Sighing, I walked further into the room and sat down on the couch.
“Look, she’s been gone for a long time. Back then she was too young, way too young. But now?” I looked up at him and held his eyes as I said the words that I wasn’t going to be taking back, “Things have changed. I already told you that you needed to let it go.”
He waited, digesting what I’d said before he lost his shit. “Things have changed? Enlighten me how they’ve changed, Noah. From where I’m standing, nothing has changed at all. She’s still Luna. In fact, there’s an even bigger reason now for nothing to change. She’s been through hell for almost four years, man. Do you know she can’t be in the dark? She freaks if the room doesn’t have the lights on at night.”
I ground my teeth listening to him and made a mental note to make sure that the lights never went off in any room she was in. Fuck, I’d already hated her father for enough reasons, this just made me want to bathe him in acid.
“And the other day I asked her to get something out of a cupboard in the hallway. She opened the door and wouldn’t go in. He’s left her terrified of small spaces and the dark. She’s only told me so much about what happened to her, Noah. Can you imagine what she’s leaving out that’s made her as scared as she is of relatively small things?”
I didn’t want to imagine what those reasons were. I didn’t want her to have experienced anything bad in her life.
Fuck, how was I going to help her get past this?
“What exactly has she told you?” I asked and braced myself for the details.
I needn’t have bothered. Levi was fiercely loyal to everyone. If you told him something, it went no further.
“Not my place to tell you, bro,” he said firmly. “If she wants you to know, Luna will tell you herself.” Sitting down in the chair near me, he leaned forward and glared. “Now, you need to tell me what you’re doing.”
“I already did,” I sighed. “Look, you know that I would never do anything at all to hurt her. I want to make her smile, to look after her, to keep her safe…she’s…” I wasn’t being trite or corny when I said she was everything or that she was a one in a million. She was special and priceless. She was just everything. I wasn’t going to divulge any of that to Levi though.
Making eye contact with him, I watched as he took in the expression on my face. Thankfully, it must have shown what I was feeling because he took a deep breath in and then stretched his neck from side to side making it pop.
“You will listen to what I have to say,” he growled. “These are the rules and if you break even one of them, they’ll never find your body parts.”
“Okay,” I nodded, looking as obedient as I could muster.
I held back from laughing in his face or saying, ‘as if’. If he needed to lay this all out for me, then I’d listen and nod like a good doggy, but he wouldn’t be calling the shots when it came to me and Luna.
“One, she is the one in control.” I went to interrupt, but he held his hand up and shook his head. “No, you will listen. She controls what or if anything happens between y’all.”
I was struggling not to punch the little shit.
“Two, don’t just listen to her words, listen to her body language. She’s never been able to hide the truth because her body and face give it all away.”
This was true. She was a terrible poker player, and we’d always ended up playing along and letting her win because of it.
“If she says she’s fine, watch and see what her body is saying. If she has a nightmare or an anxiety episode, she’ll tell you it’s no biggy, but a majority of the time that is far from the truth. Pay attention to the rest of her and make your judgements on that.” I was genuinely agreeable with this rule. “The next rule is linked to number two. Make the judgement call based on anxiety episodes and shit like that to make an appointment with her therapist. She decided that she didn’t need to continue and that she was wasting money by going when she figured that she was okay. Since then, I’ve had to take her three times, and she still refuses to continue with therapy regularly. If you think she’s struggling, even slightly, make the appointment.” He paused, tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Four, treat her like a princess. I know I don’t need to tell you this, but I’m reiterating it all the same. That woman has been treated like shit all her life by her family, apart from Madix. She will never ever have another moment like that. This doesn’t just apply to you, it applies to everyone. Make sure they treat her like one, and if they don’t, then kick their asses.”
“How many rules do you have?” I was genuinely curious about this. These all seemed like unnecessary reminders to me, apart from the therapist one.
“Five,” he bit out, glaring at me and ignoring the question. “At no point is she to be left alone. Keep checking to make sure the rest of the guys are doing their rounds and keep in contact with Coleman,” he said, mentioning the head of security for our cousins.
They’d had numerous issues that had almost resulted in death, and Coleman was one of the best. He knew his shit. I’d been in regular contact with him about my cousins’ situations as well as Luna’s since she came back. In fact, before she had, I’d asked Coleman to see if he could find her. He’d been running searches and trying to track down her father when she’d turned up again. It might have seemed like an easy task to find her father at least, but the bastard was lying low from all the people he owed money to, so he paid for things in cash and had never used his real name.
“Six, please don’t break her heart,” this one was said so softly that I almost didn’t hear it. “Please! She…she just…she doesn’t deserve that,” he struggled to say as he clenched his fists repeatedly.
I got that he loved her and that it was only platonically, but I was done.
“I wouldn’t ever do that,” I replied firmly. “Like I’ve said, years ago I couldn’t even think down that route because she was way too young. When there’s the age difference we have, even thinking or planning anything in that way makes you feel dirty, so I never did. I knew she was beautiful, I knew she was very special, and I loved her in my own way, but I wouldn’t have ever touched her or done anything about it, because - until she reached eighteen it was just wrong. I’m older than y’all, what if people had found out? I’d have been looked at like a dirty pervert by anyone who wasn’t family.” Levi nodded, realizing that this was true. “I’d also have felt like a dirty pervert for even considering anything like that with her.”
And this was true, she’d been a member of the family I loved and my little brother’s best friend and that was all I was willing to feel toward her.
“Then that asshole took her, and I worried about her constantly. I also kicked myself for not making a move or for never insisting she live with us so that I could keep her safe. I have a lot of anger toward myself because of that. But, she’s here, she’s safe, she’s staying safe, and she will never live that life again. I will treat her like a princess, I’ll show her how priceless she is, I’ll do anything and everything to make her smile every day…”
“Including growing a vagina from the sounds of things,” Levi snorted, looking way too smug about all of this suddenly. “I never had you pegged as a pussy or a chick flick cliché.”
“Fuck you,” I snapped.
“Well,” he clapped his hands together and then stood up. “I’ve got to go and pack,” he chuckled as he made his way to the door. Just as he opened it, he turned his head around and added, “And you have to go and break the news to her about her new living arrangements.”
It took a second for his words to sink in, but when they did, I panicked.
“Wait, what do you mean? She already knows!”
“No, she probably thinks I’ve talked you out of it.”
“You’re telling her!” Yeah, I was panicking. The way he was smiling made me think this could really go horribly wrong.
He didn’t answer my last demand. He didn’t actually need to. His laughter said i
t all.
Luna
“…Taint!” Levi’s brother Tate said, looking pissed.
I couldn’t help it, I laughed hard as I was swallowing a mouthful of apple juice, resulting in some of it shooting up into my brain and feeling like it was flooding my ear canals.
He’d been telling me about his cousin Tom’s problems. They lived just under two hours away from Gonzales County and apparently Tom had recently had issues that had resulted in his now wife being kidnapped. It was part of an ongoing bunch of crap from the sounds of it.
Bombs, bullets, weird letters, a perverted sounding guy who was obsessed with that branch of Townsends… It sounded like the plot of a movie.
When Tate had gone with the family’s friend, Tony, to rescue Tom’s girlfriend, Sonya, Tate had a face full of camouflage and Sonya had thought he’d said his name was Taint.
He obviously still hated this name.
I was obviously going to call him it from now on.
“And she kept making Twilight references as well,” he sounded completely disgusted by this.
“Why?” I had to ask, I really did.
“Tony only had shiny eye make-up on hand apparently. So, when we did the camouflage on our faces, it might have…” he looked off to the side and winced, “sparkled slightly.”
Thankfully, this time when I laughed, I wasn’t drinking. It still felt like I had some juice sloshing around inside my head, but I didn’t care as I held my stomach and bent over wheezing.
“And don’t get me started on her driving. She made you look like a driving genius instead of an incompetent boob with no hand-eye coordination.”
“Hey!” I might have been able to argue in my defense, if I hadn’t at that exact moment knocked my apple juice off the table when I went to pick it up and then whacked my hand off the table when I went to catch it. Again, something that many people have done, except in my case the apple juice had fallen to my left, and I’d hit my left hand on the right side of the table– even crossing my arms to do this for some stupid reason. How I managed to hit the opposite side of the table, we’ll never know. I had a knack for doing the impossible.
“I rest my case!” the smug bastard smirked, crossing his arms. “And this is why we can’t have nice things.”
“Taint,” I snapped, heading to get some kitchen towel to clean the mess up with. Thankfully, it was a plastic cup, so I wasn’t left cleaning up shards of glass too.
He took a step toward me with his eyes narrowed but was interrupted by the door opening and almost hitting me in the head from where I was crouched on the floor.
“What the hell?” Noah asked, taking in his brother’s body language, and me crouched on the floor in front of a puddle of yellow liquid.
Shrugging, I beat Tate to it. “He had an accident and when I told him he should just tell y’all about his incontinence, he got upset.”
“I will…” Tate hissed, cut off once again by his brother.
“Clean your own piss up,” Noah snapped at him. “Baby, can I have a quick word?” The way he spoke to me was so soft and sweet that I almost fell over onto my ass in the puddle of apple pee.
Not saying a word, I got up and followed him out the door.
“Baby,” Tate mimicked in a high-pitched child-like voice.
“Taint!” I shouted in the hallway, running to get to Noah’s office before he did.
“I’ll kick your ass,” he roared, running out in the hallway and spinning toward where I was now peeking around the door.
“Taint peed on the floor in the kitchen!” I yelled, slamming the door shut and locking it.
It took a couple of seconds to realize that I’d locked Noah out in the hallway with his rabid incontinent brother, but by that point, I could hear his muffled shouting and the stomp of his boots getting closer and decided that it was every man/woman for themselves.
Noah was saying something to him but all I could make out was something about his asshole.
Unlocking the door as quietly as I could, I opened it slightly so I could hear them better, just in time to hear the squeaky sound of someone slipping in water followed by the thud of a body hitting the ground.
“Oh, fuck me! Is this piss?” I heard Archer groan from the kitchen.
“Yeah, Tate did it!” I yelled and then slammed and locked the door again.
I’d missed this family. For years I hadn’t smiled or laughed, and I’d woken up every morning dreading the day ahead, praying that tomorrow was the day that karma would catch up with my dad.
I still wished that would happen, but I no longer dreaded any part of my life - just the dark at night.
Now, I prayed that the way I was feeling would last for the rest of my life.
I also prayed that my father would disappear and never come back.
I was a realist though. The man never gave up and for a disgusting reason, I was useful to him. I wasn’t deluding myself like I had as a kid that I was of emotional value, nothing ever was to him.
I was distracted from my now anxiety-inducing thoughts by Archer yelling at Tate and him screaming, ‘Apple juice!’
“Oh, Tate,” came his mom Erica’s voice. “You used to say that when you were little and had wet the bed too.”
“It is!” he insisted. “And it’s Luna’s.”
“Now, that’s shameful, son,” his dad scolded. “Blaming it on poor Luna.”
“Yeah,” I yelled through the shut door. “Shameful, you big bed wetter!”
There was a thud on the door followed by a squeak. That wasn’t what made me almost actually piss my drawers though.
Oh no, that was thanks to the deep voice that rumbled in my ear at that exact moment.
“Don’t wind him up, baby,” it said. “I don’t want to kick his ass today. Maybe tomorrow, but not today.”
Screaming louder than I’d ever screamed in my life, I jumped and somehow spun around at the same time.
Proving that my coordination was truly shit, I tried to hit with my right hand, but because I was mid-spin, I didn’t calculate it properly. Missing by an embarrassing amount, I tried to kick to fend off my attacker, but only hit the table that was next to where I was standing.
“Mother humper,” I wailed, feeling my foot break into a trillion pieces.
The fact that I had a ghost assassin was now of no interest– the pieces of bone ricocheting up into my ovaries was.
Growling, the spirit assassin picked me up and gently put me on the couch in the corner of the room. I hadn’t opened my eyes the whole time, too busy doing my best not to scream until my head exploded, but at that I opened them thinking what a nice thing it was for a ghost attacker to do.
I blame the lack of brains on my foot, or maybe the water, or maybe the stress of the last…well, my entire life really.
I probably should have tried to run to safety in case it was my dad or one of his cronies.
I probably also should have recognized Noah’s voice.
However, when I opened my eyes and saw him crouched down beside me looking concerned, all I could say was, “Which way did the poltergeist guerrilla go?”
6 Luna
“I’ll stay with Ariana,” I repeated, looking at the woman in question pleadingly.
“Not happening,” Noah said for the hundredth time, walking over with an ice pack in his hand.
He’d broken the news about my new living arrangements while we were waiting for the results of my latest x-ray. I’d heard it being said before, but Levi was meant to have a bitch’s back so I’d thought he would smother it and I’d stay somewhere else. Anywhere else!
Thankfully, my foot wasn’t bad, just a teeny fracture and a lot of bruising. I now had the world’s most stupid looking boot on my foot and I desperately needed to cut my toenails because upon impact, two had broken off at angles and were like sharp weapons.
Levi, the betraying bitch, had made sure I was okay and then growled something about ‘the rules’ at Noah before leaving.
&nb
sp; “We’ve already moved your stuff over here,” Noah’s mom Erica said as she placed my gimpy booted foot on a cushion. “Plus, Ariana isn’t the best when it comes to people being in pain or needing help getting dressed,” she explained, probably trying to make me feel better. When she saw my look of horror at the thought of Noah having to help me get dressed, she quickly pressed on. “So, who’s hungry? Tacos? Fajitas?” We all obviously answered with tacos, and then she truly distracted me. “I’ll make you a Funfetti cake too, honey. I’ve put a couple of boxes of it in the cupboard because I knew it was your favorite. And when you’re in pain, you need comfort food, right?” I couldn’t believe she remembered. “I’ve got plain, pink, blue and green icing with the Funfetti sprinkles to go on top. Which would you like?” When I didn’t answer, she looked around the group of people in the room and made the choice for me. “Pink,” she nodded, and then walked toward the kitchen, tugging Tate and Archer with her to help out. She wouldn’t have tugged Ariana, she burned everything.
I stayed silent while I fought the urge to cry. It was something so silly– a box of cake mix with sprinkles perfectly dispersed throughout, but they held such happy memories for me. When I first met Levi, she’d been making a Funfetti cake. I’d never had it before, but once I’d had my first mouthful, she’d seen how much I enjoyed it and had made them for me for every birthday and special occasion afterward.
Over the last couple of years, I’d regularly thought about the cakes and teared up when I saw the boxes on the shelves on the rare occasions that my dad took me into a store with him. There was no point in a cake for any occasion though, seeing as how he didn’t even know when my birthday was.
And pink frosting on top of that rainbow dotted cake? I was totally kicking more tables.
“Don’t you dare,” Noah whispered in my ear.
How he knew what I was thinking, I didn’t know. He’d once told me never to play poker, but that was because I was kick ass at it and always beat everyone. Of course, he didn’t want to lose!
And he couldn’t stop me from kicking tables for cake. No, not just cake, the cake – a cake with rainbow sprinkles throughout it.
Until Fools Find Gold: A Providence Gold Series and Until Series Crossover Page 5