Ahh guys the last chapter goes live THIS FRIDAY. because it's the very last one I'll *actually* set the time to Friday the 27th of September 10pm ACST (Aus central standard time)-so if you wanna catch the precise moment it drops google that!)

At the end I'll be asking for your requests for bonus chapters and questions for a Q & A, so have em ready 🧡

Comment of the Chapter goes to tineytruths:

*dramatic music ensues* 🎶

I didn't want to say I'd been here before. But, well, I'd been here before.

"Poppy and Cole's house," Felix said, hopping out of the car the moment it was stationery.

I followed him as he tapped a code into the gate and let himself in. It was as spacious on the inside as it seemed on the outside, the interior decorated with bunches of flowers and seashells that I suspected were Poppy's doing.

"Come on," he said, leading me up a wooden staircase. On the upper floor there were lights on. Felix paced towards one of the doors and knocked loudly.

The door down the hall opened instead, Poppy standing there with a robe on, her fair features creased with the early stages of sleep. "Felix—Josie, what's going on?"

"We need to talk to Cole," he said. I waited for him to give her more of an explanation. When he didn't, she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Why do you need to talk to him so bad?"

I'd never really seen Poppy defensive of her brother. In fact, they always seemed to be bickering. But now she moved so she was between Felix and the door.

"You need to tell me what's going on."

"Jeez, Pop. We just need to talk to him. Why isn't he answering, where is—"

Suddenly the door opened. In the threshold stood Cole, his red hair mussed and deep gray circles beneath his eyes. For once his harsh cheekbones didn't look aristocratic or elegant, instead they looked hollow.

"What do you want?"

Poppy rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air. "I tried."

"What the hell, man," Felix said. Then his hands were on his best friend's shoulders. "Are you high."

Cole gave a big, shallow smile as he swayed on the spot, answering Felix's question.

"He's been smoking all day. Ever since Penelope left this morning," Poppy said. Her voice was small.

"Smoking what?" I asked, looking from her to Cole. Suddenly the encounter at the party came to mind.

"God knows." Poppy scowled at Felix. "I'm looking after him. You don't need to be here."

"We need to talk with him alone," Felix said.

Poppy's expression darkened. "What? You want to hide more stuff from me? First Ella, then Cole, Jada, and now you guys. What am I to you?"

"We're trying to keep you out of a huge fucking mess, Poppy," Felix said. Finally I saw it, a sliver of his anger again. "Trust us."

Poppy's jaw pulsed and she shifted her weight, but she didn't budge.

"You know what, fine." Felix sternly directed Cole back into his bedroom. The bed was unmade, and a lamp on in the corner. Felix moved to turn on the main light, and when he did I saw that he hadn't been alone in his bedroom.

"What the fuck," Poppy said. "What are you doing here?"

Jada looked incredibly startled, perched on the edge of Cole's bed with one of his shirts on. She looked at Cole, as if begging him to offer some kind of information. When he didn't, Felix spoke.

"This situation is really, really, complicated."

"So wait, let me get this straight." Poppy screwed her eyes shut and rubbed at her temples. "You and Penelope have never even been dating all these years?"

"Well, we've been pretending to," Cole said. I think he'd sobered a little when his sister had slapped him in the face somewhere amongst the explanation. I was sitting on a chair in the corner, my arms wrapped around my shins.

"And she was paying you? For what... appearances?"

All of us watched her, waiting for it to drop.

"And you," she looked to Jada. "You weren't really her friend."

"Well, I was, I was just also... well, paid to be."

"And you." Her gaze then found Felix.

"Her photographer, come assistant in... I guess keeping us all together."

"Wow."

"And... me," I said finally. My voice was hoarse. "I was supposed to keep an eye on Cole to make sure he honored their contract. Her reputation. I had no idea it was this... messed up."

Poppy started laughing rather hysterically. "Are you guys playing some gigantic prank on me?"

"I really wish we were," Felix said.

"This isn't just some huge story to cover the fact that my brother is having an affair with my best friend?"

She gave a hurtful look to Cole and Jada.

"We never planned this," Jada said with desperation, her eyes fixed pleadingly on Poppy. "It was never supposed to happen."

Poppy laughed again.

"Aren't you angry?" Felix asked. He turned to Cole. "Don't you want this to end?"

"Now you just told Poppy everything, yeah," he said sourly. His words were slow, still coming down from his high. The smell of weed cloaked his bedroom.

"You're not supposed to keep secrets from me—and now you're basically telling me everything for the last three years has been a lie!" Poppy's voice was loud now. She stood up. "I'm going to call Penelope."

"No!" We all stood to our feet.

"If you do that, she will ruin everything. She's got stuff on us, Poppy," Jada said. "If the contracts aren't enough reason, then the dirt she has is."

"Am I the only one here that doesn't have fucking secrets?" Poppy said. Her eyes were starting to sparkle and I looked to my hands in guilt. She was right. If we were all clean of scandals, this wouldn't be an issue.

Jada stood to take Poppy's hand, but Poppy brushed her away, as if she were covered in acid.

"We need to do something," Felix said. "This has gone too far. Hiring people to spy on us. Breaking up our relationships..."

His voice cracked at the end and my heart split in two. I wondered if he'd been with Paisley today, making up for lost time.

"What can we even do?" Jada asked.

"I've tried searching her apartment before," I said. "After she started blackmailing me into keeping the contract with her. I couldn't find anything."

Felix was watching me intently. It felt shameful to speak about it in front of him. I couldn't meet his eyes.

"If Penelope has any secrets, I bet they're kept locked far away," Jada said.

"We don't need her secrets," Cole said. All of us turned to him in curiosity. "We already know what she's scared of exposing most."

"Us," Felix said finally.

"But that falls back on all of us," Jada said. "Even if she didn't get revenge, how does that look? That we can be bribed with money?"

"Yeah, how does it look?" Poppy asked, glaring at her.

"You wouldn't know, Poppy," Cole said. "We wouldn't even live here if it wasn't for the bullshit I went through—we'd still be living in that stupid little beach shack waiting for Dad to come back."

"You asshole," Poppy said, lunging across the room for her brother.

We all sprang into motion, but it was Felix who caught her. "Come on, I think we need a break from this."

"Hands off me!" But when Felix did release her, she didn't try to attack Cole again.

"Where is Penelope right now?" I asked.

"At home," Cole replied. "Like, Candard Heights. She doesn't fly out for another twenty-four hours, I think."

"Then we have twenty-four hours," I said. "To free us from this mess."

I'd craved freedom for a long time. I thought I'd found it briefly in first semester of college. But I still didn't have financial freedom. Worrying about money was a burden on its own.

This though—with all of the money I'd earned over the last six weeks—was not freedom at all. I'd gone from being one person's puppet to another.

But now I was going to be free.

I didn't want to bluff my way into getting Penelope to cave, but it was starting to look like the only chance we had under a time crunch. I was at the college library, a huge pile of paper in my hands as I fed it into the scanner.

Cole. Jada, Me, Ella, and Felix. Five contracts I'd collected.

"Almost done?" Ella asked. She was lounging over a nearby sofa, a random book in her hands. She licked the tip of her thumb and turned the page.

"Last few pages," I said. The machine started beeping to tell me it was complete. I took the flash drive from the printer and put it into the pocket on my jeans. Though it was nearly ten in the morning, the fog made it feel as if the sun had never risen.

"Great," Ella said wickedly, taking the original pages from me and binding them with a clip. "You sure I can't come with you?"

I nodded. "I'm the only one she's used all her ammunition with, remember?"

Besides, even if Penelope did have more methods to ruin my life, at least doing this would give me some sense of peace with my part in this. It might mean I could move on.

The thought made my heart sink.

"Was Poppy..." Ella said, just as I was grabbing my bag to leave. "Do you think she'll ever forgive me?"

With Ella and all her bad bitch persona, I had been wondering if she ever did care for Poppy. She'd seemed so dead-set on taking Penelope down that she'd barely even mentioned her. Now, I was wondering if that was more out of guilt than heartlessness.

"Go talk to her," I said. Though if I'd learned one thing about the dainty and angelic Poppy Kensington, it was that she wasn't one to be messed with.

Felix's car was already idling in the parking lot as I left campus. I slid in wordlessly, my hand still fidgeting with the flash drive in my pocket.

"Everything went smoothly?"

I nodded. Though, there was a knot in my stomach. I was nervous—worried what Penelope might do. But I was also worried that if things went to plan, and Penelope stopped controlling her so-called friends, then what did I have left? This might be the last time Felix and I spoke.

"And you're completely comfortable doing this?"

I gave him a sad smile. "I got myself into this mess. I can help get us out."

As we passed the half way mark and I realized I'd be getting out of the car at Penelope's complex soon, I started growing anxious for some kind of closure. I kept wondering if this was all I was ever going to get.

"Felix," I said, my voice cracking as I finally stopped biting my tongue.

"Yeah?" It was as if he'd been waiting for me to speak. He glanced at me, worry lines across his brow.

I took a deep breath.

"Are you and Paisley going to make up?"

Felix didn't look at me for a few long moments and my brain immediately took me through the worse possible options. Then he pulled onto a side street so he could stop. He cut the engine and turned to me.

"Paisley is my past. It doesn't matter how we ended—we ended. We were young, and we've both moved on. It doesn't matter that it was Penelope's doing. If we were meant to be—if we trusted each other—we would have seen through her plan. Sure, it might have saved me a lot of pain and anger if it wasn't for Penelope, but it was an inevitable finish."

"But—"

He placed a hand on my knee to silence me so he could continue. "Yeah, things are messed up. When I thought you were married for real, I imagined all these scenarios, all these endings where you'd been betraying me, just like I'd thought Paisley had. But, I had this feeling, something I never felt in my last relationship. Even though I know there was more to it—that Penelope was controlling you in some way—I still trusted who you were. No matter how stupid that makes me."

I blinked. Felix, the smartest, wittiest guy I knew, calling himself stupid because he believed in me.

"I didn't trust Penelope, or your motives, like I wouldn't trust anyone who started paying attention to us. But I trusted us."

"Are you sure you're not crazy?" I whispered, my throat feeling thick.

He leaned forward to brush a strand of hair from my cheeks. "No. But, I want you to know—for me, this was real."

I swallowed hard. "It was real for me too."