It’s late when my phone buzzing wakes me up. I roll over, a little groggy, but still floating and happy.

I was having a good dream. In it, I was with Luke in his car. He was touching my body, his hands through my hair, his lips on my throat. I could feel him fucking me, giving me what I’ve been so desperate for. It takes me a second to realize that my dream was reality only a few hours ago, and I’m smiling as I reach over and grab my phone.

There’s a text from Luke. “I’m outside.”

I look at it and blink. There’s a second text right after it. “Look out your window. Are you asleep? It’s barely ten o’clock.”

I sigh, glancing at the time. Looks like I only got an hour of sleep before he woke me up. I text him back.

“When you have a kid, you sleep when you can. Are you really here?”

He answers right away. “Look out your window.”

I sigh and get out of bed. I give myself a quick check in the mirror, grab a sweatshirt, throw it on, and look out the window. Sure enough, Luke’s down there near the tree line. He waves at me and sends me another text.

“Come talk.”

I bite my lip. “Okay,” I send back. “Just wait.”

I sneak out of my room. I check on Max, and sure enough he’s fast asleep. I tiptoe down the stairs, stop in the laundry room to put on some shoes, and head toward the back sliding door.

Before I can get it open, a noise in the living room grabs my attention. My mom’s sitting there next to a lamp, a drink on her hand, a book open in her lap. She’s watching me.

“Oh, hey,” I say to her.

“Where are you going this late?”

“For a walk,” I say. “I couldn’t sleep.”

She stares at me. For a second I think she knows what I’m doing, and I’m afraid she’s going to make a big deal out of it. My mom never had as big of a problem with Luke as my father did, but she does whatever daddy says in the end. So if he says I can’t see Luke, mom will go along with it. Not like she’s ever sober long enough to argue.

“Don’t get hit by a car, dear,” she says, and then looks back down at her book.

I think that’s the worst possible thing to say, but I just leave. She’s been drinking all day, like usual, and she probably doesn’t realize how inappropriate that comment is.

I hurry across the dark lawn. I spot Luke just in the tree line and I walk quickly over to him.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. “My mom almost caught me.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep. I met with Slick earlier.”

I go totally still. “Slick?”

“Yeah,” he says. “He told me something insane.”

“I thought he wasn’t helping you.”

“Changed his mind, I guess.” Luke starts walking and I hurry to catch up. He has the wide-eyed excited look that I’ve seen before, like he’s hopped up on coke or something. He gets like this when he’s excited.

“Wait up,” I say, hurrying.

He snatches my hand and pulls me tight against him. He kisses me soft on the lips. “You’re incredible, you know that?”

“I know,” I say, pulling away. “Why did you get me out of bed, Luke? You could have told me tomorrow.”

“I know. I just needed you to hear this.” He takes a deep breath. “One of the guys that claims to have witnessed my truck hitting Linda Chavez is your father’s second cousin.”

I stare at him, surprised. “Really?”

“Really,” he confirms. “Slick figured it out.”

“Shit,” I say, although I knew this already. That was one of the first things I figured out, one of the things that convinced Slick to even take the case. “That’s insane.”

I hate lying and pretending like I didn’t know this already, but I don’t know what else to do. I feel like my lies are all compounding each other. Maybe I should have been honest from the start, but it’s too late for that now.

“On top of that, Slick found the hard drive with the security footage that proved my innocence hidden in a barn owned by the Walker family.”

“Wow,” I say, trying to hide my expression. I knew this as well. “Incredible.”

He gives me a look. “You don’t seem impressed.”

“No, no, I am. It’s amazing and terrible. I mean, do you think my father had something to do with it?”

“Of course,” he says. “Who else has the motive and the means to pull this off?”

I look away from him, down at the leaves. I’ve been thinking about this nonstop for years now, which only complicates my position even more.

I’m fairly sure it was either my father or Mr. Walker, but I don’t know which, maybe it was both. But to imagine that my father had Luke put in jail for five years for a crime he didn’t commit makes my skin crawl. I’ve been living under his roof, letting him help me with Max. All the while he’s this psycho asshole that ruined the life of the man I love. And yet I needed my father’s help, and couldn’t just run away when I started to put the pieces together.

So I’ve been living with this, torn every day between hatred of the man that did this horrible thing, and still needing him. In some ways, that’s been my punishment, my own prison.

“It’s hard to picture that,” I say softly.

“Please, Avery. I know this is difficult. But think back, is there anything you remember that could help me?”

I stare at the ground, unable to meet his gaze. There is something I heard, the thing that set me down this path from the very beginning. It was a year after Luke was locked up. I was awake late with Max when I heard it, and at the time, I didn’t believe it. Only later did it make any sense.

“Maybe,” I say softly.

“Please, tell me. No matter how crazy.”

I take a deep breath. I’m so tired of lying to him. “It was my brother,” I say. “He was on the phone one night, talking to someone. I think to Franklin.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘That old fuck won’t say a word. Do you know how much money my father gave him?’ And that’s all I heard.”

Luke stares at me for a second. “Nothing else?”

“No, nothing,” I say. “I had Max at the time and he was crying. I couldn’t hear anything else, but it stuck with me. The way he said it…” I trail off and finally meet his gaze.

He looks pained and hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know,” I say, which is only half true. “I didn’t know if it would be important to you.”

“God damnit, Avery. Your family might have set me up. Probably because they hate me.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I say honestly.

“You can’t do anything. Stay where you are, keep living like normal. But be ready.”

“For what?”

“I’m going to expose them. I’m sorry, I know they’re your family, but the world has to know.” He grabs my shoulders and hugs me tight. “Thanks for telling me. Go back to bed.” He lets me go and stalks away into the night.

I stand there, staring after him. Once he’s well out of sight, I finally let myself break down and cry.