I kept having a recurring dream that left me waking up in tears, sweat pooled around my neck as I cried out in horror.
It began with Cooper setting off a bomb and throwing it directly into my arms. I hugged the explosive tightly to my body, trying to absorb the impact of the blow while everyone I loved circled around me. I cried and screamed for them to run, to get as far away from me as possible before they got hurt, but no one would listen. They all stood there, reaching out to save me.
Eventually, the force was too strong, and my shield began to crumble, sending pieces of the bomb off toward the people surrounding me. I watched in slow motion as each and every person I cared about was hit, screaming and begging them to run before they were injured beyond repair. But my voice held no sound, and none of them noticed me waving them through the chaos.
Some people, like Cara, had the sense to run away to safety. My parents and Liam lingered, insisting on saving me. I was forced to watch as shrapnel continued to hit them. One by one, they would each get knocked down just to get back on their feet and run toward me again until eventually, they stopped getting up. Liam was always the last one standing when I woke up in tears.
●
The pounding on my door practically startled me out of my skin, growing more intense the longer I kept my guest waiting. Daisy barked manically at the intruder while I hesitantly got up from my cocoon on the couch, trying to make it to the door before the person on the other side broke it down. I was wallowing in my feelings, holed up in my apartment while I processed my last interaction with Liam and everything he’d said.
It felt like I’d been punched in the chest when I got home and thought about his promise to stay away when this all blew over. I knew he’d keep it, and that alone had me gasping for air. I wanted him to leave and come closer all at once. As per usual, my feelings regarding him were all over the place and I needed time alone to work through them, so I was extra pissed at whoever was trying to break through my door and interrupt my pity party.
“Mom?” I asked, taking in her disheveled appearance as fear creeped in. “What’s going on?” I heard my voice question, panic lacing every word. “Is Dad okay?”
She pushed past me and walked into my kitchen, grabbing herself a glass and running it under the faucet.
“You don’t answer your phone to me anymore, and I couldn’t wait out your little games at the shop,” she rambled, taking a long gulp of water before slamming the glass back down on the counter.
I noticed her hands were shaking as she reached into her purse and pulled out a manila folder. My brows scrunched together as I squinted my eyes to read what was written on it, but I didn’t have my glasses on and couldn’t make anything out through the large blur of blue.
“What is that?” I finally asked, walking to the couch and inviting her to join me.
I couldn’t find it in myself to be angry with her for flying through my apartment like a tornado. Not when her face looked like that. I wondered again if something had happened to my dad, or maybe one of her brothers? Get it out already! My mind screamed at her as my stomach tightened.
She finally came around the kitchen and sat in the chair across from my couch, looking down at the floor as she reminisced, stalling. “When you were scared or hurt as a little girl, you would always ask for your father. It drove me nuts. I remember lying in bed with him, crying night after night, wondering why my presence never comforted you when you needed it. I blamed him for encouraging you, always running to your rescue whenever you called. Even if he was at work, he would come right home to comfort you. Oh, it made me so furious.”
A sad smile appeared on her lips. She was right, I never wanted anything to do with her when I was younger. Guilt panged in my gut at the memory. She shook her head as she continued.
“Do you remember when you broke your wrist after falling off your bike and I had to rush you to the hospital? Sal was working twelve hours a day, seven days a week to get the overtime money so we could go on our cruise that summer. As soon as I found out you were going to be okay, I called him and told him to stay at work, and that I had it handled.
“An hour later, he showed up in the emergency room, just as we were packing up to leave. I scolded him for coming there when I had already assured him I had it handled. I was so insulted, thinking he didn’t even have faith in my ability as a mother. It turned out, when I was signing the discharge paperwork, you had stolen my phone to call him, insisting he come there to take you home.
“That night in bed, I told Sal I had given up, that if you didn’t need me the way every other little girl needed her mother, I must be doing something wrong. He spent the rest of the night trying to console me, assuring me I was a perfect mother… that man always knew how to talk me down from the highest ledges.” Tears streamed down her face as she relived the memory, her love for my father shining bright on her face.
I hoped one day I could share the same thing they had, quickly realizing I might have been close to it with Liam. My heart bottomed out in my stomach at the thought just as my mom continued.
“He helped me realize that, while it hurt that you didn’t see me as a comfort to you, at least you found someone to rescue you in your darkest days. When that sank in, my love and gratitude for Sal doubled. I was so grateful toward him for being the perfect father figure to my most prized possession. I hoped it would stay that way forever, or at least until you found the love of your life and he could take on the role I never had.”
I felt tears burn at the back of my eyes again as I watched my mom’s face crumple in front of me. I wanted to cry, to show her that her words were affecting me and to prove to myself I wasn’t as much of a shell as I thought, but they wouldn’t come. Just like when Cooper first attacked me, I waited for tears that wouldn’t ever fall.
After a few beats of silence, my mom shook her head again, disappointed in my lack of response, and opened the manila folder sitting on her lap. With her brows pulled down and lips puckered disapprovingly, she held up the top sheet of paper and all the air left my lungs.
Even without my glasses on, I could see the police station seal at the top of the copied paper. My frantic eyes slid to hers, only to be met with the worst disappointment I’d ever seen. She finally broke the silence between us.
“After you left my house, I had no idea what to do, Luna. It hurt to see you so angry at us for just wanting to help. I was fresh out of ideas when Sheri suggested I check into the police station and see if they could give me a copy of the statement from the night of the robbery again,” she explained through tightened lips, a face of stone and no sign of remorse while she shoved my nose into my own deceit.
Sheri was one of her friends who had nothing better to do with her life than judge other people. I never liked that woman.
“It was harder than I thought it would be, as this is apparently an open case and only one detective would allow anyone to see the evidence. After about a week of trying, Detective Wilson finally met with me, explaining that he was so grateful to my daughter for making the decision to step forward on his case and testify. He told me he thought it was such a great thing that you were doing, getting your story out there for others to hear, and even complimented me on raising such a strong woman. I told him I needed the paperwork for the bakery’s insurance records and he handed it all over happily.”
Within seconds, my emotions were out of control. I felt like I was being attacked from all sides again. The familiar burn of anger rose in my chest as I stared at her, pure shock at her backhanded meddling radiating off my skin like heat waves coming straight off the sun.
“Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?” I spoke slowly through my teeth, afraid that if I moved even the slightest bit, I would do something to hurt one of us.
I was so sick and tired of this game, done with being unexpectedly attacked and constantly violated. Was I not allowed an ounce of privacy in my life? Didn’t I deserve to process this as my own reality before having the truth plastered on my forehead for all to see? Since the moment Cooper entered my body and ripped my life apart, I’d lost every shred of my basic rights as a human, and the people who claim to love me have done nothing but shove my face in it.
My mother’s traitorous voice broke me from my thoughts, anger tightening its deathly grip on my chest at the sound of it. “How can you expect me to just leave you alone when it was so obvious something was wrong? I’m so grateful that I didn’t, Luna. I wish I had pushed this months ago. You were raped! Do you know how it feels to find out from someone else that my own daughter was raped nearly a year ago? To have some stranger tell me how proud he was of you for opening yourself up to him and everyone else, when you weren’t even speaking to me? How could you do this to us?”
Her voice echoed through my body, igniting a fire in my mind as she slammed the folder down on my coffee table, freeing her hands to wave around dramatically.
“I didn’t tell you because I knew you would do this! What makes you think you can take my experience and turn it into some twisted story where you’re the victim? Do you think that’s fair to me?” I yelled back, feeling wild as I drowned in the thick emotion that was closing in over all my senses.
Fury was a demon that took all control over what was coming out of my mouth. I was simply a puppet to the intensity that flooded my chest, swishing around, one emotion replacing the other before I could even identify them.
Anger.
Fear.
Betrayal.
Sadness.
Hurt.
Longing.
But they were all stronger than I’d ever felt before, too powerful to control. By the time I had identified one, it had already swum past me, inviting a new one in. I was losing it.
My mom barely noticed the storm going on within my psyche, continuing with her fight and fueling my fire. “You’re my daughter! You should feel comfortable coming to me or your father about these things. Why did you keep it all locked away, Luna?”
As if demanding that I should feel comfortable and guilting me about it would change the reality of our situation. As if insisting that I trust her would magically make it happen.
I finally stood, feeling like I was unable to keep the storm contained within my body if I sat a moment longer.
“I was trying to protect you guys! I knew you wouldn’t be able to handle the guilt if you found out. I knew Dad wouldn’t be able to look at me the same ever again, knowing that his only daughter was tainted and destroyed. I knew Cara would turn it into some selfish pity party. All the while, I would still be suffering. Something in me changed that night and I couldn’t bear the thought of you guys realizing I was gone.”
“That’s not true! We would have helped you find your way back to us,” she defended, standing up across from me.
I shook my head incredulously at her. She had no idea. “There was no getting back. The old me is gone, Mom. She’s never coming back. I’m sorry, but you’re stuck with this girl now, regardless of how much you hate her. I knew it would never measure up to what you wanted, so I pretended it wasn’t true. I was protecting you from the ugly person I became.”
Her hands flew up to her face as she sobbed into them. A new emotion was found swimming in my chest, squeezing my heart and prickling the back of my eyes with tears: guilt.
I hated myself for doing this to her, despised Cooper for putting me in this position. Seeing her stand there while she processed the loss of her child was what fueled my lies toward her and everyone else I loved in the first place. I felt like I could never measure up to the person I was before, and the thought alone broke my heart.
“How could you get yourself into this mess?” She sobbed, waking up a new beast inside of me.
Now she is blaming me?
I knew I had to end this before I did something I’d regret. With a stiff finger and all the patience I could muster, I looked her in the face and stood my ground. “You know what? I think it’s time that you leave. You’ve made your point, Mom, you’re the poor victim and I’m the villain who’s kept all my secrets from you.”
My mom was taken aback, and I watched her for a moment while she considered whether she should insist on staying and continuing the fight or leave me alone. Lucky for her, she settled on leaving and walked to the chair she sat on earlier to grab her purse, crocodile tears long forgotten. She knew better than to challenge me when I was like this.
I stopped her before she reached to pick up the manila folder. “Leave that here,” I demanded, glaring from where I stood across the room.
She took it all in stride, playing it off like it was no big deal to leave the evidence of her betrayal and the details of my attack behind, but I knew it killed her.
“Fine, I can always get more copies,” she stubbornly replied, pushing her purse further up on her shoulder before throwing one more threat toward me. “Just wait until your father hears about this, Luna Marie. He will not be as easy on you as I have been.”
With that she slammed the door, ending the conversation before I had a chance to respond. We’ll see about that.
It was like my life after Cooper was a dark, twisting tunnel. Then Liam entered, and I started to see a small speckle of light at the end. As time went on, I’d become addicted to the light, desperately trying to grasp it and hold on as tight as I could until I was finally out of the dark. The problem now was that I’d snuffed out the light, and I was left with only darkness.