“Hi.” I try to sound cheerful. I am so not her problem, and I feel bad for calling now.

“Shit, hang on a second?”

“It’s okay,” I say, because truly I don’t want to fuck up her night. I wouldn’t have called if she hadn’t made me swear.

“Can you hear me?” she asks half a minute later. Wherever she is now, it’s quiet.

“Yeah, but don’t worry about it.”

“Shut up, Ridley. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I lie. “I was just bored.”

“You sure?” She hesitates, and I know what’s coming. “Are you safe?”

I roll onto my back and drop one arm over my eyes. I hate when she asks if I’m safe. It makes me feel like I’m two years old. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. I was just calling to say hi.”

“I’d rather talk to you than anybody in that room, and you know it. Whatever it is you’re trying not to tell me, spill, or I’m driving over right now to make you say it face-to-face.”

I scoff. “Boston’s like ninety minutes away.”

“Sixty in a rush,” she says, her voice firm and worried. “Don’t test me.”

“Peak is Vera Flores’s stepdaughter,” I blurt out, because Peak has been the subject of probably 60 percent of my texts with Gray lately, and she’ll get exactly how bad that is.

“Holy shit,” she says, and then goes quiet for a second. “How is that possible?” I don’t answer, and there’s a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. “You knew when you agreed to do this, didn’t you?”

I roll onto my side, blinking hard. “Yeah.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t put this together. Ridley, this is really . . .” She trails off like she doesn’t know what else to say.

“I screwed up. I know.”

“Peak was your in this whole time? I thought you liked her.”

“I do like her! I really like her! But Dad was so happy, and it just snowballed. All of a sudden, I was back in my old room, and he was taking me out to dinner and making small talk, and he’s never been like that with me.”

“Ridley—”

“You know that’s true! You and I might have the same last name, but we don’t have the same parents. They aren’t there for me the way they are for you. And when he dangled a chance to come home—”

“That’s not home, Ridley. It’s just a house we used to live in.”

“You don’t understand.” My eyes burn, because she doesn’t. She really doesn’t.

“I’m trying,” she says. “But you can’t keep this up. It’s not healthy for you, and it’s not fair to her.”

“I know. I told her today that I was Bats.”