by Shen, L. J.
“Of course,” she mumbled. “I knew that, obviously.”
Flustered, she made a beeline to the door, bumping into a wall on her way out. She took her phone with her before she left the room, throwing an accusing look my way. I stayed in her bed, sniffing the scent of her pussy on my fingers and replaying what had just happened on a loop. Her nipples against my tongue. Her clit swelling against the pads of my fingers. I stretched, patting the nightstand for the Cartier I’d removed before I got into her bath yesterday. My hand rested on something. An envelope? A letter?
I knew a repeat offense of getting into her shit was going to get me kicked out of her life for good, so I practiced self-control. I reached for my watch. There. Good boy. But as I did, I couldn’t help but notice FUCKING JOSH’s name on the sealed envelope.
She writes him letters now?
I flung up, ramrod straight, grabbing the letter. Self-control, my ass. This wasn’t a goddamn chocolate cake. The letter was already sealed, so I had to work with what I had. I angled the envelope toward the rays of sun drifting in the window, as far away from me as possible, reading the text through the somewhat transparent, thin paper. I couldn’t make out much, but here’s what I did read clearly:
“…and I want you to know that, of course, I love you.”
Of course, she loved him.
Of course.
She loved him, and if I wasn’t careful, I was going to hate her.
Something came to me then. A switch flipped in my brain. Luna and I were never going to be even as long as I was still holding my bullshit V-card for her. We weren’t equal.
FUCKING JOSH was always hovering over our head, just like Poppy.
Only difference was, I knew I would drop everything and be with her. I couldn’t say the same about Luna—especially with this fucking love letter to another guy in my hand…
Fury crackled in my veins, so hot it burned past my skin. My jaw locked, and I felt my teeth grinding. She loved him. I’d drunk her pussy juice like it was the nectar of the gods, and she pined for him, still.
As a friend.
As a lover.
Who the fuck cared?
Were they going to bump uglies as soon as she returned to Boon? There’s no way she would wait for me. She hadn’t before…
I merely passed her time until she got on a flight back home.
She must feel high and mighty, too, since she wasn’t exclusive with FUCKING JOSH and wasn’t technically cheating. I was. I was a goddamn cheater, something I’d hated with a passion.
No matter how pissed I was, this time I wasn’t going to be a pussy about it. I didn’t bail. I didn’t throw a fit. I just placed the envelope right where it belonged, pulled my sweatpants on, and waited for the stupid-ass shirt.
When Luna came back, I thanked her for the tea, the shirt, the soup, and the Advil. I kissed her nose, smiled, and got the hell out.
I was going to kill Luna with kindness.
And dance all over the grave of our friendship.
I spent the rest of my week either with Rosie or in the treehouse, working on Rosie’s project. Guilt gnawed at my gut for not telling Knight about what I was doing with his mom, about how she thought she wasn’t going to survive much longer.
There were better, nicer places to be than in the treehouse. But I went there because sometimes, in the afternoons, Knight would show up with a six pack of Bud Light. Although I could talk now, he still hadn’t asked for my words and was content with silence. I’d drink a beer. He’d drink five. He’d stare into the woods. I’d write and erase. Delete and rip papers from my notebook, working on his project unbeknownst to him.
He didn’t ask me what I was doing.
I didn’t ask him about Poppy.
I also didn’t ask if we could do the things we’d done in my room again, even though it was pretty much all I could think of, other than my Rosie project.
I could practically envision Daria hitting me with her straightener for spending time with him, for letting him into my panties while he had a girlfriend. Hell, I hadn’t even let him kiss me when he didn’t have one.
The one thing I did tell him, breaking the silence once, was that I was flying back to Boon at the end of the week.
“Bummer.” He burped, throwing an empty beer bottle through the window and watching as it dunked right into the front basket of my bike. He’d smirked to himself. “Have fun there with FUCKING JOSH.”
It was like we’d never shared that moment in my bed. That intimacy. I tried to remind myself what I’d been told about him by his own mother—what I knew about him firsthand: Knight didn’t show vulnerability. He was so deeply wounded by being constantly on the verge of being an orphan that he stuck his chin out and hid the pain.
When he felt threatened, he pushed people away. But he needed me.
“How long are you going to punish me, Knight?” My eyes blurred with the fresh tears that clung to my lower lashes. “How much longer are we going to dance this twisted tango?”
He bent his head down, plucking a fresh beer from the pack. He’d been drinking so much lately, I could hardly tell when he was sober.
“I don’t know, Moonshine.” He’d cracked the beer open, downing it in one chilling gulp. “I hope we find out soon.”
“Did Uncle Dean ever hurt you?” I asked Rosie the next day, furiously writing in my notebook.
She’d given me some great notes today, notes I was going to dig into later, notes that reminded me how deeply entwined my life was with Knight’s.
Rosie looked like I’d just asked her if the sun was hot.
She burst out laughing, not even bothering to hide her delight. I felt my cheeks heat, watching as she began to cough, a barking sound that made me wince.
She was loud, but I didn’t worry. Knight and Lev were never here when I stopped by. She wanted the project to be a secret, and I understood why. No son wanted to know his parent had lost hope she’d make it to celebrate his next birthday. No son deserved to know his mother was contemplating the eternal, dreadful question—how do you tell your children goodbye?
“Can you elaborate?” I blinked.
She sat back, blowing a lock of hair from her eyes. “Where do I begin? Oh, yes. Dean dated my sister, for one thing. And took her virginity.”
I gasped, which only made her laugh harder.
“Emilia’s?”
She nodded. “Bet you didn’t see that one coming, huh, kiddo?”
“But he loved you!” I frowned, my hands moving fast.
I was thoroughly outraged. I knew Uncle Dean and Aunt Emilia had been a thing for half a second in high school. I didn’t know they’d been so serious, or how Rosie got over it.
How would I react if Knight slept with Daria? I’d kill them both, that’s how, and Daria wasn’t even my sister. Yet, I’d kissed Vaughn. Hell, I’d kissed Daria, too. I was no less responsible for the pain distribution in my relationship with Knight than he was. My sins were just more…casual. Spontaneous. I hadn’t meant to hurt him, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t.
“Hmm… Let’s see. Then he spent the next decade or so—give or take—bedding anyone with a pulse, besides me, of course.” Rosie tapped her smiling lips. “Threesomes. He was big on threesomes. We were neighbors for a while, and he always had a few girls go up to his apartment. I’d meet them in the elevator, warn them off about his mysterious STD that turned groins green. He wasn’t impressed.” She snorted.
“How could you forgive him?” I signed.
I was half angry that she had, at this point. Who was I kidding? Maybe even fully. Dean Cole had done a ton of threesomes. I don’t know why it surprised me. He did have a wild streak about him. But he was so…so…in love with Rosie. From the moment he was born, it seemed.
“How could I not?” Now it was her turn to look angry. “You only get one life, Luna. One stab at this thing called happiness. Why deprive yourself of things you want just because they weren’t given to you the way you hoped for them to
come? Life is like a book, a long chain of scenes threaded together by circumstances and fate. You never know how thick or thin your book is, so you better make the most out of every scene, enjoy each chapter.”
“But Uncle Dean…”
“Didn’t pay?” She arched an eyebrow, grinning. “Did he not, though? Didn’t he chase me around like a lovesick puppy? Get blackmailed by Uncle Vicious? Marry me, knowing I might not have children? Commit to me, knowing he would almost definitely outlive me? What about his sleepless nights for the past six years? The hospital visits? The emotional toll? The fact I am going to make our children orphans? Yeah.” She patted my hand, like I was a precious, naïve thing. “If you think you’ve found something good without anything bad in it, it just means you haven’t examined it close enough.”
When we’d finished, I rode to our treehouse with my head almost hitting the front basket. The weight of my decision slumped my posture. I wasn’t going to tiptoe around Knight’s intentions anymore. Rosie was right. Life was unbearably, excruciatingly short. I wanted to be with Knight. He needed to know that before I flew back to Boon. He needed to know that I loved him.
But also that I was done being the other woman.
I wanted to be the only woman.
Yes, I had slept with someone else while trying to move on with my life. But that had been my choice. Did I wish I had known the truth? Yes. Would knowing it have made me wait for Knight? Maybe. But I hadn’t done anything wrong, and he couldn’t keep holding a grudge like it was the end of a cliff he was dangling from. He had to let go. He had to. For our happiness.
I wanted to kiss him again. To open my legs for him—again. Let him lick and bite and taunt me. Let him punish me and cherish me. He was my everything. My only sin was fighting what we had because I’d thought I wasn’t worthy.
When I arrived at the treehouse, I dropped my backpack against the trunk and toed my Vans off. As I climbed up, I realized the light inside was on. Knight was here.
Chipped bark dug into my nails as I grasped the trunk hard, knocked back by the sight in front of me.
Knight.
Knight and Poppy.
He’d brought her here.
To our spot.
Not only had he brought her here, but they were both naked. Completely naked. He was lying on top of her, removing locks of hair from her neck, kissing it softly, his glorious, tan body enfolding hers. His triceps and broad back bulged with perfect muscles, and his tousled, brown hair fell across her face. She arched her back, her breasts full and lily white, meeting his pecs.
They looked like a beautiful dream and my own ugly nightmare. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. He was losing his virginity. To Poppy.
He was giving to her what he didn’t want to give to me.
He wasn’t done making me pay. At this moment, I wasn’t sure he ever would be.
“You feel so good,” Poppy moaned into Knight’s mouth.
I shivered. I wanted to throw up. I needed to throw up. God, make it stop. They couldn’t do this. It was wrong on so many levels. He didn’t love her. He cheated on her. With me.
“I want you inside me.” She rolled her hips toward him again, and I didn’t dare look down and see him bare, aligning himself with her.
“Sunshine,” he croaked.
Of course—the sun was stronger, bigger, and more important than the moon.
Knowing when to accept defeat, I’d learned, was an art. Giving up too fast was cowardly. But not giving up when all the signs pointed to long-lasting heartache was dangerous, too.
I could no longer afford to put my heart on the line.
Once upon a time, Knight had been my protector.
But nowadays? Nowadays, he was the very thing I needed protection from.
And the person to shield me from him was myself.
Years of being noiseless had taught me how to slip into places without making a sound. I could be eerily quiet. The irony was, the same silence that had helped me go up undetected also helped me climb down from that tree without making a sound. When my feet hit the soft ground, I wobbled to the farthest corner I could find, deep in the woods, and threw up against a tree trunk, ripping chipped bark off of it with my fingers.
I didn’t stop until my stomach was empty and my fingernails were gone.
Knight (Two days ago): When are you leaving 4 Boon?
Knight (Two days ago): Sup with you, L?
Knight (One day ago): Someone call ghostbusters, Moonshine just learned how to ghost.
Knight (One day ago): *insert five emojis of a ghost*
Knight (Three hours ago): Your dad just told me you flew to Boon yesterday. What the fuck? Are we playing this game again?
Knight (Three hours ago): Fuck you, Luna. Fuck you.
I hadn’t meant to pick up her call.
Unfortunately, life was hell-bent on fucking me in the ass, sans lube, the day I answered.
And in the great scheme of things, did it really matter?
Also, at least Dixie was alive. Val wasn’t.
Also, I was in no position to make a decision about my next meal, let alone my long-lost biological mother.
Also, was this an earthquake, or had I really drunk enough to make the world spin like the teacups in Disneyland?
Mom had been taken to the hospital again, and after spending two nights in a row under harsh florescent lights watching her wasting away, I took the Aston Martin for a ride. So far, so normal—only I did it with a bottle of my old, destructive friend, Jack Daniels.
The bottle was empty by the time I reached the beach.
It was cold, windy, and well past ten at night. I was pretty much alone, which was a relief and a lonesome curse. I threw the bottle into the ocean and screamed at the endless horizon until my lungs burned. How tauntingly beautiful and deceiving the world could be. With its palm trees and stupid oceans and Spanish villas and poisonous women who look like Nymphs rising from the water.
Woman. Not plural. Just the one.
I told myself the drinking problem I was unabashedly flirting with had nothing to do with Luna and everything to do with Mom. But that was bullshit, even to my own ears. First of all, I wasn’t flirting with the problem anymore. I’d moved in with the bitch, and put a ring on it.
Second, it had everything to do with Luna. Everything.
Fucking Luna, who’d just bailed.
Fucking Luna, who always went hot and cold on my ass, and I kept on coming back for more. After screwing FUCKING JOSH. After kissing Vaughn. And Daria, too. Shit, why was I so happy she’d let me finger her cunt? She’d probably seen more dicks than a public urinal.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Collapsing on the sand like a sack of bricks, I held my phone in front of my face, scrolling the contacts. I didn’t want to talk to Vaughn, and Hunter was a shitbag. The rest of my friends were dumbasses with first-world problems and couldn’t relate to me if they had a fucking brain transplant. Dad had enough on his shit plate, and anyway, we still weren’t really talking. My aunts Emilia and Melody were at the hospital, fussing over Mom, and I wasn’t sure how much Trent and Edie knew about what was going down with Luna and me, so it felt awkward to cry in their laps.
My screen flashed with an image of a bull’s head and read Deadbeat Dixie. The bull’s head was my own personal sick joke. Because it was the shape of a uterus, and that’s what she was for me—a hub for nine months until she spat me out and gave me away.
There wasn’t even an inch of me that wanted to answer her, but I still did, because I was too alone not to accept the love of those I hated.
“Hello? Knight? You there?” she asked frantically, the desperation in her voice telling me I wasn’t the only one surprised I’d picked up.
The wind beat against her receiver, and I could hear she was outdoors.
I grinned, even though I’d never been so sad in my entire miserable life.
“Knight? Are you okay?”
No answer.
&nb
sp; “Baby, tell me where you are.”
“What do you care?” I hiccupped. “You live in fucking Texas. Does it matter if I’m stuck in a sewer? You can’t do shit about it,” I taunted.
“Honey…”
“Honey,” I mimicked, letting out a wretched laugh, rolling in the sand. I bet it wasn’t a pretty sight. My grown-ass, six-foot-three quarterback figure drunkenly rolling on the beach like a whale trying to find its way home. For some reason, I still had the phone to my ear.
“Knight, listen…” She hesitated.
“Now’s not the time for dramatic pauses. Kind of in the middle of being shitfaced here, and not really in the mood for coaxing your ass.”
“I’m here.” I heard her swallow.
“Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes. “Talking about my feelings is low on my to-do list, Dick—can I call you Dick? Seems fitting.”
“No, Knight. I mean literally here.”
Godfuckingdammit, is anyone ever going to use that word correctly?
“Huh?”
“I’m here. In California. In Todos Santos. Where are you?”
“Why?” My voice suddenly sounded sober, but that was about the extent of it.
It just surprised me was all. I hadn’t known she was planning another visit so soon.
“The thing is…I kind of…well…” She sighed.
Please, God, I hoped she hadn’t gotten knocked up again, by someone local this time. Life was too short to deal with random half-siblings, and my life was doing a fine job being a train wreck without any added drama.
“I never left,” she finished.
“You stayed here through Christmas and New Year’s?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I didn’t even know why I was laughing.
“Yes,” Dixie said seriously. “You looked like you could use someone, so I wanted to make myself available to you. Where are you?”
“I…” I looked around me before remembering I didn’t need a savior. Especially in the form of Dixie.
“Where?” she repeated.
“Nah. I think I’m good.” My smirk was back.