Page 51 of Whatever It Takes

Mom:…you would’ve been out of my house in a year’s time anyway for college. Maybe this change now is for the best.

Then she gave me the faintest of smiles, like a goodbye, like she’d already begun severing me from her mind and she was waiting for me to do the same. She’s used to leaving children behind, I realized. Maybe she thought this was the natural course—that she should leave me behind too, in time.

Sometimes I wonder if it was all a ruse, if she just appeared detached so she could let me go more easily. If she spent the night crying on the plane. If she hopes my life will be better here than it was there.

I’d like to believe all of this because it makes me love her a little more and resent her a little less.

Leaving Ellie has turned out to be the hardest part of all. Without constant communication, I can’t know how she’ll fair. If I fool myself long enough, I can imagine that my absence won’t have any real impact on her, but I know it will.

Ryke parks in front of a brick apartment complex, the lot nearly full with cars. I feel out of my element. Not only because four different vehicles park near us, doors opening and cameramen jumping out—but because I’m only seventeen and entering territory that college students step on.

Lo isn’t happy about it.

I can see that now as he scans the twenty-something, backpack-clad students, strolling in the apartment complex. His brows pinch, and his eyes darken.

“I’ll be okay,” I tell him, having to raise my voice as paparazzi gather outside the car doors.

He shakes his head a couple times. “You should really be staying with us.”

Six people live in his house: three Calloway sisters and their three significant others, all in their twenties. Along with two newborn babies, one is Loren’s son.

There may be extra room in their mansion-sized house, but I don’t feel like I’d fit in. In fact, I see myselfalwaysin the way.

I haven’t even met Rose Calloway’s husband, Connor Cobalt, yet. He could very well hate me. On the reality show, he came off as a conceited human being. I even made a gif set of him saying (with a straight face),“Most people never reach the pinnacle of perfection. But I’m not most people, so think of it as an honor to meet me.”

He’s a genius. A billionaire. And living in a bedroom down the hall from him sounds like a fantasyland not created for me.

“I don’t want to complicate your life,” I tell him honestly.

His brows rise at me, and he motions to a bearded cameraman by my window. “And I’m not complicating yours?”

The man meets Lo’s gaze, and Lo flashes his iconic dry smile at him. Seeing that smile in person is more powerful than in photograph.

On impulse, I almost take a picture, but I control myself, flipping my phone in my hand. It’s so easy to become part of the paparazzi without really knowing.

“I’m going to grab a fucking box and head inside. Do you have your keycard?” Ryke asks me.

I nod.

Loren seems reluctant to do this.

Ryke gives him a look that I can’t read. “You can’t force her to live with us,” he reminds him.

“She’s onlyseventeen,” he whispers, running a frustrated hand through his hair, thicker on top, shorter on the sides. “She should be closer to the high school she’s going to attend, not to Penn.”

“I’m closer to UPenn,” I say softly, “not Penn.”

Both of the brothers swing their heads to the backseat, and I swear camera flashes go off like crazy. The windows are only slightly tinted, so I wonder how much the paparazzi catch.

I feel my cheeks heat, but the color drains, their eye contact more and more intimidating. “Do I have…something on my face?” My voice dies, and by their rising smiles, I immediately regret speaking. I shrink into place.

Ryke tells me, “The only people I’ve ever heard say UPenn are people who never attended the University of Pennsylvania.” He pockets his car keys. “We all call it Penn. At least when we went there that’s how it was. Who the fuck knows what students are calling it now.”

He acts like he graduated decades ago, but he just turned twenty-six. I’m not that great at math, but I can subtract well enough to figure out that it’s been four years since he gracedPenn’scampus.

Lo adds, “Most of the older faculty prefer calling it Penn over UPenn. It’s just tradition and it sticks with some people when you’re there.”

“But Penn State…”