I told you.

There was a lot of talking in that last part, and not by me. So, I'll let you know a few things right off the bat.

1. While Leo Lutz was talking to me, explaining everything that had happened in excruciating detail, I couldn't really think. I couldn't process everything that was going on around me. So, by the time I got out into the real world again, I was completely shellshocked.

2. I had some weird, preconceived loyalty to Kennedy. Even after she had implicated me in a hit-and-run, even after she had kicked me off of the influencer account. I had this loyalty to her and to our friendship; or, at least, what I perceived as being our friendship. I didn't want to give her up.

3. I didn't want to believe what my mind was itching for me to realize: that the timing of my 'friendship' with Kennedy was awfully convenient for her. Awfully, terribly convenient.

I was the most lost I'd ever been in my life. I didn't want to believe a word he was saying, and yet, at the same time, I knew he was telling the truth. And I knew that Kennedy had been lying to me. I just didn't know how to make sense of it all.

I had also been going through this entire thing completely on my own. No help from Leo, no help from my friends, no help from my family, and especially no help from Kennedy. Everything was hard, and I didn't want to have to do it on my own anymore. I decided that I didn't owe anything to Kennedy anymore, and I could start talking to someone I trusted.

And can I just tell you?

It was liberating.

><><

Rebecca spent the entire ride home in complete silence. Music played from the radio, but she didn't sing along. She didn't enjoy the beautiful weather by opening her window. Eventually, the music playing from the radio started to annoy her, so she turned that off too. Complete silence. Nothing but the cars going past her and the inane beating in her chest that had been bothering her for over an hour.

She walked into her apartment and made a beeline for her room, where she immediately sprawled out on her bed as if she had never felt anything quite so comforting in her entire life. Which, perhaps she hadn't.

She felt her Fitbit buzz with a phone call and flipped her phone over next to her, half of her hoping that the call would be from Kennedy and half of her hoping she never heard from Kennedy again.

It was Lyla. Essentially an extension of Kennedy.

She ignored the call and tossed her phone over to the other side of her bed, not looking at it until her Fitbit buzzed again with a voicemail notification a few minutes later.

Rebecca raised her eyebrows slightly. She never got voicemails. And especially not from Lyla Rose.

She unlocked her phone and started listening.

"Rebecca? Rebecca, I need to answer me." Her voice was high-pitched and she was sniffling between every word, "I...I didn't know who else to call. Doug broke up with me. And I know you're probably like 'Oh, why didn't she just call Kennedy?' Because he dumped me for her. He dumped me for that lying, backstabbing slut and he didn't have any problem telling me that. I need to talk to you...Rian's going to take Kennedy's side because she wants to keep her status, but you don't care about that stuff! I need you to call me back, Bec, it's so rough right now and this is like the hardest thing ever and...well, you don't have friends, so you should at least be one to me." She let out a loud, dramatic sob before the message finished, "Call me back. And don't call Kennedy!"

The line went dead and Rebecca sighed before setting her phone down on the bed. She didn't need to deal with that. Breaking up a college relationship was hardly the worst thing Rebecca had discovered about Kennedy that day.

"Knock, knock."

Rebecca almost jumped out of her skin when Celeste opened her bedroom door, flipping around to face her friend as Celeste walked in the room, her face looking like she was about to explode with excitement.

But her expression changed quickly once she saw Rebecca's face, and she closed the door behind her before jumping on the bed next to her friend.

"What's wrong?" Celeste asked as Rebecca sat up slowly. "You look like you're about to cry."

And as if hearing the word was some sort of curse, Rebecca immediately burst into tears, her entire body shaking. Celeste grabbed her friend instantly and wrapped her arms around Rebecca, silently letting the other girl sob into her chest. She waited for a few minutes until the sobs started to fade before asking Rebecca anything else.

"Bec," She said quietly, "Are you okay?"

Rebecca shook her head adamantly, trying to calm herself down. She didn't know why crying had been the first thing her body thought to do, but there she was. Everything about the past day had been so overwhelming that she wasn't even sure she could process all of it. Everything about the past month and a half, since the car accident, had been something out of a nightmare for the girl, and she had been holding it all in, keeping it all to herself.

"You know Drew Parley?"

And Rebecca launched into the entire story. She told Celeste absolutely everything: she talked about how the account began, she talked about how she had lied and gone to Tampa with Kennedy to get pictures for Drew. She told her about the hit-and-run. She talked about how Kennedy had ordered Rebecca not to breathe a word of it. She talked about how she had listened to everything Kennedy said for the next six weeks, until Kennedy decided to remove her from the account. She told Celeste everything that Leo had said to her.

When Rebecca finished talking, Celeste sat in silence. She didn't move, she didn't speak. Rebecca started to get worried about how her best friend was taking everything, until Celeste suddenly grabbed Rebecca and hugged her tighter than she had ever been hugged.

"I'm so sorry that you were roped into all this." Celeste whispered, still hugging Rebecca, "I don't think I could have survived this with as much strength as you have."

She moved away from Rebecca and the latter felt as if a brick had been lifted off of her chest. She had told someone about everything. Someone who only had Rebecca's best interests at heart.

"What do you want to do next?" Celeste asked softly, "What's your next step?"

Rebecca shook her head.

"I have no idea." She admitted, "I don't even know what my options are, legally or otherwise. I don't know how to keep the account or how to keep Kennedy from turning me into the cops for something she did. I don't know how to confess everything to Leo without having Kennedy retaliate. I just...I feel like I was backed into a corner and I have no way to get out."

Celeste shook her head in disbelief, sitting on the bed silently for a second.

"I wonder what's going on with Kennedy." She said finally, "Because from everything you've said, she was the picture-perfect best friend at the beginning of all this."

Rebecca nodded.

"She was. That's why everything feels so surreal right now. I never thought she would do this to me."

"Maybe you were a scapegoat."

Rebecca turned to face Celeste in surprise.

"What?"

Celeste shrugged.

"Think about it." She said, "She was so buddy-buddy with you...and so quick. I mean, I was all for it. We got invited to her parties, I felt like I was talked to more because I was associated with you, and you were associated with Kennedy...I wasn't complaining, by any means. But that doesn't mean that I thought it was completely normal. She found you and suddenly you were hers."

Rebecca nodded slowly, thinking over her brief friendship with Kennedy Abrams. It had started completely randomly, after Rebecca had fallen off of a treadmill and Kennedy had helped her up. They shared a love for volleyball and then Kennedy invited her to a party...and within a week, they were running a secret, fake Instagram influencer's account together. Just the two of them.

Why hadn't she done that with Lyla? Rian? Doug, even?

Maybe she did need a scapegoat. Maybe she had been planning on getting rid of her old boyfriend and needed someone to take the fall for it. Rebecca remembered that night, the worst night she had ever endured: how Kennedy had insisted on driving home, how she had insisted on not using a GPS at all. She remembered how Kennedy had asked if they could use Rebecca's car instead of Kennedy's to drive to Tampa in the first place. She remembered how calm Kennedy had been about killing someone.

Almost as if she had planned it.

But then she also remembered Kennedy's face when she saw what she had done. She had looked so shocked. There was no way that could have been faked. There was no way that they could have hit Hank Wilcox on purpose. She had looked so frightened at first. And then it had morphed into an eerie calm. Rebecca had assumed that was because she needed to be calm. If she hadn't been calm, both girls would likely have been thrown into a cell by the next morning.

Kennedy couldn't have hit him on purpose, but it also couldn't have been a coincidence. And Rebecca didn't want to believe that she had just been Kennedy's scapegoat.

"All I'm saying is," Celeste interrupted Rebecca's frantic musings, "After everything you just told me? I wouldn't put it past her."

Rebecca nodded again.

"I wouldn't put it past her either. But I just...I just don't really want to believe that's true. It's not like we had a relationship or anything, but we were friends, and I thought we were good friends, and...I don't know. I just haven't made that many good friends in my life, and I usually struggled with making friends at all, and so the fact that someone wanted to be my friend in the first place, and then the fact that someone like Kennedy Abrams wanted to be my friend...it would just suck if it was all just a way for her to save her ass in this warped, perverted scheme."

Celeste wrapped her arm around Rebecca and hugged her from the side, shaking her head slightly—almost in an 'I can't believe this happened to you' way. At least, Rebecca thought it was in an 'I can't believe this happened to you' way. Rebecca couldn't believe this had happened to her either.

"So, what am I gonna do?" Rebecca asked finally, "What do I say when Leo calls me tomorrow?"

Celeste was quiet for a few minutes and the girls sat together, both confused, as they thought. Finally, Celeste spoke.

"I think that you should tell him." She said, "I think you should tell him about everything that happened that night. Every detail...so he knows that you weren't the one in the wrong at all."

"I feel like he's going to end up using it against me." Rebecca argued, "Like, somehow I'm going to come out the bad guy in all of this. Kennedy always comes out winning."

"Then tell him you won't talk unless you get immunity." Celeste replied immediately, "That way, they'll get Kennedy and you won't have to worry about it."

"I'm pretty sure that's only something that happens in TV shows." Rebecca rolled her eyes, "But I guess I can try it."

Celeste nodded.

"If you think about it, he'll probably agree to anything you say." She commented, "You're not the suspect here. Kennedy's the one who has everything going against her, she's the one who had the affair, and she's the one who Leo wants to catch more than anything else—the guy has been on her tail for like six weeks. No offense, but you're not interesting to him. He wants to nab Kennedy, and if you tell him what he wants to hear, I think you can come out of this without any repercussions on you."

Rebecca thought about that. She guessed that was true, all things considered; she was just a means to an end. Leo wanted Kennedy. She knew that. She knew that Leo wanted Kennedy and she knew that everything Leo had told her was for his own benefit. He didn't want Rebecca. He wanted the person he had been hired to find.

A/N: Sorry for the delay in updates! BUT! Restricted, AKA Three's Company part 2, has officially been PUBLISHED and is available to order on Amazon! I've included the link as the external link for this chapter! If you don't have the money to buy the book but still want to help me out, head over to Goodreads and leave a review for the book (if you've already read it on Wattpad, obviously) to help it gain traction!