I stop and look out at the silent, stunned crowd.
“You came here for an announcement? There it is. The truth.”
“Why should we believe you?” a reporter asks.
“You don’t have to believe me,” I say. “I didn’t make this little speech for you. I made it for them.” I point to Kiera, and Sofia, and Hayes. Emily is close to me now, so I grab her hand and hold it up. “I made it for us. What happens next doesn’t matter. I did this for us. We are the Dirty Ones and this is our story.”
I walk around the podium, jump down from the stage, and extend my hand to Emily. I grab her by the waist and lift her to the floor, keeping her hand, so she knows who I am in this moment—her friend—and walk towards Kiera. I take her hand, she takes Sofia’s hand, Sofia takes Hayes’ hand.
And we leave. Together.
Minus two.
Because we came back from this sick, grand delusion one day too late.
And we just gotta learn to live with that.
CHAPTER THIRTY – KIERA
Louise Livingston was arrested the day of Camille’s funeral. Bennett had been put to rest the day before, and when Connor, Hayes, Sofia and I walked back through the door of Sofia’s apartment we thought we’d run out of tears for Camille. That’s how hard we cried.
It’s funny how these two were so much a part of me, then they weren’t, then they were again. Funny how I can feel so empty for one man I hadn’t talked to for ten years less than a week ago.
Even Hayes cried for Bennett. It was a silent cry. No sobbing or hysterics. Just… overwhelming sadness.
Connor really did lose his best friend. Bennett was the only kid he’d grown up with since he was small. The only kid he shared all the success and failures with.
I’m not sure if I cried harder for Bennett dying or that little piece of Connor’s heart that went dim that day because it was empty.
I just know I cried so hard I couldn’t open my eyes when we got home.
The guys got drunk. Sofia and I crawled into her bed and held each other all night. And when we woke in the morning, just when we thought we’d get to start a new day, we did the whole thing all over again.
Only this time it was Sofia falling apart. This time it was Sofia saying goodbye to her best friend.
And guess what?
It turns out you can’t run out of tears.
But Connor saved us that night. He opened up one of Camille’s stupid erotic comedies and read it out loud.
The entire book. Cover to cover. Every single page, even the note at the end. We streamed it live for her fans and they watched by the millions.
So hard.
They loved her so hard.
We cried with them until we laughed. And then we cried some more when her characters got their HEA.
Because we were one day too late.
One day.
And Camille DuPont would never, ever get another chance at happily ever after.
It took another seven days for Steven what’s-his-face to be arrested as an accomplice. There was a whole slew of charges. Too many for me to list now. Then every day after that for almost a week, there was another arrest. More people. Even Connor’s mother.
Hell, if my mother was alive, she’d have been arrested too.
But it took another three full weeks before Christopher Arlington was finally led out of the front door to his North Shore estate in handcuffs and put in the back seat of a police car. Helicopters circled overhead, catching it on film.
For Connor, it was another funeral. Another loss.
None of us cheered.
It’s taken months for me to unravel the long process of how this book came to be written in my voice. By my hands.
It was me. But not just me.
Because it was Hayes Fitzgerald who started unraveling this tightly wound secret.
Several years ago he got in his helicopter with a drunken directive for the pilot to take him to Essex College for the annual legacy dinner. He says now he can’t explain how it all came apart in his head. Maybe it was the alcohol or the drugs that allowed the memories to come pouring out of the broken dam. Or maybe the brainwashing was just wearing off.
All he knew at the time was that he was broken. Shattered into millions of pieces. That he spent all those years that came after graduation in a drug- and alcohol-induced stupor.
Not because he was an addict, but because he was afraid. Scared to death of the secrets locked inside his head. Terrified that one day they’d come spilling out of that cobbled-together dam and he’d go insane, just like Emily.
But as is the case with most fears, once you face them they lose power. They make you stronger.