Page 153 of Dream On, Ramona Riley

And Dylan hadn’t even responded, because she’d never knownhow to respond to her parents’ acts or words of love. She didn’t trust them. Wasn’t sure she knewhowto trust them.

The only thing she did know was that she was tired. She was tired of feeling angry, of feeling hurt and wounded all the time. She was tired of blaming Jack and Carrie for everything that was wrong with her life.

And at the end of the day, right now, she just wanted her parents. Not Jack Monroe and Carrie Page, two people the entire world recognized and idolized.

Just Mom and Dad.

She took a deep breath, then opened her car door. Stepped out on the pristine walkway, all white stone and bright green grass. She made it to the front door without turning back, so she counted that as progress.

Baby steps, as the cliché saying went, but right now, she’d take every win she could get.

She stared at the giant oak door for what felt like a long time, the water from the fountain whispering behind her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been here, though her parents had lived in this house for ten years. Her throat went a little thick at the thought—she felt suddenly young and unsure.

Like that toddler sleeping on the pizza box in a destroyed hotel room.

But she wasn’t that kid anymore.

And her parents weren’t those parents.

She reached out and rang the doorbell. Before the chime even stopped ringing through the house, the door flew open, and there was her mother, that short silver hair and all her gold chains, her icy eyes wide and liquid, as though she’d been standing in the foyer, waiting for Dylan to make the first move.

They stared at each other for a second, and then Dylan stepped forward and fell into her mother’s arms.

They sat outsideon the patio, all of them sipping on some sort of mango green tea Carrie was obsessed with, enjoying the last bites of a spicy coconut curry Jack had made himself. The late July breeze drifting through the hills was warm, the sky cloudless and full of stars.

It was a perfect night, by all accounts, and Dylan couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this comfortable with her parents.

The evening hadn’t started off quite so easily.

After that initial embrace, Dylan and Carrie had made it to the living room—a giant space with a huge cream sectional, sage-green and coral pillows, the room emulating a calm coastal day. Jack had poured them all a glass of the tea, and then they’d talked.

Really talked.

Sometimes voices were raised.

Sometimes they cried.

Sometimes they all got quiet, because they didn’t know what to say or how to say it. The realization that the past was the past washed over them more than once, a hard reality that they couldn’t change any of it.

But they communicated. With words that meant something, and they all shared and they all listened. Dylan still responded with some passive-aggressive jabs here and there, and Jack still tried to act as though love were enough to wipe away past transgressions, and Carrie still tried to explain away those past transgressions, because none of them were perfect. But this was the first real conversation the three of them had experienced.

Ever.

It was hard and only a start, but it wasgood.

Now, as Dylan sat at the table with her parents, she felt completely drained. She was exhausted, but in a good way. In afresh startkind of way.

“So what’s next, Dill Pickle?” Jack said, dipping a hunk of bread into his bowl of curry. “You really blew everyone away with this last project.”

Dylan smiled, her hands folded on her stomach. “I don’t know if I blew them away.”

Jack shook his head. “You did, you did. You really showed them.”

Dylan was tempted to ask,Showed them what?but she knew. It wasn’t a secret how she had been viewed in Hollywood—how she was still viewed by the majority of the industry—but she hopedAs If You Didn’t Knowwould change all that once it was released.

She was proud of it.

Proud of herself.