J.W. LYNNE AUTHOR OF BESTSELLING NOVELS WITH TWISTS, TURNS, AND SURPRISES	Connect with J.W. LYNNE on

An excerpt from What He Didn't Tell Me

"Have you ever wished a night could go on forever?"

I ask the question so softly that I'm not sure anyone heard me until Star whispers, "Not until tonight."

She's wedged up against me in the back seat of the limo. We're wearing our best dresses—mine white lace and hers red satin—and we each have a tuxedo jacket draped over our bare shoulders.

"I think this was the best night of my life," I say, smiling.

Dylan, who is sitting on my left, squeezes my hand. "Your life is only going to get better from here."

"Definitely," Mateo—who is cozied up next to Star—agrees.

The four of us have been best friends since kindergarten. Tonight, we got together to celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday. Dylan, Star, and Mateo rented a limo, because I'd always wanted to ride in a limo and never had. We dressed up in our best outfits and visited our childhood hangouts, reliving some of our favorite memories.

We got some strange looks, because we were incredibly overdressed for places like Mario's Pizza and Candy's Karaoke Bar, but I had the time of my life, eating and drinking and laughing and singing with the people who I love and who love me more than anything in the world. It is because of my three best friends that my childhood is filled with happy memories. I hate to imagine what it might have been like without them. I'm not sure if I could have survived it without them.

In seventh grade, Dylan and I became more than friends. At first, it was just a fantasy. I started daydreaming about holding hands with him ... and then kissing him. When I confided my feelings in Star, she told me that she felt the same way about Mateo. But neither of us dared to tell the boys about our feelings, because we didn't want to hurt our friendship with them. We swore each other to secrecy, and we honored our pledge for an entire year. And then, one night, the four of us were at Dylan's house watching a movie, and everything changed.

Halfway through the rom-com Star had chosen, she had to go to the bathroom. Mateo took that opportunity to go make more popcorn. That left Dylan and me on his couch, alone together.

I turned to him and blurted out, "I wish you were my boyfriend."

He looked into my eyes and, in that instant, I realized that my fantasy wasn't only mine. Without a word, Dylan leaned toward me, and we kissed for the first time. The kiss went on for a while, because neither of us wanted to stop.

When Star and Mateo came back to the living room, they were holding hands. I looked at their clasped hands and gave them a questioning look.

Mateo said, "Star and I saw you guys making out when we were coming down the hall, so we went into the kitchen to give you some privacy."

Star nodded. "While we were waiting, I asked Mateo what he thought about you two getting together and he said ..."

"I wish it was us," Mateo finished.

Our friendships changed that night, but the changes felt incredibly right, as if we had slipped off a perfect outfit and traded it for one that fit us even better.

Now, I rest my head against Dylan's shoulder, his jacket draped over my shoulders, our fingers intertwined. In my reflection in the window glass, I see that the curls I forced into my sandy-brown, usually unruly hair are still cascading perfectly, the way hair normally does only in magazines. In the hazy reflection, I look younger than I am. I can almost see my childhood self. A little girl who is finally on the cusp of becoming the woman she was meant to be.

In a few months, I will finally be going to college. It's something I put off for way too long. Ever since I graduated from high school, I've been puttering around working dead-end jobs that I hated while my friends made something of themselves. Dylan is already about halfway through his internship as an architect, and Star and Mateo are almost finished with medical school.

I glance at Dylan, and he gives me a smile. Even though I've struggled a lot to figure out where I belong in the world, he has always been there for me. Accepting me without judgment. Never pushing me, but always wanting the best for me. He brushes my hair away from my eyes, and he moves in to kiss me. I let my eyelids fall—

Suddenly, there is a loud honk. My eyelids spring open as the limo jerks to the right. A horrible screech of tires is followed by the sound of shattering glass. The limo hits something solid and keeps going right through it. Then the ground slips out from under us. I look through the window and see that we are airborne over a body of water. My stomach rises into my throat as we fall toward the water and then slam into it, as if smashing into cement.

Murky water rushes fast into the limo. Horror floods my veins when I spot Dylan lying crumpled on the floor. I shout his name, but he doesn't stir. Star and Mateo are still in their seats, but their eyes are unfocused. Blood streams rapidly down Mateo's face from a wound on his forehead.

As I unbuckle my seatbelt, Star's eyes regain their focus.

"Are you okay?" she asks me in a trembling voice.

"I'm fine, but Dylan ..."

Her gaze drops to Dylan. She quickly unbuckles her seatbelt, and she goes to him. Her fingertips check him for a pulse, then she turns to me.

"Keep his head above the water. Try not to move his neck too much, in case his spine is injured," she instructs me urgently.

"We need to get out of the limo while we still have air," Mateo shouts.

I look over and see that his eyes have regained their focus. He has unbuckled his seatbelt and is moving about the limo.

"The doors and windows won't open," he continues, wiping blood from his face. "We need to find something to break the glass."

The three of us yank open every compartment in the limo, but they hold only bottled water, bags of snacks, and napkins.

Mateo kicks hard at one of the windows, but the glass refuses to break. The air pocket around us is getting smaller by the second. There's almost no air left to breathe.

"I don't want to die like this," Mateo grunts, kicking another window.

"None of us are dying tonight," Star says, trying to break a window with her heel.

I kick at the nearest windows as hard as I can, while at the same time keeping Dylan's mouth and nose above the rapidly rising water. I can see now that he's breathing. He's still alive.

"I love you guys," I say through the tears trickling over my lips. "I need you to hear that one last time. In case we—"

"We love you too," Star interrupts. "But nobody here is dying any time soon."

Star has always been an optimist. She doesn't give up if there is even the slightest chance of success. She wants to be an ER doctor, and I know she would be an incredible one. She is amazingly adept at solving even the most difficult puzzles, which I think is a lot of what doctors do. But not every puzzle has a solution.

"Don't stop fighting!" Mateo says.

Mateo has memorized the names of every major nerve and blood vessel in the body, along with each of its branches. He wants to be a heart surgeon. When he was a kid, he used to take apart broken appliances and try to figure out what was wrong with them. A lot of the time he was actually able to get them working again. I bet he'd be terrific at fixing broken hearts.

And Dylan ...

Dylan and I were supposed to get married someday. I wanted to wait until after I graduated from college. It was going to be my reward for all my hard work. Dylan promised that, as soon as we could afford it, he was going to build us a house overlooking the ocean. I couldn't wait to live in the house that Dylan built, along with the kids we were definitely going to have and a cat or a dog or, more likely, both.

But now ...

Our pocket of air is down to just a sliver.

Mateo takes a breath and drops underwater, still furiously trying to break the windows.

Star takes a final desperate gulp of air, and I take one too.

Hold your breath, Dylan, I pray.

And then our faces are underwater.

I close my eyes, holding onto my last breath, knowing that, when I can't hold it anymore, I will drown.