Page 71 of Girl Like Me

“Are you okay?” he rushes to ask and I can hear the others in the background telling him to put me on speaker phone.

“I’m fine, I’m on my way to your house now. Could you ask everyone to meet there, even Echo? He needs to run an errand for my uncle and it’ll take him the longest to get there. I’m coming from New Hope, so it’ll take me about forty-five minutes to get there.”

“Lissa said you were taken in for questioning but we haven’t heard any more from her. Is she okay?” Levi asks and I pause.

“I hope she is, she risked her job for me and my uncle is working on getting it sorted. She should be out by tonight. I will explain when I get there, I have so much to fill you in on and I want to do it once so I need everyone to be there when I do.”

“Drive safe,” Mercer says in the background. I tell him that I will and I hang up the call.

***

Half an hour later I’m pulling into Rory’s driveway. Rocky is the first out of the door and racing down the front steps, the others walking at a normal pace. The car has barely stopped before Rocky pulls the door open and helps me unbuckle my seat belt. I laugh as he pulls me from the seat and wraps himself around me.

“You’re never leaving again.” he mutters, burying his nose in my hair and taking a deep breath before pulling back and looking down at me with his beautiful blue eyes.

“I don’t plan to.” I say as a stray tear slides down my cheek. “Let’s go inside so I can tell you all a few things before the others get here.”

They all follow me back into the house and into Rory’s living room. Rocky sits to my right and Maximus on my left, both of them holding my hands, while the others are directly opposite us on another section of the couch.

I run them through everything that happened from leaving to come here, to being thrown back into the hospital, them trying to convince me that they never existed, to Lissa breaking me out, confronting Shandra and Carter, to my uncle taking me to Milo. They’re all stunned into silence.

“And that is why I am now officially JD Blakely.”

“I don’t know how to wrap my head around all of this,” Rory says. “But I’m glad my mum came through for you. I think that I’m the most shocked about that.”

“She was so different, it was weird. Maybe it’s a good sign.” I say shrugging one shoulder.

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up just yet, she does this every few years. Gets clean and then as soon as she gets out things slowly go back to how they were before. Once she finds out about Chelsea's pregnancy, shit will hit the fan and the whole process will start all over again.”

“We all have something to tell you,” Mercer pipes in. “We have all officially moved in here until we leave.”

“Oh my god, what did your parents say?” I’m pretty shocked, I didn’t think they would let them all move out of their houses so early.

“I’m pretty sure they already knew we would all want to be together before we left. All of our bags are packed and ready. We just have to get past Christmas first, we invited all of our families here, it'll be the last time we will see them before we leave. We want to head to Sunset Haven a few days early, if that’s okay with you, of course.” Levi says but before I can say anything Rocky answers for me.

“It’s okay with her, she isn’t allowed to leave us again.”

We decide to get a start on making dinner while we wait for Echo. By the time we are pulling the lasagne out of the oven the doorbell rings. Rocky races off to open the door while we start setting up the table. Rory puts a stack of plates and cutlery on the table, Levi pulls out the salad we made, Mercer uses oven mitts to take the garlic bread to the table and goes back for the lasagne.

Echo waltzes into the kitchen behind Rocky, followed by Chloe, Mossy and Mac. It seems her harem follows her everywhere she goes. I do a double take when Chev is at the back of the pack and raise a brow at Chloe. She shrugs.

“We’re not going to have any problems, are we?” I say looking straight at Chev.

Echo answers before Chev can open his mouth. “Nope, we’ve come to an understanding, Chevvy here is a reformed asshole.”

Chloe snorts. “I wouldn’t go as far to say reformed but we are working on things.”

We all sit around the massive table and everyone is silent for a minute before Rocky breaks that by lifting his glass of water into the air. “Here’s to all of us dudes being pussy whipped.” He says, wiggling his eyebrows.

Everyone laughs even though Rocky isn’t serious. He just gets uncomfortable in silence.

“Well we figured if you dicks could share a girl, surely we could make it work.” Mac says followed by a laugh.

“You forget we have all been friends for over ten years,” Mercer snaps.

“Okay boys, how about we just agree that Chloe and I are extremely lucky.”

“Works for me,” Rory says.

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