“Whatever this is”—I point back and forth between the both of us—“it’s got to end, now. No more fake dating, no more fake kisses, no more hand-holding, no more anything.”

“Did I do something wrong?” they ask again.

No, you didn’t do anything wrong, Wyatt, except make a coward fall in love with you.

“Yes, you did,” I lie.

Their shoulders slump forward. “I wish you’d tell me what it is.”

“That doesn’t matter—”

“It does to me,” they say firmly.

“Whatever. This is over. You can perform at the wedding, and we can act like we’re together until we go back to Steerfield. Then we never have to talk about it again.” I step away from Wyatt, fully prepared to go back to the rehearsal dinner.

“No.” Wyatt steps in front of me.

“What?”

“No.”

“You can’t just say no.” I try to step around him, but Wyatt is quick.

“That’s not good enough, Neil.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’re my friend, and I’d like to know what I did. What changed?”

“Oh my God, just drop it. This was all a fucking act anyway!” I finally move past Wyatt and around the corner, where I run headfirst into my mother, standing there with her arms crossed.

My blood freezes.

Because the look on her face tells me that she’s heard every single word.

“I came to see why you’d left in such a hurry,” she says. “But I can see the two of you are busy.”

“We aren’t,” I say.

“You faked this whole relationship?”

“Is that true, Neil?” Josh asks. I don’t even know where he came from. One second the elevator door was opening, and the next, he was there, with a new pair of pants and Lindsay standing next to him.

“Yes, Neil. What’s going on here?” Mother stares at me and then Wyatt. “You’re not dating this boy?”

“God, stop. Just stop.”

“And how am I going to explain this to everyone?”

“You don’t fucking have to!” I say a little too loudly. Heads turn in our direction. “Not every fucking thing has to be about you!”

The faucet has been turned on.

“Oh, but that’s impossible, because everything has to come back to you. Because you don’t know how to actually be a mother, you just throw money at me and hope that it fixes all of our problems. And when it won’t, you’ll take any chance you can get to embarrass me.”

She stares at me. There’s this look of disbelief on everyone’s faces.

I didn’t even mean for the words to come out, but now that they’re out there, I can’t say that I’m sorry.

“Neil Anthony Kearney, you cannot talk to me that way!”