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“But if he wants to buy you one, it would be free, so why say no?”

“First, it’s not free to me either. I’d have to pay much higher insurance on a new car. But beyond that, money always comes with strings.”

Easton nods slowly. “And if you let him buy you a car?”

“He’ll want to keep going,” I say. “You heard him talking about buying me clothes. He wants to get me a new phone. He’s always complaining about mine because the photos aren’t great.” I shrug. “It’s fine if my photos aren’t the best quality. The world’s not suffering from a shortage of high-res photos of Jake Priest.”

“I guess not,” Easton says.

“If I really, really needed something, I know he would get it for me, and that’s nice to know.”

“Or Emerson.”

“Or Dave and Seren,” I say. “I have no shortage of people willing to help me, and that’s one of the reasons I want to do things on my own.”

“Must be nice.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t have people who will help you,” I say. “Your family is money money money.”

“Not exactly.” Easton sighs, and his hands tighten on the wheel. “It was mostly smoke and mirrors growing up.” He shakes his head. “Mom and Dad never let us tell anyone, but our family was usually one step away from bankruptcy. Dad’s not very good at business, and it wrecked everything, over and over. As a teenager, I decided I’d figure out how to do the opposite of what he did.”

“Oh?”

He nods slowly. “Even though it was against school rules, I sold candy to kids at school. So much candy.”

“Candy?” I can’t help chuckling again. “Sounds. . .lucrative.”

“I know it sounds stupid,” he says. “That’s actually why it worked. No one suspected me of really doing it to make money. I turned it into a joke. ‘How bad do you really want my Snickers?’ or ‘Are you hungry enough to pay twenty bucks for this Butterfinger?’”

“Wait, you’re serious?”

“I paid for my own college by selling candy for way more than it was worth to a bunch of spoiled kids in high school and sticking every last dime in a savings account my parents didn’t know about. Only, my second year of school, Dad found it.”

I’m completely shocked. Emerson mentioned that Elizabeth’s family had struggled, but I didn’t think it was with money.

“Anyway, it was less embarrassing to tell people I’d partied too hard than it was to say my parents found my college fund and used it to keep from filing for bankruptcy, so everyone thinks I failed out of school.”

Maybe no one’s life is really as easy as it looks.

“I do have some great friends, like Ace, who will do whatever they can to help me.” He’s staring straight ahead like he’s a little embarrassed. “That’s why I’m driving over to help him. He’d do it for me.”

“But your parents aren’t the rock they should be for you.”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Do they still raid your savings when they run into trouble?” I shouldn’t be asking. It’s none of my business.

“It’s not exactly the same anymore,” he says. “But thewhole reason I started my own company is that I wanted to make so much they could never spend through it all.”

“But their spending is the problem,” I say. “If you can’t get that under control?—”

“Trust me,” he says. “Unless they start ordering the New Orleans strawberry thing every night, they can’t outspend me. Not anymore.”

“I guess, but they probably still feel like an anvil around your neck, dragging you down.”

“We live in the land of opportunity. I just got pretty good at swimming.” He shrugs. “Honestly though, it’s fine.”

I kind of hate his parents, but I don’t mention that. Before I can think of anything else to say, he turns into a neighborhood—the houses are gargantuan. They’re as big as Seren and Dave’s inn.

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