Is it any wonder I’m so relaxed on the drive to L.A.? No more throwing up. Just a lot of shared smiles and hands clasped over the center console as we make the relatively short journey out of Las Vegas to L.A. and then crawl through the heavy traffic of Downtown, before we’re finally able to get off the highway at Forest Lawn Drive, and then into more congestion on Barham.

“Welcome to L.A.,” I half apologize.

“How did you live here full time?” Woods mutters, eyeing the congested road in front of us grumpily. This street is wider than some West Virginia highways, but completely stuffed with cars. Like anyone dealing with L.A. traffic for the first time, or even for the hundredth, I can tell he doesn’t love all the stop-and-go we’ve encountered since getting into town.

Definitely not the time to tell him, I decide, thinking how unfair it would be to drop my bomb while he’s trying to navigate the lunch time chaos of the Barham pass.

However, Woods frowns when Waze finally tells him to turn left off of Barham into a much quieter scene. Roads that become narrower the higher you go, lined on each side with expensive cars. Audis, Teslas, Range Rovers, Maseratis, Porsches, Maybachs, and just about every other car with a six-figure price tag currently on the road.

Woods squints at the Waze app on his phone, which he hasn’t really trusted since we left West Virginia.

“Are you sure we’re going to the right place?” he asks as my Prius makes the long climb toward the address I keyed into his phone. “This isn’t exactly how I imagined Compton would look from your descriptions and the pictures I saw on the internet.”

“Um…actually Compton is where I used to live until I was, like, twelve. It’s a lot further south. Then we moved here. Right now we’re in the Hollywood Hills.”

Woods’s brow pulls low as the houses get bigger and bigger. “So you were struggling to make ends meet back in West Virginia, but your family lives here? In one of these big houses?” he repeats. “Are they, uh… live-in servants or something like that?”

I grimace. “No, it’s a long story. But I guess you could say my dad didn’t support my decision to move to West Virginia and become a doctor. Really didn’t support it, in fact. And Mom is old-school. Like one of those women who believes whatever the man says, goes. So I ended up having to do it on my own dime.”

He digests this information and opens his mouth to ask another question. But then the nav system interrupts with a command to turn right onto to the small access road leading to our house. And then he’s left without words, because he’s too busy ogling the white stucco mansion sitting just beyond a double gate with two microphones sculpted into its iron bars.

We stop at the gate, because according to Waze, we’ve reached our final destination.

Woods stops the car, letting it settle into a silent electric idle as he continues to stare at the house in front of us.

“This why you didn’t want to bring me home to meet your family at first?” he asks me. “You’re ashamed of me, because I don’t have nothing to my name but a backpack full of money and your daddy’s got all of this? Is that why we’re pretending to be married already, because you know they ain’t going to accept me as the father of your baby unless they think we’re already hitched?”

Woods’s tone is so sincere, his expression so hurt, his questions so valid given how little I’ve told him of my past. Which is probably why I come off as a straight up bitch when I burst out laughing.

“No, no! That’s not it at all,” I answer. “If anything, my dad’s going to love you. Like love you way too much, and then immediately try to use you.”

Woods just shakes his head at me. “Call me dumb, Doc, but I’m not even close to understanding any of the words coming out of your mouth.”

“I know,” I answer, sobering. Then I take a deep breath because this is it. No more stalling. I need to come clean with him about everything.

“Before we go in, there’s something I have to tell you,” I say, peeping up at him. “Actually, it’s a big something about my family…”

But just as I’m about to spill the beans and share everything I didn’t tell him back in West Virginia, the microphone gates part and my larger-than-life father comes out dressed in boxer shorts, a white tank top, and a velvet robe.

Of course he’s holding his smart phone—the exact same make and model as my latest special phone—at chest-level. And he makes sure we’re fully lined up in the shot before yelling, “What the hell, Nitra! You got married to some random white nigga in Vegas and you didn’t tell me?!?!”