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I pressed my lips together. “Okay. Well...good. He should have.” I told him they were the most important people in my life, and he’d tried to make it right.

“He even apologized to your mom,” Axel said.

I rolled my eyes. “I bet he loved getting to talk to her.”

Axel cringed.

“Let me guess,” I said. “He apologized for getting naked on her desk and then immediately asked her to prom in my place?”

“No,” Scarlett said with a laugh. “Wait, are we allowed to laugh about jokes like this yet? Or is it too soon?”

“Too soon, baby,” Axel said.

“Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “But he really did go on a whole apology tour before he left that night. And he’s apologized every day at school for good measure.”

“And he’s been very adamant that his feelings for you are real,” Jacob added.

Yeah, I’d heard Adonis say that. His feelings had become real at some point. But fuck. Not until after he’d called me Miss Hunter and pictured my mom.

“How are you actually doing, Soph?” Jacob asked.

“I’m okay.”

“How are you actually doing?” he repeated.

I shrugged. “Not knowing why Mr. Halifax left killed me. But I know what went wrong with Adonis. I don’t have to stay up late pondering Adonis’ sudden disappearance. So at least there’s that.” But it didn’t mean I wasn’t plagued by thoughts of all the lies when I tried to go to sleep at night. And all the good moments, that I wasn’t even sure were real, that made me cry myself to sleep.

My friends were all quiet.

“I’m worried about Larry,” I said.

Scarlett laughed. “That demon cat will be fine.”

“I hope so.” Larry had very particular dietary needs. I was the only one that truly understood her. “I miss her.” A small piece of me missed Adonis too, but I’d never admit it out loud. And I didn’t really miss him. Because I didn’t even know the real him.

I groaned and lay back down in the sand. “You guys, I messed everything up so much.”

“No you didn’t,” Scarlett said.

“I really did though. I can’t believe I dropped out of college for that asshole. And I can’t fix it. I’ve called the admissions office a billion times. They gave my spot to someone else. What am I going to do?”

“My dad said he’d take care of it,” Scarlett said.

“Wait, what?”

“He said he’d handle it. And whenever he says that, he means it.”

I wanted to say I didn’t need special favors. But I did. Desperately. The lady at the admissions office was very mean. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I heard him say it too,” Axel said. “And he seemed very happy about it. Which kinda made me a little suspicious.”

“He’s definitely up to some kind of shady deal,” Jacob said. “He already has a hall named after him, so I’m not sure what he’s up to exactly. But I believe him when he says he’ll get you back in.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. My fate was in Uncle James’ hands. And that felt a million times better than having my fate in Adonis’ hands.

Uncle James would pull through. He always did. I let the realization that maybe everything was going to be okay settle around me. I exhaled slowly. Going to the University of New Castle with my friends had been a dream of mine. I couldn’t believe I’d almost replaced my dream with someone else’s. This was what I wanted. To be with my best friends.

“Thank you guys for coming,” I said.