The next morning, I'm woken up by an insanely loud honking sound. It's probably so loud because I'm still lying on the hood of the car with Elias next to me. Startled, I jump up and open my eyes, surprised that it's light outside because I was expecting it to be dark when I woke up.

"Let's go!" I hear Gabe shout as the horn honks again and I flinch at the loud sound so quickly after I woke up. "We're going to be late!"

As Elias is doing the same thing, I slide off of the hood and try to orient myself some more. Cassie and Gabe are in the front seat and Gabe is looking panicked. I don't really question anything because I'm still really tired so I just climb into the backseat with Elias and Mac, who is already sleeping under the window where he usually is.

I lay down again with my head on Elias's lap to go back to sleep but Gabe is ranting in the front seat.

"We were supposed to drive until we got there, what happened?"

"We took a nap," Elias says as an explanation with a tired yawn. "What time is it?"

"It's nine," Gabe responds. "The wedding starts at noon and we have two hours to drive."

"We'll make it on time," I mumble tiredly although I am pretty surprised that we slept all night on the top of the car. It wasn't that comfortable and I was only expecting to sleep for an hour, maybe two. Then again, we did sleep all night in a park's tunnel too.

"Dad is going to be so pissed," He mumbles from the front. I keep my eyes closed and start breathing deeply in hopes of going to sleep again. I hear Cassie and Gabe talking in the front but they keep their voices quiet as Elias and I go back to sleep in the backseat.

With three hours to get to the house and two hours left on the road, I'm not worried about making it on time but I do know that Gabe was right about our dad being pissed about us being so late. We were supposed to be there two days ago for the rehearsal dinner but now we're barely going to make it to the actual wedding in time.

I could care less about him being angry at us, as I've made so clear before, but it will sure be annoying when he's scolding us like we're children once we get to the wedding. Since Gabe is apparently his best man, he probably should have been there way earlier and that'll probably really stress out everybody but the important thing is that we'll get there on time.

I wake up an hour later when Elias is waking me up by shaking my shoulder. When I open my eyes to look up at him, he explains to me why exactly he must wake me up even though we have to be at least an hour away from the city.

"We have to get dressed," He tells me but when I look out the window as I'm sitting up, I notice that we're still moving.

"Won't we have time when we get to wherever the wedding is actually going to happen?" I counter but he's already pulling the back of the chair out to get into the trunk.

"We won't have time," Gabe answers for him. "So we'll get dressed now and then we'll switch and Cassie will get dressed too."

Just going along with it because I don't want to argue, I help Elias pull out all of our wedding outfits from the trunk. I basically have to crawl into the trunk of a moving vehicle to find all of the right luggage to get all of them open and find the right clothes but eventually, I'm able to gather Gabe's suit, my dress, and Elias's suit from our separate suitcases.

It's not as easy as Gabe seems to think that it is to get dressed in a cramped car because it's really hard. I take my shirt off and then get my dress over my head but I have to move around in awkward ways to get my arms all the way through and then I have to take my bra off because I'm wearing a sports bra. It shows on the back of the dress so I have to put a different bra on and then I have to take off my shoes in order to take my shorts off.

The whole thing is a difficult ordeal and I'd be worried about Elias seeing me taking my clothes off in such an awkward manner if he wasn't struggling just as bad with his suit to get his dress pants on and his undershirt and white button up.

Once I get my dress zipped via Elias, I plop back down in my seat with an exhausted sigh. Finally, all three of us are dressed and our clothes are flown all around the car in a mess.

"It looks like we just had an orgy," I make an observation just as Mac jumps onto my lap from under the window and he starts stomping his paws on my lap, which is what he does when he has to go to the bathroom. "Also, side note, Mac has to pee."

"We don't have time," Gabe says from the front seat where Cassie is speeding down the road in hopes of making it to Seattle as early as possible. "We're going to stop at the next rest stop in about half an hour just to switch drivers."

"Okay, cool, I'm going to use your clothes to clean up the pee," I warn him, being totally serious because although Mac hasn't peed in the car yet, I'm not willing to see how long he can hold it.

"Fine," He sighs, obviously not willing to take that chance either. With a sour frown on his face, he tells Cassie to pull over into a parking lot of some park. "You have two minutes."

I attach Mac's leash to his collar and get out of the car after I put my shoes back on so that I can walk outside without stepping on anything.

"We'll see what Mac has to say about that," I mumble as I shut the door and follow Mac. I don't think that he'll pee in two minutes because he usually has to take a little walk to find the perfect place to pee before he actually goes to the bathroom.

"Wait, actually, I'll walk with you," Gabe decides, getting out of the car as well. At first, I think that he wants to go with me so that he can make sure that I don't waste any time and ruin our schedule some more but then I realize the possibility of the fact that he's taking this opportunity to talk to me about what happened in the cell the other day because I've successfully avoided talking to him frequently since that argument.

"Okay, whatever," I respond because I can't think of a legit reason to say no to that offer.

He starts walking with me down the path that Mac wants to go down and I don't say anything else because if he wants to talk, he can be the one to say something.

"We have to talk about what happened," He says matter of factly.

"Do we though?"

"Yes, Peyton, eventually, you will have to talk to me again and the easiest way to get you to talk to me is to talk about this because it's been in the air for too long," He tells me. "You know that I didn't mean any of that stuff that I said and I'm sorry but I already said that and you aren't hearing me so tell me what you want me to say to make this okay again."

"I don't know that you didn't mean it," I shake my head at him. "Obviously, you meant it a little bit because you said it. I know that you were really mad at me because you blamed me for... everything pretty much and, I don't know, maybe you still do but really mad people don't just start shouting out lies, they start saying the truths that they know will really get to you. And it worked, they got to me. So I'm sorry that you think that everything is my fault, I guess."

"Not everything is your fault, Peyton," Gabe assures me. "I know that I thought that because I was frustrated with the situation and I wanted somebody to blame but I know that it's not all your fault that we're so behind schedule. A lot of shit has happened and I know that you're just trying to make the best out of the situation."

"You mean the world to me, Gabe," I tell my brother as we walk down the path. "And I don't think that you understand how much it hurt to hear you say those things that I already think about myself and it's not just something that we can brush off."

"None of it's true, Peyton," He insists again. Mac is being very picky today about where he's going to pee, I notice, because he still hasn't gone to the bathroom. "Nothing that I said was true, I just said it because I knew that it'd get to you and I wanted you to be as upset as I was. I know that it's stupid but I don't know what to do to make it right."

"I don't either," I mumble. "Because I can't get it out of my head, what you said about Elias. That he's going to leave or that I'm going to hurt him, it fucking scares me to death that you were right. Because every time I look at him, I think about what you said and I realize how sweet and caring and just in general really amazing he is and how much I don't want to hurt him and it's terrifying."

"The fact that you are so afraid of hurting him proves your paranoia wrong. You care too much about him to hurt him," He adds. "And, I guess the only thing that I said that day that was true was that Elias likes you, because he does, and you two will be fine. Everything is going to be fine."

"I know," I agree with him. Mac finally finds his favorite tree and deems it worthy enough for his pee so he lifts his leg up and starts doing his business. "After this goddam wedding and we get back home, everything is going to calm down and we'll have some time to just take a breath."

"Speaking of this wedding, we might actually be late," Gabe tells me as he's checking the time on his phone. He doesn't sound nearly as stressed or angry about that than I'd expect him to be.

"What kind of best man shows up late to the wedding?" I wonder teasingly. Mac has to poop too so I lean against a separate tree and breathe through my mouth because he lets out some really terrible stink bombs.

He's silent for a moment before he says, "He would have offered you something too."

I roll my eyes at that. "Gabe, stop."

"I'm serious. He really would have but Brandy's family is so big and she has a lot of friends so she kind of took over most of the wedding party," He tries to justify our father's reasoning for leaving me out of the wedding party.

"It doesn't matter. I would have said no anyway," I assure him. "We have completely different definitions of Dad, you know, there were always two different sides to him and he always showed me his ugly side in order to give you the best view. And it sucks that I didn't grow up with the dad that you remember and it sucks that I'm so bitter about it but it explains why we can never agree about him."

"I figured you'd be angrier about the best man thing," He admits.

"I'm not. It just makes so much sense," I continue. "Why you were always so loyal to him, because he never forgot you. He never forgot that he had you as a son, he just selectively forgot the rest of his family. Which is fine, I guess, I may be bitter but I don't need him as much as I used to think that I did."

"I'm going to ask him about the college thing," Gabe says. Mac finishes pooping and we start heading back on the trail toward the car where Elias and Cassie are waiting, probably in silence. "Why he's paying for me and not you."

"I just told you why."

"Yeah, but I want to hear it from him because I think that's absolute bullshit," He insists. "Because whether you two get along or not, he's still our dad and he really hasn't been there for you at all so he owes you that much. If he still refuses to pay then... I'll give you the money that he gives to me."

"Really?"

"Well... how about we go halfsies?" He adds after thinking that over.

"Yeah, okay," I say with a small laugh. As I take my next step through the path, I'm jolted back when my dress gets stuck on a branch. I try to tug it loose but it's really stuck on this branch.

"What're you doing?" Gabe turns when he notices that I'm not following him anymore.

"It's stuck," I explain, trying to pull even harder to get my dress loose without tearing it.

"It's a tree, not a cursed monster, how stuck can it be?" Gabe asks me, trying himself to get the dress unstuck from the branch. I let him try but laugh when he can't get it unstuck either. "Okay, this little fucker."

"I told you that it was stuck," I remind him in an 'I told you so' voice.

Feeling too stubborn to work with the branch to get the dress unstuck, we both start pulling until the dress gives and we both go flying to the ground with the sound of the ripping of the fabric and the gloppy sound of the mud that we just fell into. It's not incredibly wet mud but it's soft enough to cover the entire side of our bodies when we hit the ground.

Mac is barking at us as we both sit up to see just how muddy we are and I figure that Gabe is going to be pretty upset by that because this is his wedding suit so I try not to laugh. "Well," I say slowly after Gabe is done releasing a long string of curse words. "At least we got the dress unstuck. I kind of like it, really. It really makes the wine stain pop."

"We look like mud monsters," He says, standing up beside me as he tries brushing off some of the mud that hilariously resembles a skid mark.

"There's nothing we can do about it now, let's just get back to the car and keep moving," I tell him, letting out only the smallest laugh before I can't hold it back anymore and I start laughing my ass off. "Oh my god, you look like a giant skid mark."

"You look worse than I do," He accuses me, laughing a little bit himself.

"It's avant-garde," I defend, wondering if I really am going to have to go to this wedding looking like I've been through some sort of crazy war where I got pelted with wine and mud. And with a tear on the left part of my dress. At this point, Mac looks cleaner than me. Which, now that I think about it, might make our dad less angry about us inviting a dog to his wedding.

"It's a mess," He corrects me. "Hopefully, we'll have some time to clean up before the wedding."

"Unless we meet a seamstress, I think that I'm going to look ridiculous no matter what," I say, motioning to the bottom of my dress that's ripped at least six inches up my thigh.

"Yeah, well hopefully, the mud will dry and just wipe right off," He suggests hopefully. I'm not very optimistic about his plan but I don't have the heart to tell him that he's probably wrong. Sooner or later, he's going to have to face the fact that he's going to look ridiculous at this wedding and when he does, he'll probably go back to blaming me. We wouldn't be out here in the forest if I didn't have to pick up Mac and keep him and then if Mac hadn't need to go pee and take so long with it.

That's okay, we'll deal with that when the time comes.

When we get back to the car, Cassie looks incredibly concerned but Elias looks like he's really trying his hardest not to laugh at the sight of both me and my brother covered in mud.

"There was a minor mishap," I sigh, realizing how much of a mess we all look except for Cassie. Elias doesn't look too bad but he does have some wine on his white dress shirt, Gabe is now covered in mud, and I'm a tornado of both, covered in wine and mud.

"It's a style," Elias suggests, still holding back most of his laughter with a surprising amount of success. Cassie grabs her dress and gets in the passenger side as Gabe gets in the driver seat to get us the rest of the way to Seattle.

"Exactly," I say with a small laugh. "It's a style and I look fabulous. It's what all of the fashionistas are doing in France right now, the mud look is totally trending."

"I don't think Dad is going to see it that way," Gabe warns me from the front seat.

"No, I suppose he won't. It'll be fun though, we'll see how things go," I pull my cosmetic bag out and start doing my hair. Maybe if we have to stop at any red lights, I'll be able to get some makeup on or something.

"You're not looking as anxious I thought that you would," Elias observes as we drive toward Seattle and toward the wedding.

"I'm good at hiding it," I mumble because in all honesty, I am feeling very anxious. Not really nervous, just very anxious. Gabe and I just started fixing everything that went wrong in that holding cell and I know that our relationship will probably strain even more when we get to Seattle. Not to mention all of the crap that my dad will throw at me. We're late and we look like a mess, he's going to blame it all on me.

I'm distracting myself by the hilarity of Gabe and me falling into the mud but that doesn't mean that the closer and closer we get to Seattle, the more anxious I am about what we're really driving into right now.