by Shen, L. J.
Luna loved seahorses with a passion. They were her favorite animals—something about the male seahorse being the one to give birth… Mom gave me so much shit before she signed the consent for the tattoo, but she’d known it was a part of a bigger plan, so she’d let it slide.
And if that wasn’t enough, I’d made Luna seventeen different birthday cards, all the while trying to downplay my excitement that we were spending the entire day together.
The day had been pretty perfect, as far as birthdays go. So perfect, in fact, that when I dropped Luna back at her door, she’d taken my face between her palms and smiled up at me. I’d stared at her like an idiot, thinking, Should I or shouldn’t I?
Darkness had washed over our street. Our families had been inside, probably eating dinner. No one could see us—not that anyone would have cared. It wasn’t a secret I’d chop heads and bring down the sun for Luna Rexroth.
Still, I’d kept on staring at her, searching for the okay in her face. By that time, I was pretty damn good at recognizing the okay in girls’ eyes when I looked at them. But not with Luna, apparently. Every time her eyes said yes, the rest of her said no. I’d decided this time I needed more affirmation before I fucked everything up and earned an unfriendly visit to my house from Trent Rexroth, Luna’s dad, with his even unfriendlier baseball bat.
She’d pressed my hand over her heart through her shirt. It was beating so fast, I’d thought she needed me to squeeze it back into her chest. My fingers had involuntarily twitched against the swell of her breast. The hint of a puckered nipple under my palm had almost made my knees buckle.
Luna had worn thin sports bras. You noticed those things about a girl when you hung out with her all the time. My brain had short-circuited, refusing to come up with words to describe what was happening inside my body. I mean…
My.
Hand.
Was.
On.
Her.
Breast.
Why’d it feel so fantastic? In my mind, we were already fucking three times a day at that point. My morning jerk-off in the shower before practice, the rub-in after I got back from practice in the afternoon, and of course, the whack before bedtime to take the edge off prior to slipping through her window. I’d imagined us doing filthy things I was pretty sure Luna would never even think about, let alone do.
Meanwhile, in real life, I’d just nearly come from touching her tit. I’d been worried for my man card. Also: for my sanity when it came to this girl.
“Do you feel it?” she’d signed.
I’d squeezed my eyes shut and breathed slowly through my nose. Opened my eyes.
“I never unfeel it, Moonshine.” The words had come out laced with pain.
“Promise not to break it?”
Even my dumb teenage brain understood the magnitude of the situation. Never breaking our gaze, I’d put her hand on my own heart, so she’d know, without a doubt, she wasn’t the only one whose heart had a chunk missing.
“Promise.”
Luna had tipped her chin up, giving me the okayest-okay in the history of the goddamn word, and I’d gone for it, still half-expecting to wake up from the dream. And that was it. My lips were on hers. Finally. Consensually. This time, she didn’t pull away.
A low, guttural moan tore from my throat when our mouths met and molded. She’d poured magic into that kiss, and it had depressed me to know, after kissing dozens of girls before her, that I’d been right all along. My mom had said there were a lot of lids for every pot. But there was only one lid for this pothead. Luna.
Her lips had been soft, sweet, giving—like her. She’d smelled like coconut and ocean salt and pencil shavings. Like heaven. Her wild curls had framed both our faces. I’d wrapped a lock around my finger, and it had gripped me like a live wire. I loved her hair the most, because that’s how I recognized her in the hallways. Everyone else either had flat-ironed, thin hair or a tired, in-between mane that wasn’t straight or curly. Some wore theirs in doll-like, perfect ringlets held by hairspray that made them look like fancy divorcées. But Luna looked like nature. It was like kissing the entire fucking forest from our spot in the treehouse.
“Knight. Jameson. Cole!” A loud whine had cut through the air, jerking Luna’s body away from mine.
I’d twisted my head, still drunk from that kiss. Noei had been standing in front of my door, mouth agape, a hand on her hip, one foot tapping on the wide step to my door.
“I knew it! I just knew it! And with the school’s freak no less! I should’ve listened to Emma and Jacquie when they said so. You’re such a cheater.”
No. No. No. Just…no.
Pretty sure I voiced that aloud, because Noei had shouted, “Oh, hell yes!” and “I can’t believe you,” and “I thought you were the one.”
Which, honestly, would have been laughable if it hadn’t been for the unfortunate situation.
I didn’t even entertain the idea of explaining myself to Noei. We’d never been steady. I’d never called or texted her, though I had messed around with her in public every now and again. I’d explained to Noei that my situation was complicated. That I didn’t do relationships. That I had an endgame, and it didn’t include her.
“Moonshine, wait…”
I’d chased my best friend through the snaking, cobbled pavement leading to her doorstep. She’d moved quickly between the green hedges, ducking her head down so I wouldn’t see her face. She’d asked me not to break her heart, and I’d gone and done it, even before our kiss had ended. Frantic, I’d grabbed her wrist. She’d spun around, her waterfall gray eyes breathing fire I knew would leave blisters on my memory. I’d let go of her immediately. She’d raised her finger between us, warning me not to get closer, before launching into the longest speech I’d ever seen her sign:
“I love you, Knight Cole. More than anything. Maybe even more than myself. But I don’t trust you with my heart. And when you hurt me like this, I feel little and vindictive. So vindictive, you shouldn’t trust me with yours. Whatever it is, we need to kill it before it kills us, you understand? We can’t be together.”
“But…”
“Friends.”
She’d mouthed the word. I almost heard it.
“Listen, Luna, it’s not what you think.” I’d tugged at my hair so hard, it occurred to me I might pull it out completely. This was bullshit. I wanted to rip something apart. Maybe my own skin.
“Knight, no. Promise me.”
I’d turned around and stalked back home, and that had been that.
Then, I’d thought I couldn’t handle less than everything.
Now, I knew that when you’re left with no choice—you can handle it. It just hurts like a thousand bitches in heat.
“Moonshine. Can I get you a beer?” I blocked her way to the other girls in Vaughn’s kitchen with my huge frame, rolling my pierced tongue along my lower lip. Long gone were my five-eleven days. I was a little shy of six-three now, with the width of an industrial washing machine, hard and muscled head to toe.
These girls, they hated her. She’d hung out with Vaughn and me, the most popular guys in school, until she’d graduated. Spent summer vacations and trips to the Maldives with us and with Daria Followhill, the alumna Queen Bee of All Saints High. Luna was cool as shit by association, and fuck knows she tried hard not to be.
It didn’t bother me that Luna and Vaughn were tight. I trusted both of them. There was still a dull pang of pain every time she as much as breathed in the direction of a guy who wasn’t me, but I’d learned how to control it over the years.
Mostly.
Now, Luna flashed the girls behind me the middle finger. By their lack of reaction, they either didn’t see it or knew they’d never get away with answering her without feeling my wrath.
“What brings you to the lion’s den?” I brushed my scarred knuckle over her cheek slowly, watching in awe as goosebumps broke over her neck.
She took the beer from my hand, tilted it back to take a small swig, the
n pointed at me with the neck of the bottle. All eyes in the kitchen were on us, but I was used to the audience. Luna, not so much.
“Just make sure to bring him back in time for our round two!” Arabella barked, staking her claim on me tonight.
Her mini-dressed clones laughed like hyenas.
Luna gave her a hard stare, then pretended to shove her finger down her throat. I bit down a smile. Luna turned back to me.
“Spencers’ bedroom. Five minutes.”
The Spencers’ bedroom was soundproof, which was something Hunter and I gave Vaughn a lot of shit about. Didn’t make any difference that Baron was Vaughn’s dad—it still must’ve sucked to know someone was fucking your mom so hard she needed special walls not to wake up the neighbors.
Even though I couldn’t hear Luna’s tone, I knew she was pissed. I could read it in her delicate frown. Not that she had a case. Way I saw it, she’d rejected me—not once, not twice, but three times. What did it matter if I wanted to fuck every mouth in this room? We weren’t together.
“Wrapping shit and coming up.” I took a sip of my drink, turning around and slapping Arabella’s ass on my way to ask Vaughn for his parents’ bedroom keys.
I was being a little spiteful, but I gave myself some slack because of the extreme circumstances.
Right now, my breath was goddamn near flammable. Substance abuse ran in my family, so usually, I tried to limit myself to one joint and a beer at every party.
But usually I didn’t find out Mom was officially no longer a candidate for a lung transplant, which meant her team of doctors had basically given up on her.
Today, I did.
My mother was sick. Really sick. Rosie had cystic fibrosis. She’d been lucky to reach forty, let alone pass it by a few years. Recently, her treatments had become more intense, more frequent. She stayed at the hospital for longer periods of time. Sometimes weeks. Her lungs weren’t coping. The rest of her body wasn’t doing so hot, either. From the outside, she looked fine. Gorgeous. Vital. But inside, her liver and kidneys were collapsing. So was our family.
Frankly, I was surprised Dad hadn’t ripped out his own lungs and tried to shove them down her throat when he heard about it. It had sent me on a binge this evening, and I wasn’t completely in control of what I was doing. All I knew was I needed to numb the pain of Mom not getting her lung transplant and seeing her earlier, hunched over Dad’s office desk, crying.
Five minutes later, I pushed the bedroom door open, letting Luna in and locking it behind us. The Spencers had the wildest bedroom I’d ever seen. If Pimp My Ride and Buckingham Palace had a lovechild, it’d be this place. Royal navy drapes decorated floor-to-ceiling windows and a matching upholstered, California King bed filled the room. Everything else was in gold or deep, blood red, and there were self-portraits of the Spencer couple on the walls in sexy poses I was pretty sure we had no business seeing—the reason they locked this bitch whenever they weren’t home.
I watched Luna slump on their bed, looking up at the ceiling and making a snow angel on their sheets. She looked faraway. Spaced-out. Perching a shoulder against one of the posters of the bed, I watched her, already on the defense.
“Why do you give yourself to anyone who asks?” There was a snow globe of unshed tears coating her eyeballs when she asked this.
Interesting, coming from Luna, who’d gone to extreme lengths to ignore my antics with girls this past year, as well as the fact that there was a dick attached to me in general. I cocked my head to the side, inspecting her. I wasn’t an asshole—definitely not to her, and maybe not at all. But she was seriously overstepping if she thought she had a say in what—or who—I was doing in my spare time.
“Because I enjoy it.” I shrugged.
She gave me a you-don’t-look-like-you’re-enjoying-it glare.
“Jealous?” I smirked.
She rolled her eyes.
“There’s enough to go around. If this is a booty call, I’ll gladly pick up.”
No fucking way I was risking another blow to my ego—a fourth one—weeks before she started her college courses and could ghost me, even from across the street. I no longer had leverage on her. The All Saints’ hero everyone was afraid of but also admired had officially retired from protecting her at school. I needed to play my cards more carefully to keep her around.
“When did you become such a sexist jerk?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Right around the time I was born. It’s called being a guy.”
I was reducing myself to my reputation, something I knew she loathed. After all, she was the weirdo who wouldn’t talk. She knew that between the stigma and the person laid an open abyss, and in its depth, the truth.
“Don’t give me credit I don’t deserve. I work full-time for my dick and take orders directly from him,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood.
She snorted out a sarcastic laugh, shook her head, and swung her legs to the side of the bed, darting up and making her way to the door.
“Good talk, Knight.”
Whoa. Back. The. Fuck. Up. What?
She didn’t get to shut me down two thousand times and then get pissy when I tried to move on. Or pretended to, for that matter.
I clasped her wrist and turned her around so she faced me. “You came here to throw shit at me?”
There was some anger in my voice, and it made me furious with her. I tried so hard to accommodate whatever wish she had for us. When she wanted kisses, she got them. When she wanted friendship, she got that, too. What about what I wanted from her? What I needed?
“Because I have nothing to apologize for. If you’re here to pick a fight, wait till I’m done with the party. I’ll climb up to your room, and we can talk shit out. Oh, wait, that’s right. You don’t talk.”
“Shut up, dumbass. Shut up before you ruin eighteen years of friendship in one drunken night.”
Her eyes zinged with fury, and she shook my touch off of her arm. “Why wait?” she signed. “So you can squeeze in another girl?”
Her hands moved fast. Luna was still partial to not talking at all, even in sign language, so her Pissed-O-Meter was obviously dinging.
“Two.” I winked at her, knowing I would regret every single word that left my mouth, but somehow unable to stop myself. “I’m a hell of a multitasker, which is something you would know, if you weren’t such a fucking coward when it came to us.”
That was the beer speaking, not me. But let’s be real—the beer wasn’t wrong. I was team beer until the bitter end. Beer had more balls than I did.
I heard the slap before I felt it. It was the first time a girl had ever slapped me. Up until now, I hadn’t been a player, but the fucking coach. I’d abided all the rules of the game. I never led anyone on. With the exception of Noei, who simply refused to come to peace with my terms, girls mostly understood, even if they hated the fine print.
Luna took a step back, cupping her mouth. My gaze was hard on the wall behind her. I didn’t even rub my cheek. Whatever emotion it evoked in me, I didn’t show it. As I said—my mask was made out of solid gold. Nothing seeped in. Nothing poured out.
I was drunk, and scared shitless by Mom’s situation. Ruining one more thing about my life wasn’t going to make any difference. I sighed theatrically.
“Moonshine, baby, we’ve been through this. Next time aim for the balls. Quarterbacks are good at taking hits. Barely even felt it,” I said.
She raised her hand in apology, lowering her head and squeezing her eyes shut. Luna was the type of girl who never hurt a soul—the caregiver, the nurturer of the crew. Vaughn and Daria thought she was obnoxiously sweet, but I’d take her sweetness over their black hearts any day of the goddamn decade.
“Forget it.” I took her hand and kissed her knuckles. I was a fool for Luna Rexroth—incapable of being mad at her, even when she deserved it.
The horror of what she’d done still played on her face as she took another step away from me, the back of her legs hitting the bed. She wasn�
�t scared of me, I realized. She was scared she’d do it again.
“Why are you here, Luna?” I asked softly.
She swallowed, looking away out the window. The Spencers’ house was a dark castle, a large, ancient-looking property that stood out in the manicured neighborhood like a sore thumb. I wondered if Luna wanted to jump out the window, like she’d jumped in front of that car all those years ago. I also wondered if it really had been by accident that she’d pedaled straight into the car. For all our years of friendship, I didn’t know what she was thinking ninety percent of the time.
“I came to talk to you about college. I’m ready to make a decision.”
I nodded, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed. There was no fucking way she was leaving, no matter what her dad wanted. She hadn’t even left the neighborhood for a sleepover without her family. Was it sick that I liked her frightened? Sheltered? Closed-off? Because it meant having more of her, and less competition.
Yes, fucker. It is wrong on every single level, a voice in me confirmed.
Still, it wasn’t any less true. I thought Trent was insane for even suggesting an out-of-state college, not to mention pushing it down her throat about a week before she had to make a decision.
“So?” she asked. “What do you think?”
“UCLA online.”
Were we actually talking colleges right now? Our shit was faker than a Hooters waitress’ tits.
“They have a good creative writing program,” I continued. “Plus, you won’t have to leave, so you’ll be here with Racer, Edie, and your dad.”
And me.
She nodded, turning toward a window, placing her fingertips on the glass, staring out. She’d just slapped me, after accusing me of being a manwhore. But the truth was, I needed more than a crumb of jealousy to keep me going. I’d been shut down one too many times, and I needed her to throw me a bone with at least a bit of meat before I reassured her that, yes, I was the same pathetic bastard who had loved her from day one. That I wished I weren’t, but I was hers, whether I liked it or not. And fuck knows I didn’t like it anymore. Not for a while now.