Page 153 of Next to Everything We Wanted

I turned the light on in my room, revealing the mess I’d made before. A bunch of clothes were piled on my bed from when I was trying to figure out what to wear.

A sharp pain rippled through my chest, one that almost made me double over. I pushed past it and pulled my suitcases out of my closet. I opened the first one, which still had a few clothes from the last time I visited my family. I went through my closet to pack as many clothes as possible.

When I came across the shirt I wore to the Whiteout concert, I cursed and stuffed it into an empty drawer in my dresser. Maybe later I’d throw it out, along with the CD Sienna had given me, but I didn’t need it in my field of vision right now.

I took all the shirts I’d worn the past two months and stuffed them in the same drawer. Thankfully, I didn’t change up my outfits too much, so I wouldn’t need to burn my entire wardrobe.

Only half of it.

I thought I’d hidden everything when I spotted a worn-out UNLV shirt on my closet floor. Great, how was I supposed to return that? I shoved it into a random gift bag.

A loud fist pounded on my door. “Gavin, come out here.”

I ignored Phoenix, stuffing a few shirts into my packing pods.

He shook the doorknob, but the door didn’t open. “Gavin.”

I opened my underwear drawer.

“You know Forrest has a key to all the rooms, Gavin.”

Cursing under my breath, I unlocked the door and swung it open. “You don’t need to say it—I screwed everything up, okay?”

Phoenix’s gaze darted to the suitcase on my bed. “So, you’re just going to run away like you always do when things go wrong?”

His words struck a nerve. “I don’t run away from things.” It was a lie from the pit of hell as all the times I’d run from things the past few months flashed through my mind.

Instead of calling me out on my BS, Phoenix only shook his head. “Just join us in the living room so we can talk like adults.”

Not having the strength to protest, I followed him. Ellis stood in the kitchen, grabbing ice cream from the freezer. Was he really going to eat ice cream at a time like this? Forrest and Celeste sat on the couch. While Forrest crossed his arms, Celeste’s head hung low, like she was more disappointed than anything.

Yeah, I was too.

Phoenix cleared his throat, sitting in the chair. “We’re going to talk. And I meantalk. No yelling, no shouting, no screaming.”

“We’ll see,” Forrest muttered, and Celeste hit him in the side. He shot a glare at her.

Phoenix only frowned at him before facing me. “Explain how this Ruby thing even happened.”

I drew in a sharp breath. “Ruby Estrella is Sienna’s estranged mom, and her dad told her about us. Sienna found out last week that she used to work at our old label—and that she was involved with Charm Street. Instead of directly asking me about it, she tried to get more information by asking questions about the label.”

“So, she hid it from you,” Ellis said. “Like you tried to hide your past.”

“This isworsethan hiding my past.” I tried to keep my voice steady, but it came out as a snarl. “My past has nothing to do with her. Well, it didn’t. Her mom being a part of the nightmare team has everything to do with us. My past is something I hid from everyone, but her mom’s relation to us was something she hid from me alone.”

Ellis’s brows furrowed as if he didn’t agree, yet he didn’t say anything.

“Do her friends know about this situation?” Phoenix asked.

“I don’t know what they know. They were the ones in the hallway with you,” I said. “Them knowing our identities would be the least of our worries because Ruby knows who we are. At least she knows whoIam.”

“She recognized the rest of us,” Celeste said. “She didn’t call us by our real names in front of Sienna’s friends.”

“Regardless of what her friends know, our secret is busted,” Phoenix said. “She can go back to Gary or whoever she wants and blabber about it. When people start talking, things end up in the public.”

“Which means, if worse comes to worse, our entire cover could be blown,” Ellis finished, hanging his head low.

Which means this is all my fault.