Mom: When you call, I’ll make sure to hand the phone to Ellie. *checks watch*

Me: …do you want me to come home?

Mom: …you would’ve been out of my house in a year’s time anyway for college. Maybe this change now is for the best.

Then she gave me the faintest of smiles, like a goodbye, like she’d already begun severing me from her mind and she was waiting for me to do the same. She’s used to leaving children behind, I realized. Maybe she thought this was the natural course—that she should leave me behind too, in time.

Sometimes I wonder if it was all a ruse, if she just appeared detached so she could let me go more easily. If she spent the night crying on the plane. If she hopes my life will be better here than it was there.

I’d like to believe all of this because it makes me love her a little more and resent her a little less.

Leaving Ellie has turned out to be the hardest part of all. Without constant communication, I can’t know how she’ll fair. If I fool myself long enough, I can imagine that my absence won’t have any real impact on her, but I know it will.

Ryke parks in front of a brick apartment complex, the lot nearly full with cars. I feel out of my element. Not only because four different vehicles park near us, doors opening and cameramen jumping out—but because I’m only seventeen and entering territory that college students step on.

Lo isn’t happy about it.

I can see that now as he scans the twenty-something, backpack-clad students, strolling in the apartment complex. His brows pinch, and his eyes darken.

“I’ll be okay,” I tell him, having to raise my voice as paparazzi gather outside the car doors.

He shakes his head a couple times. “You should really be staying with us.”

Six people live in his house: three Calloway sisters and their three significant others, all in their twenties. Along with two newborn babies, one is Loren’s son.

There may be extra room in their mansion-sized house, but I don’t feel like I’d fit in. In fact, I see myself always in the way.

I haven’t even met Rose Calloway’s husband, Connor Cobalt, yet. He could very well hate me. On the reality show, he came off as a conceited human being. I even made a gif set of him saying (with a straight face), “Most people never reach the pinnacle of perfection. But I’m not most people, so think of it as an honor to meet me.”

He’s a genius. A billionaire. And living in a bedroom down the hall from him sounds like a fantasyland not created for me.

“I don’t want to complicate your life,” I tell him honestly.

His brows rise at me, and he motions to a bearded cameraman by my window. “And I’m not complicating yours?”

The man meets Lo’s gaze, and Lo flashes his iconic dry smile at him. Seeing that smile in person is more powerful than in photograph.