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He was attractive, but there was something about him that was just…. “Like you paint cars a different color?” he asked. There was more to it than that but… “Yeah.” He was still squirming. “Isn’t that—” I knew exactly where this crap was going. “—you know, more of a man’s job?” “No,” I told him patiently. “I do it too, and I’m not a man.” I should have stayed home. Being alone was better than being here with a man who didn’t know what my name was. “Why?” he asked all of a sudden. I finally couldn’t suppress my frown. “Why what?” “Isn’t there something else you can do?”
That ur cue to leave 🚪🚶🏾♀️
“I don’t think I could let my girl work with a bunch of horny guys,” he said, still giving me that patronizing expression. I snickered. “Why would they be horny?” “Because.” What an imbecile. “Yeah, I don’t work with any guys that have constant boners. I don’t know what kind of guys you work with, but mine… never. And if they do, they don’t go around whipping them out for me to look at.” The dead-eyed glare he gave me had me expecting the worst, and his next comment didn’t surprise me. “Lydia said you were really nice… something wrong with you?” I shook my head and couldn’t help but raise my
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Yea no he can kick rocks
My spidey senses went off the second I parked my car in my driveway. For one, I knew I’d left the porch lights on. I was paranoid about someone hiding in the dark and attacking me from the bushes. I wouldn’t play around with my safety. Two, my front door being wide open, like a gaping maw in the dark, would confirm that something wasn’t normal. Under no circumstance would I have left the door open. I was known for getting back out of my car and checking the front door if I couldn’t clearly remember tugging on the handle after locking it. And third… if the lights I knew hadn’t been left off and
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BRO CAN WE CATCH A BREAK LIKE-
Why did things like this always have to happen to me? Why? Why couldn’t I catch a break every once in a while?
What I said like cmon
Someone had taken a knife to it, dragging that blade from one end to the other. Because some asshole had broken into my house and torn it up for no reason. Did I look like I was rich? Or some spy with secrets I had stitched into the mattress? It just seemed so… senseless. Even the cops had agreed. They had gone as far as to ask if there was anyone who could be upset with me.
Def Thea’s fault
I could tell it had meant to be fast. Just a glance. But no sooner had his eyes gone back to what he’d been looking at, that they returned to me. Rip straightened as a frown took over his mouth and his eyebrows drew together. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, those incredible eyes moving over my face quickly.
I’d fold I fear
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” I tried to tell him. And just like that, his face clouded over and he took another step toward me. “I wanna worry about it. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Sigh
I saw his face cloud over before I heard the change in his voice. “You slept there?” “It was late,” I kept on croaking. “I tried calling my best friend and Mr. C, but neither one of them answered.” And, oh, my God, wasn’t that another reminder that I was alone. I could have tried Lydia’s cell or Mr. Cooper’s home, or Grandpa Gus’s number. Hell, I could have even called Miguel. But I hadn’t wanted to bother anyone. It was my house. My things. Rip pierced me with that intense gaze, giving me no preparation for his next question. “Why didn’t you call me?” Call… him? That time I was able to shape
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WE UP 🙌🏾
And I cried. Because I had worked so hard for what I had only for someone to come in and screw everything up. Because I was tired. Tired of getting shit on time after time. I had my place where I had felt happy and proud and safe, and someone I didn’t know had decided to take that away from me.
I’m sorry bestie :(
Two big arms wrapped around me, cutting my thoughts off. The next thing I knew, my face was at a very warm neck and my chest was against a broader one… and I did the only thing I knew how. My hands went to hips that weren’t my own and my fingers curled into the coveralls he had on.
I wonder what it’s like to hug such a big dude
Heat touched the top of my head lightly, and what I knew had to be a palm spread across the space between my shoulder blades, pulling me in even closer to that coverall-covered body. Rip’s voice was low, as he said, “S’all right, Luna. Don’t cry.” The hand on my spine moved up and down, up and down. “I’m sorry.” “You got nothing to be sorry about,” he said into my hair, his arms strong. “Not a single fucking thing.” I didn’t say anything. I just stayed there, inhaling and exhaling him… mostly on accident, but on purpose too. Like medicine but for all the other little hurts. The big hurts too.
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“Go when you wanna go, Luna,” he whispered, his hand stroking up my spine and staying between my shoulder blades even as I let out a shuddered breath. “Everything’s all right, baby girl.” I nodded. “You’re gonna be good.” I was going to be good. He was right. So I nodded again. His hand slid higher up to palm my neck, and his voice was soft as he said, “You should’ve called me.”
But I was going to take it because who knew when the next time I would get held again would be. Unfortunately, I knew it wouldn’t be Rip doing it.
Wait what
His gaze landed on me just standing there, holding my hands to my chest. I could see his eyes narrow. See the great big breath he puffed out of his mouth. I could tell his shoulders dropped, his hands going loose at the same time. “You didn’t tell me you were leaving.” Something inside of my freaking soul stuttered. My throat seemed to choke on every letter in the alphabet, and all I could do was press my lips together and, after a second—after that thing inside of me stuttered then stuttered some more—I nodded. But I managed to get the words out. “I didn’t want to bother you.” And Rip… Rip
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WE’RE PROGRESSING
Before I could get another word out, and before I could blink at that, that huge hand slipped into mine like it was nothing and he tugged me toward the side of the house.
Dang first base already 😏
But what I could and would remember was how Rip stood with me, his hand holding mine the entire time we threw things away.
Inconvenient but sweet
My whole body tightened as I took in the television I had saved three months to buy that now had a massive crack through the center of it. That was only the beginning. Broken dishes, four flipped dining room chairs, my mattress, and drawers that had been ripped out and gone through. I didn’t let myself cry as I realized hardly anything had been stolen with the exception of about one hundred dollars in cash I’d hidden in my drawer and two hundred under the bathroom sink. My laptop was missing and so was my tablet. There was just so much… destruction. What was the point?
Right i’m confusion
“You can’t stay here tonight.” I didn’t want to stay there tonight. Or the next night. But I didn’t want to leave it either. “You’re coming with me.” I was? I was what? “Come on. I’m not in my twenties anymore. I’m usually in bed by now.” What? I glanced at my watch and saw the time. It was almost midnight. Holy crap. How had this taken so long? How was I even awake? Rip tugged at my wrist again. “You’re not staying here. Don’t give me that face.”
“Luna. I’m tired, baby.” Rip sighed, giving me a gentle squeeze.
Don’t start w me bruh
What I wasn’t ready for was the hand that snuck beneath my head and lifted it—Rip lifting my freaking head—, before effortlessly sliding the pillow under my head before his fingertips touched my forehead. “Go to sleep. I’m here,” he said to me. I looked up, or tried to look behind me, and I saw him stretch out from upside down. Rip was too busy yawning to notice I couldn’t take my eyes off him. “Sleep, Luna. I’m not going anywhere.”
rough and mellow. I stared at those big fingers, taking in the calluses all over them and the palms. They were strong hands. Solid hands. And they made my own itch. “You think I’d let that happen?” I rolled onto my stomach and propped my hands under my chin, so I could look up at him. I mean, if he wasn’t falling asleep yet either… “No.” His head was back against the couch, his eyes heavy and low. “Good, ’cause I wouldn’t.”
The hand on my shoulder gave it a light squeeze that had my eyes going just that much wider. “Take the day off, baby girl. I gotta go into the shop for a few hours, but I’ll come back and help you after that.”
Ily bae
The hand on my shoulder gave it another squeeze, just as gentle as the one before it. And Lucas Ripley moved his hand from above my arm to graze my cheek… and I held my breath as those rough fingers stayed there. “All right then, let’s go to work.”
Have I mentioned I love gentle giants
“I was looking for you to see if you wanted to go to lunch,” I said quickly, aiming my gaze right at Rip. “I owe you for yesterday.” I didn’t miss the confused look that Mr. Cooper sent Ripley, then me. I also didn’t miss the way Rip’s body tightened at my question. He was going to say no, I knew it, and I was going to be fine with it. The only reason why I’d even said anything was to break this up. “So?” I asked, giving him another smile that was as big as he was going to get, trying to tell him with my eyes that it was fine for him to say no. But he didn’t do that. “All right.” He uncrossed
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He’s such a sucker
“I’m okay. I know it’s stupid to be worried they’ll come back or the same thing will happen.” “It ain’t stupid.” It was and we both knew it. “You don’t feel safe. Nothing stupid about that,” Rip tried to tell me in that voice I had no defense against.
Period
“Stop,” he grunted. I would have crossed my eyes if he’d been looking at me. “I appreciate it, okay? You’re being really nice, and you don’t have to. I just want you to know I’m grateful, so suck it up.” We happened to come up to a stop sign when he glanced at me with those blue-green eyes and said, not softly but not roughly either, just… different, “I want to, all right?”
Mannn say less
And he’d brought me food. Again. Man, I could fall in love with this man if I let myself. I really, really could.
Real
“You look like you need a good rest too, baby girl.” I did. I really did. I also needed to ignore the use of that b-word again. And I needed to quit being a chicken and sleep wherever. “Nothing’s gonna happen, you know that, yeah?” he asked in his careful voice, making me focus on him.
“Baby, you cried out,” a sugar-sweet voice murmured a moment before what I knew were his fingers reached for my arm, sliding down it until his hand took mine and swallowed it whole. “Tell me what happened. It’s not real. You know it’s not.” I took a breath through my nose, my nape itching again. “It was real, Rip,” I sniffed, feeling him squeeze my shaking fingers. “Somebody do something?” I tried to rub my fingers over his rough ones. “Somebody hurt you?” the man beside me repeated himself.
“I called the cops the next day while the girls were in school—while I should have been in school too—and told them there were drugs at my house. I told them where to find it and how there were kids living there. And they came… they came and they arrested my dad and their mom. He screamed at me that he was going to fucking kill me… and I found out later on in the paper that they ended up arresting his brother too.”
I’m proud of u bestie
“You still want to be my friend then?” “Christ,” he hissed before making a choking noise. “Goddamn, Luna.” I didn’t get a chance to think his words over before the hand holding mine left, and the next thing I knew, a hand snuck between my rib cage and the bed and another went to my hip, and he pulled me toward him. Onto him. Lucas Ripley pulled me halfway onto his body, or at least that’s how it felt when his bicep turned into my pillow and his hip and thigh a part of my mattress. “You kill me, girl,” he murmured in the roughest voice I’d ever heard. “I swear to God, you’re a fucking puzzle I
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Shut up I’ll cry
Until suddenly, he dipped his face down—and I held my breath—and he did the last thing I would have ever expected. Rip brushed his dry, warm lips over mine. Over the corner of my mouth. Over the length of my lips. Just the quickest, lightest, most feather-like kiss of my life. And just as quickly as it happened, it was over. He rolled back down to his back, leaving me…. Just like that. Rip had kissed me. Me.
WHAT OMG
Was it… was it for comfort? Did friends do that? Kiss each other sometimes to make the other person feel better? Yeah. Yeah, they did, I told myself as I heard him exhale. That’s what I was going to keep telling myself. He hadn’t slipped in any tongue, that wouldn’t have been friendly.
Ok bestie💀
“Luna, if you knew the things I’ve done…” “I would still want to be your friend,”
Period
“Were you in a gang before?” The arm beneath my head went hard again, and it took seconds for it to relax. Seconds that seemed like minutes as his body finally lost its defensiveness. And I couldn’t say I was totally surprised when he said, “Yeah, baby. You can say that.” Well. I couldn’t say I was surprised. I wasn’t, not even a little bit, but his response tickled at that part of me that had a dozen different questions. I was only going to choose one. “Can I ask you one more thing?” His “yeah” was a rumble. “Why’d you do it?” If the question surprised him, I would never know for sure. What I
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I see
“He was into that life. My mom’s brother. I was mad as hell over life, and… they… took me in. It was kinda like having a new family, if your family was fucked up and everybody had lost their minds,” he kept explaining in a steady voice. “I spent eighteen years there.”
Oh that was longer than I expected
“Are you glad you came back?” His chuckle was a puff, and those knuckles moved over me one more time before he said, “Some days, no… but, yeah. Yeah. Coming back was the best thing I ever did.”
That’s good bae :)
If I had thought that maybe I would have gotten a break from my Streak of Shit, I would have been mistaken. Big-time.
Broooo
In this case, the thing with my sister had been the warning it was headed my way—I just hadn’t seen it for what it was soon enough. The break-in had gotten me to the eye of the storm, and now I had the other half to live through.
Whyyy
Unfortunately, in the days since the break-in, Jason forgot he was on strike two, or he’d decided he didn’t give a crap about his job and had taken being an obnoxious jerk to a totally different level.
Firing time?😃
“I was ordering paint for you,” he’d tried to claim when I came out of the booth and found the paint sitting in the same spot it’d been in before. I knew he was full of it instantly. “So you ordered it for me?” His blank stare confirmed my answer. “They put me on hold and I hung up.” Patience. Patience.
Long deep sigh
I had probably gotten across half the main lot when I spotted Jason’s head over the top of his Mitsubishi Eclipse. “Hey,” I called out, stopping in place. He turned to look at me, and I could see the hesitation on his face before he seemed to nod to himself and start walking toward me. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I’ve been waiting for you.” Jason was busy looking at the ground as he approached, and he didn’t respond. I said his name again just as he passed by me. He still didn’t even bother looking over at me. I stayed where I was and tried again. “Jason.” Still nothing. What was going on
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I didn’t put the pieces together until way too late. Until I got shoved forward from behind so hard I went flying. Until my hands stretched out to break my fall, them and my forearms scraping the concrete when I landed what had to be ten feet away. It wasn’t until then that I figured out what the hell was happening. I wasn’t sure why, I wasn’t sure I would ever know why, but the first thing out of my mouth was a shouted, “RIP!” at the top of my lungs. I yelled it again the second I could get another mouthful of letters into my body. But it was the second that name was out of my mouth that I
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HELP WTF IS HAPPENING
I didn’t put the pieces together until way too late. Until I got shoved forward from behind so hard I went flying. Until my hands stretched out to break my fall, them and my forearms scraping the concrete when I landed what had to be ten feet away. It wasn’t until then that I figured out what the hell was happening. I wasn’t sure why, I wasn’t sure I would ever know why, but the first thing out of my mouth was a shouted, “RIP!” at the top of my lungs. I yelled it again the second I could get another mouthful of letters into my body. But it was the second that name was out of my mouth that I
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Bruhhhh leave me aloneeee
But the next thing I knew, I reached down and pulled my work boot off—thankful I never tied them too tightly—and I chunked it as hard as I could at the man trying to get away. I watched as my steel-toed boot hit him right between the shoulder blades, heard the “Oh!” escape him as it was his turn to go flying toward the ground, arms stretched in front of him. Heard the “Fuck!” that exploded out of him that told me it wasn’t just my boot that hurt him.
IKTR
My cousin was going to jump me in the parking lot of my job. He’d put his hands on me. “Stop! God! Fucking stop!” my cousin yelled. “Jesus Christ!” Miguel looked up at me, foot poised in midair, his normally easygoing features rearranged into genuine freaking anger and disbelief. “Want me to stop?” “No,” I told him without thinking.
I LOVE YALL
“We told you not to go back to San Antonio!” Rudy had the nerve to yell in his raggedy but pained voice. “We told you what would happen if you did!” he tried to use as an excuse, but all it did was make me freeze. “Should have gotten you outside your fuckin’ place—”
Why is u obsessed w me bruh like pls move on w ur life
“Rudy, did you break into my house?” I saw his hand jerk. Saw him flinch. “Did you break into my house?” “Am I gonna get kicked again if I answer that?” he had the stupid nerve to ask. He’d done it. This little asshole, sack of shit had done it. It hadn’t been random burglars.
Oh brother
“You came and you tried to hurt me, and I’ll live with that. But I told you at the funeral if you ever put your hands on me again, I was going to break your hand.” His entire body froze, and I heard a noise from Miguel, but I didn’t turn to look at him. I was too focused. I was in this zone I had forgotten how well I was familiar with. “And you know what that means, don’t you?” I asked him again.
BESTIE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH
Just as I reached for Rudy’s hand, another one landed on my shoulder, and Rip’s voice was clear as he asked, “Let me do it.” I didn’t look at him. Instead I took in my cousin’s face, pained and angry and furious—a reminder of a time in my life I never wanted ever again after this. “I can do it,” I told Rip. “I want to,” he assured me quietly. And it was that that had me glancing up at him again. His face was still red, his breathing was still pretty off, and he looked… furious. For me?
