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“Well, then. You keep saying you aren’t mine, but all evidence points to the contrary.”
“As for you, Moonshine, I think it’s time the tables turned. Unrequited love is a bitch. Time to taste your own medicine.”
“You’re a dead man walking,” Knight spat at Vaughn.
I slipped back to my house, as I always did. Running from conflict. From the truth. From my voice. From my silence.
Luna and I had decided we were too grownup for the treehouse when I was fourteen. Well, she’d decided, and I’d agreed. I’d agreed to a lot of stuff in the name of pleasing Luna, and I had to admit, it felt liberating to stop giving a crap. Even if I was just pretending.
I opened my eyes, arching an eyebrow. “She talks again. Maybe all you really needed to start talking was for people to stop giving a crap about you.”
I still couldn’t believe she was talking. It made me happier than a pig in shit and disturbed more than a pig on someone’s plate, as bacon.
Because she was becoming someone else, and that someone? I wasn’t her best friend. Or her soulmate. I was barely her goddamn neighbor at this point.
“What?” Her nostrils flared. “I don’t know. I never thought you’d say something like ‘on the reg’, is all. You sound completely…” “Normal?”
“Yeah.” “Yeah.” She nodded. “I used to talk to myself sometimes, when no one was listening. Like, to see if I had an accent or something.” That made me burst out laughing.
But, yeah, you were upset. I stepped up. That’s what we did for each other, you know?” “Did?” I bit down on my tongue ring. She looked down at her thighs. “Do?” “Do,” I said with conviction. “No matter how hard or stupid shit gets, Moonshine. Ride or die, remember?”
“Fuck.” She never cursed. Even in sign language. It felt good to hear her say that.
“I’m looking for Val.” She changed the subject. “Fuck.”
“Whatever it is you’re looking for, I hope it’s peace and not a relationship. She doesn’t deserve you, Luna. She never did.”
“Never too busy to be a beautiful girl’s knight in shining armor.”
“She’s not a tortilla chip. No need to put so much cheese on it.” Knight tousled his own hair, his eyes drenched with disdain as he threw Jefferson a scowl.
Michael Jackson’s eating popcorn GIF played in my head.
“No disrespect, man. I was actually baiting Luna.”
“A word,” he hissed my way. I tore my gaze from Jefferson, playing dumb. “I don’t talk.” “To me you do.”
“I can’t,” he said simply. “I can’t fucking look at you anymore. It’s wrong. I know. It’s hypocritical. Hell, I know that, too. You owe me nothing, but you slept with someone else, and it’s the only thing I can think about when I look at your face, no matter how much I want to see anything but that.”
“Screwing FUCKING JOSH. Kissing Vaughn. Flirting with Ken. You’ve really become quite a hussy, haven’t you, Luna?” “Jealous?” I smiled sweetly, folding my arms over my chest.
“Jealous? Why would I be jealous? Guy’s a vegan. He probably doesn’t even have the energy to fuck you. Ken here is no competition for me, and we both know it.”
Her only sin was being interested in the same guy I was in love with.
“Let go, or I’ll slap you again.” “I’ll take your wrath over your indifference,”
“You can’t half-ass a relationship, Knight. Either you’re in or you’re not. You’re with Poppy now, but you treat her like crap. Every time I’m in the room, you put your relationship with her on the back burner. You don’t let me move on without faulting me for talking, or flirting, or kissing other guys. Guess what? I can. More than that, I will. We had our chance, and we blew it. My fault. Your fault. Does it really matter now?”
“I will meet someone else. I will sleep with someone else. I will love someone el—” He cut me off with a searing kiss, slamming my back against the wall in the process.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” His tongue ring swirled across my lips teasingly, his kiss hot and incredibly deep as he thrust his tongue into my mouth again. “There will be no one else, Moonshine. I will never let you get over me.”
Knight was not a good guy. He wasn’t even a decent one. But he’d been my protector. My savior. My guardian angel. Now that he’d quit that role, all bets were off. The precious prize became the prey. My halo was broken. My free passes—no longer free.
“I really do hate y—” I started. “You already mentioned. Let me assure you: I don’t give a fuck.”
“I will make you so fucking wet for me, Luna. So fucking ready. And. I. Will. Never. Fuck. You. Never give you what you want.”
Anything to get away from my angel turned devil. I unchained my bike, flung a leg over it, and sped back to my house. I heard cars honking and Knight cursing behind me, but I dared not look back. This time, neither of us was going to save the other. This time, we were on our own.
Earlier, I’d followed him into his study silently. I’d found him bracing his desk from the other side, his back quivering as sobs rippled through his body. My dad. The mighty Dean Cole. Crying.
Things were changing, and I didn’t know how to stop them. Luna was living elsewhere, and no longer mine. She was speaking. She had friends. Boyfriends.
Poppy, for all intents and purposes, was perfect. Only problem was, she wasn’t perfect for me.
I couldn’t stop myself from doing any of those things, even when I wanted to. Desperately. The more my mother weakened, the more I drank. The more I drank, the more mean Knight came out. It was a vicious cycle. I knew there was only so much Luna would suffer before she flipped on my ass. She was a proud girl.
“Luna and I are unfinished business.” I bit on the tip of my tongue ring, slicing into her speech. “We’ll always be unfinished business. Now. In five years. When we’re eighty. That’s the deal; it’s always been the deal. You knew it. You saw us up until senior year. We were always together.”
I spun toward her, studying her face: the soft planes of her cheeks, her carefully brushed hair, flawless little Neiman Marcus dress. She could be someone else’s Luna, someone else’s everything. A guy like Jefferson, maybe.
“Yes, you are.” I erased Luna’s kiss from my lips, replacing it with Poppy’s sweet, soft petals. “You’re my queen.”
This girl needs to go.
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “When you refuse to pay your dues to love, sometimes the price goes up. There’s an inflation, and you end up losing more than you’d bargained.”
She’d tasted different than Luna, and smelled nothing like her. It was like making out with a bottle of Chanel No. 5—bitter and about as sexy as licking a fish.
Luna, of course, was right. Even when I hid my alcohol breath, she could tell when I was intoxicated, because when I was, I was mean to her. I didn’t want to be. But staying sober, sharp, and present felt slightly worse than dealing with her disappointed gaze.
“Ride or die, Luna Rexroth,” I yelled to her back. “You’re my ride or die.”
“I need you to be there for Knight, even when he pushes you away. And he will push you away. He will do anything he can to make sure you don’t see him break. But he will break—in outstanding fashion, as he does everything else,”
“Even if he pushes me away. Even if he refuses it. I will always be here for him.”
“I want you to make sure Dean moves on. He is far too young not to experience love again. He is far too beautiful, inside and out, not to be admired. I know my husband. He wants to be a martyr. To show me that he cares, that I was—am, am—” She coughed again, her voice strained. “—the only person for him. But it’s a title I never claimed. I know his love for me is the Big Bang. I don’t mind him settling on another quiet planet afterwards. He needs to move on, Luna.”
“We go to the party, Knight sees Luna looking like a million bucks, and he dumps the English tart.”
“You’re not the girl I met the first day we arrived at Boon. You’re much stronger. Make sure he knows that.”
“Look…” She turned to me. “When you find the one, all the other details blur together. I don’t know what I want to wear when I wed him. I don’t know what my hair is going to look like, or how many guests I want to invite, or if I want a beach wedding, or one in a fancy hotel, or to elope in Vegas. All I know is that I want to be with Penn. Every hour. Every day. Every year. And that’s enough for me. It’s more than enough. It’s everything. Don’t you feel like that about Knight?” She cocked her head.
Guys are trash.”
“Ten!” “Look at me, Luna. Not at them.” Daria snapped her fingers in front of my face.
