Annalisa’s half brother, Luke, is going to stand trial for murdering Aiden’s stepfather, which he claims he doesn’t remember doing because he wasn’t sober at the time, and Annalisa is just now realizing that she can’t bear to not have Luke in her life.

Noah and Chase are in a weird we’re friends but not really stage because Chase walked in on Noah in bed with the love of Chase’s life, Charlotte, who really doesn’t know if she even likes either of them as more than friends.

My middle (and favorite) finger is dislocated from punching Ryan, Aiden’s now ex-stepbrother, in the face. My nose is swollen and bruised from walking into Mason’s elbow, and there are a bunch of cuts and bruises on my body from Aiden’s dad’s attempt to murder me.

And to make all of that worse, I’m being relocated as soon as the agents assigned to my case finalize our new location and identities. King City is the one place that feels like home, where I have friends I adore and a boy I love. But Aiden already knows all about me, and I decided to break some small rules so that I don’t have to completely give him up—namely the no contacting anyone from your old life rule. But what my mom and the agents don’t know won’t hurt them, and I’ll be supercareful. When the time comes to leave, I won’t feel like my heart is being ripped out; I’ll still have Aiden.

But in the meantime, while I’m still here in King City, not only do I have Kaitlyn and Ryan trying to make my life miserable, but my best friends are all in the middle of their own dramas, and I still have two grown men trying to kill me.

Nice.

Honestly, Julian’s the only one in this group who has his shit together and is living a relatively normal life—except for the fact that he hangs out with all of us.

After the accident when Aiden and I were run off the road by Harvey, Andrew’s right-hand man, Aiden and Mason gave the cops a pretty convincing story about what had happened, mostly sticking to the truth but omitting any mention of me or Julian. As far as I know, the detectives don’t see any discrepancies in their story.

Harvey, the man who ran Aiden and me off the road and tried to shoot me, wasn’t found, but “Aiden” didn’t deliver a kill shot, so authorities believe Harvey is injured. They ran the prints on the knife that he held to Aiden’s throat and they were matched to a Harvey Vedenin, who, to no surprise, has been arrested before. It’s also not a shock that Harvey Vedenin is a known associate and bodyguard of Andrew Kessler, which gives validity to Aiden’s story. Of course, there’s no evidence that actually proves Andrew Kessler was behind Harvey’s actions, but we know the truth.

Aiden and Mason stayed at the beach house for an extra week to sort everything out, and the rest of us returned home, Noah driving Jason and Jackson back to Mason’s house. During that week they stayed back, I didn’t dare go to school. While I couldn’t really afford to miss any more of it, I felt guilty returning to school and pretending everything was fine when it was anything but.