WHEN I FINALLY GET through Thursday afternoon New York City traffic, I find Lara on the pavement outside Al's Bar, tapping on her phone.

I smile, knowing she's probably playing some kind of game, but I peep my horn and she looks up quickly, smiling when she sees me.

She waves, grabbing her stick before hobbling towards the car. I lean sideways and open the door before she gets there. She jumps in with a sigh and wraps her arms around my neck.

"This must be important if I get a private chauffeur and everything," she jokes. "But I appreciate it."

I shrug. "Not a problem. It's been too long since I've seen you, and I couldn't make you walk to my place could I?"

"Yeah, twenty blocks. My leg would never have forgiven you."

I automatically glance down at her leg at her comment. After what she'd told us at Christmas, about both the accident and what her dad did, she'd come a long way. Her leg finally healed, and she was able to accept what the doctors had been trying to tell her, which meant she was finally able to understand why her dad made the choice. She still hadn't spoken to him, but at least she now understood.

But she'd told us more. She told us about her brother, the brother that was driving the boat when her mum got killed. Billy had been in a coma for months, but just before Christmas she got a call from the hospital saying he was awake. She'd gone to see him, but the doctors told her he had a condition called TBI - Traumatic Brain Injury - and that his behaviour could be erratic. Doctors had told both her and her dad that the condition could last the rest of his life or with therapy he could get through it, but so far neither of them had been able to get through to him.

"Is Millie at the apartment yet?" she asks, jogging my brain away from Billy.

I laugh, "No, not yet. Ollie's there now. Well, he's out at a movie at the moment, but he's living with me now."

"Oh that's good. I liked him. It's good you aren't on your own," she says, patting my knee before taking my hand.

I look over at her briefly before looking back at the road, but we don't say anything more for the rest of the journey.

***

WHEN WE GET BACK to the apartment, I park my car in the underground car park and get out first, grabbing her crutch and helping her out of the car. Once we're upstairs, I sit her down and fuss over her for about ten minutes until I feel a sharp swat on the back of my head.

"Dude!" I complain. "What the hell was that for?"

She laughs and pushes herself up, sitting cross-legged. "Well, you've brought me here to talk about something and then you aren't saying anything. So sit," she points to the sofa next to her, "and spill."

I chuckle. Her honesty and her no-nonsense attitude is refreshing. To be honest, it reminds me of Matt. He would just come out and say things like that, but more often than not, he would be right.

"Sit," she says again, pointing at the soft, so I sigh before sitting down next to her, wondering where the hell I should start.

"So you know I've told you loads?"

She shrugs in response. I hadn't told her that much, but what I had told her was pretty big. I'd told her about the accident, and about Tessa, which is more than I'd told many others.

"Well I never told you about my dad..."

Her eyebrows raise as she sits forward. "Your dad?"

"Yeah. I don't really talk about him because he's... Well, he's in prison."

"In prison?" Her eyes widen. "Oh my god, what for?"

I sigh and brace myself, closing my eyes. "For killing Matt."

Her jaw drops, as I thought it would.

"Jesus Christ, Arch. Was that the car accident?" She swallows. "The car accident that..."

"Yeah," I nod. "He was the one that ran us into the central reservation and made the car flip over."

She cups her mouth but I keep going, wanting to get this all out so we can move on to the more fun part of the evening as quickly as possible.

"But anyway that's not what I wanted to talk about. There's something else. He owns WEH. Wall Enterprise Holdings."

Her eyeline automatically moves to the middle distance and I know she's looking towards the skyscraper that houses WEH New York headquarters. It's got the writing down the side, and millions of commuters and tourists pass it every day. She knows what it is.

"Fucking hell."

"Yeah," I scoff. "That just about covers it." I look around my surroundings. "How else do you think we've been able to live here all this time?"

"I don't know? I just figured you guys were loaded." She shrugs but her cheeks pink as she looks back to that building in the distance.

I'm taking a guess at her knowing exactly who I was when she found out my last name was Wall. But I appreciate her friendship in letting me come to her about it, and not forcing it out of me.

"So how come you're telling me this now? Has something happened?" she asks.

"Something, yeah. I got a phone call from one of Dad's lawyers. Well, someone in WEH's Legal department. And they're asking Millie and me to come in to the office in a couple of weeks, because there are 'things to discuss'," I tell her, using air quotes.

"Things to discuss? Like what?"

I sigh as I pull my phone out of my pocket, getting the email up again and showing her.

I watch her reaction as she reads the whole thing. She looks at me at several points, I'm guessing the line about Dad dying, but overall she stays calm.

When she's done, she hands the phone back to me and she looks just as shocked as I felt when I read it.

"That is intense, Archie."

I nod.

"You wanted to talk to me about this?"

I nod again. "Yeah, I had to tell someone, otherwise I'd go crazy. You were the only person I could think of."

"I'm not really the right person to talk to Arch. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to tell you?"

"I don't want you to say anything. I just needed to tell someone, and Millie seemed off when I texted her, and I didn't want to just text."

It's quiet for a moment as we both mull over what was in the email.

"What do you think they're going to ask?" I ask with a sigh.

"I have no idea!" She throws her hands up in the air. "But it sounds like they're serious about getting you guys involved... which, no offence, seems a bit risky to me."

"Oh none taken," I hold my hands up. "I'm not even twenty-one yet and I have no business experience whatsoever, and they want me to help run a Fortune 500 company?"

She shakes her head and runs her hands through her hair before looking at me. She looks as overwhelmed as I feel, but I know she's going to try and help. It's what she always does. And it's what I love about her.

"Arch, this could completely change your life."

"I know it will. Again, that's why I wanted to talk it through. I knew my life would change, and I knew something with the company would crop up eventually... I just figured it would be way later down the line, when I was actually bloody ready for this!" I was starting to panic now. "Actually, scrap that, I figured they wouldn't contact me at all because it had been so long since everything happened that they wouldn't need to change anything."

She shuffles closer to me as I put my head between my knees, trying to stop the panic from rising inside of me.

"Okay, let me put it to you this way. If you just pretend for a moment that it has nothing to do with your family, it's just an amazing job offer. Would you take it?"

"No," I say quickly, because no sane person would do that.

She laughs and swats at my knee.

"Okay fine. Have it your way. Let's talk it out."

"Fine," I sigh.

"How did you feel when you read that your dad was dying?"

Okay, that question I hadn't been expecting.

"Weird," I say truthfully. "Which isn't how I thought I'd feel."

It's true. After everything my dad has done to me, from putting me in the hospital, to Matt... I thought I'd be happy to find out my dad was dying. I didn't want anything to do with my dad, not at all... not after the way he'd always treated me. And I didn't owe him anything.

But then he's my dad. Despite what he's done, he helped bring me into this world, and whether I like it or not, he's a part of the man I am today. He's the part I never want to be, the part I know I'll never be, but that still means he's a part of me all the same.

And the same went for WEH.

Dad had built the company from nothing, him and Grandad both had. They went from a one-roomed office in Saffron Walden, to a building in Canary Wharf, to an entire skyscraper in New York. They went from a two-man idea, with Dad working whilst getting his degree, and now it's one of the most successful companies in the world. And although I could keep telling myself I don't owe my dad anything, did I really want my grandad and my dad's legacy just to be carved up, broken down and then sold off to the highest bidder? I wanted that answer to be yes so badly, but it was a no. No matter how much I hated my dad, I couldn't do that.

"I can't let him down."

She smiles. I don't know how long we've been silent for, but I know that smile tells me that she knew I'd come to that answer all along.

"You don't know what they're going to offer you in there. They could make you an offer that means you sell it, or that they offer to run it for you or something. They might ask you to be involved. The guy said you had options right?"

"Yeah. Options."

"Then the only thing you can do is hear him out, Arch."

The part I was worrying about is the running it part. But if my dad knew how to turn a tiny idea into a hugely profitable business, he knows not to put an inexperienced twenty year-old in charge. He has a plan.

"You could do some charity stuff with the money maybe?"

I look at her and smile. "That's one of the things my mum kept suggesting to him. Dad gave some, but with the millions he earns, he could have given way more."

"See, there we go. Already thinking like a businessman."

"What? Trying to find ways to give the money away?"

She shrugs. "Arch, you're like Mr Grey. What was it he said? He makes $24,000 every twenty minutes?"

I shake my head.

"You don't think they'd actually want to put me in charge do you?" I ask, wary.

"Ha!" She throws her head back in a laugh. "Arch, you know I love you, but like I said, putting you in charge will be a disaster," she giggles. "Putting a rookie in charge is pretty bad for business." She laughs again before she turns serious again. "What does Millie think of it? Did she get the same email?"

I shrug. "Like I said, I texted her, but she seemed really pissed at me, so I figured I'd talk to her when she got here in a couple of weeks. I don't know what she'll think. I mean, she said that she thought all of this was behind us, and I know how she feels."

I drop my head into my hands. Every time I feel like I'm just about able to stand with my head firmly above water, someone kicks my legs out from under me and I have to struggle to breathe again.

"I don't know what my sister wants to be honest. Even though we're okay now, so much has happened the last couple of years. I don't know what she's thinking anymore."

I hated that this rift had grown between Millie and me. As much as the two of us were okay now, our friendship is a lot different to what it was before I came here. I knew it was all my fault too. There was no one else to blame here, other than myself.

"You know, now that you've told me," Lara starts, looking round the apartment, "all of this insanity really does make sense."

"You mean how's a college kid able to afford a place like this?"

"Pretty much," she laughs. "Did you live by yourself mostly?" I can tell she's trying to change the subject slightly to help me keep calm.

I nod, "Yeah, apart from the last couple of weeks with Ollie. I preferred it that way when I first got here. To be honest, when I arrived I stayed in a hotel for months because I didn't want to have anything to do with anything that would tie me to Dad. But then Millie told me I was an idiot and convinced me that using it wouldn't be as bad as I thought."

"You stayed in a hotel?" She looks around. "You could be staying here and you chose a hotel?"

I shrug. "Columbia offered me a dorm too. I would have accepted, but at the time I woke up-"

"Screaming? Yeah I don't miss those nightmares," she jokes. "You have no idea how much your screaming freaked me out that first night, Arch."

My cheeks redden as I see the worry in her eyes. Worry for me, worrying about what was going on in my closed-off state at the time.

"I'm sorry about that."

"Hey, don't be sorry. The fact you don't have them anymore shows how far you've come right?"

I shrug. I still had them from time to time, but thankfully nowhere near as bad. I might wake up drenched in sweat, but I'm no longer screaming at the top of my lungs.

"You ever tempted to move back into dorms?" she asks with a smile.

"Are you kidding? Absolutely not. I'm close to campus here, close enough that I can run in on the days I have classes."

"Ew, you run to campus? So you're sweaty in all your classes?"

"No, I have a shower. The gym on campus has showers, I'm not that gross."

She laughs and I watch as her face goes from bright to serious in the space of a second before she smiles again.

"What? What is it?" I ask.

She shakes her head and gestures as if it's nothing.

"No, tell me."

She sighs as she sits up again. "I just still can't believe I never put two and two together."

"Me telling you doesn't make you see me any differently does it?" I ask, frowning as I look at her seriously. That was the last thing I wanted.

"What! No!" She swats at my knee. "You'll always be plain old Archie to me, no matter how loaded you are," she comes back with a smile. "But it's what I like about you - even before. You have all this, and yet you're still... normal."

I raise my eyebrows and smile.

Tessa had said that so many times to me. Our school was a private school, so we had quite a few rich families with kids there, but she always said that Millie and I were the only ones who actually wanted to do something with our lives, rather than live off our parents' money.

A big example is Callum. I don't quite know what his dad does, but he hasn't gone to university, and from what I've seen on what social media I look at, he seems to be on one long permanent holiday. But what disappoints me most about that, is that he's changed Dee. I remember her telling me once that she wanted to teach English to children in third-world countries. Now I see her in Callum's pictures, mooching off him and his family, living life in expensive hotel rooms and on expensive yachts.

"It's because of Andrew," I say with a smile.

"Andrew?"

"Yeah," I nod with a smile. "Tessa and Matt's dad. He was more of a father figure than my dad ever was, and I always wanted to be more like him. Helping people, encouraging people to be who they want to be."

"He sounds amazing. Just from that proud smile on your face, I can tell he meant a lot."

"He does. I miss him." I clear my throat. "He saved us. He took Millie and me in after what happened. He didn't have to do it, but he did anyway. We helped where we could, when we could, but he was always happy to provide for us, no matter what, as if we were a part of the family. And Tessa and Matt are two of the kindest people you will ever meet."

A lump forms at the freeing way in which I'm able to speak about them now. I never thought I'd be able to, and yet here I am.

"You know... She worked with kids, and she loves kids. And I remember we were at the park, Matt and me playing football, and we were in the queue for an ice cream afterwards." I smile as the memory comes to the forefront of my mind. "A child was with his mum, in front of us, and she noticed he was crying. She looked at him and saw he'd dropped his ice cream on the floor. So when it was our turn, she bought him another one. His mum had no idea, but the smile on his face as we walked away was so cheeky and happy. It's things like that I miss the most about them."

I turn my attention to Lara.

"It's what I like about you, too."

"Me?"

"Yeah. You do things to make other people happy, despite what's going on with you. Matt did that too," I laugh. "He always used to say the truth is the truth, so you may as well just tell it, even if it hurts."

I poke her in the side and she flinches sideways, giggling.

"You're the same. You tell it to me straight, whether I want to hear it or not," I laugh. "You listen, you really listen, and you have never tiptoed around it like everyone else seemed to."

"This conversation has suddenly gone all serious, Arch," she laughs. "But I'm going to take that as a compliment."

"You should."

It's quiet for a moment before she speaks. "I just don't see the point," she shrugs. "I didn't actually used to be like this. I was the opposite."

"Now that I can't believe."

She shakes her head, "No, really. Since seeing how quickly Mum died, I don't know... I just don't see the point in being something you're not. To be honest, it's probably why I don't have many friends these days."

I raise my eyebrows. She'd never really spoken too much about home. Same as me, her past was painful and full of hurt she wants to work through. But like her, I listen, offering her as much comfort as I can.

"You've only got one life, right? Why waste it lying to people."

I nod. "And, Lara, if I haven't said it already... Thank you."

She shoves me sideways, laughing.

"Arch, you have said it before. Many times," she winks. "Now before this conversation gets too serious, what the hell are we doing tonight?"

"Good point. So much more important than the prospect of my every-looming future.

"Precisely. Now please tell me we have something epic planned?"

"We sure do," I laugh. "A night in. I figure you could use one if you've been working all week?"

"Ha! All month more like." Her smiles means I know I've made the right choice.

"Well, all the more reason to stay in then. Harry Potter marathon maybe?"

"Ooooh, now you're talking!"

I laugh. "Let me text Ollie as well. He loves Harry Potter."

"Okay, you do that, I'll pee."

She pushes up on her crutches and hops across the apartment to the bathroom whilst I pick up my phone from the table.

Hey man, Lara and I are having pizza and a HP marathon if you're up for it?

As I go to grab a bottle of Coke from the fridge, I hear a ping and I smile as I read it.

Screw Spanish cinema, I'll be back shortly!!

"Is Ollie in?"

"Yup," I laugh. "And he'll never forgive us if we start without him, so we should wait. I can order food in the meantime though?"

"Pizzas?" she asks.

I smile, contented that after such a weird start to the day, life is normalising again.

"Lara.. You read my mind."