“You really don’t have to do this.”

Rip didn’t even huff or roll his eyes as I said the same words I’d already told him five different times since he’d pulled up to my house and dropped the bomb on me.

Luna, I’m taking you to Dallas. Get your shit.

Of course I’d reacted the way any sane person would. I had sat there and stared blankly for about a minute until he’d raised his eyebrows at me and said, Night’s not getting any younger, baby girl. Let’s go.

And that, that had snapped me out of it.

Which then started us into a five-minute back and forth discussion about why he didn’t have to take me and why he was going to. I mean he could barely get through a conversation with me without huffing and shaking his head. I hadn’t even known he’d had a dimple until tonight. Yet he wanted to drive me to Dallas?

I wasn’t the kind of person to tell someone not to help me, but it just didn’t make sense.

And yet, I still found myself in his truck twenty minutes later with a bag filled with a change of clothes, my toothbrush, contact case, and solution.

I sighed and leaned my shoulder against the window. “Rip….”

“Luna.”

I pressed my lips together, watching his profile in the dark cab. “Turn around and take me back. I shouldn’t have even gotten into the car in the first place. You don’t need to do this. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“I don’t.”

I blew out a breath that had him swinging his eyes to me.

“I don’t,” he repeated himself, those long fingers flexing on the steering wheel.

I sighed again. “It was just one little lie, Ripley.”

“You lied to the fucking cops for me, Luna. That’s a felony if you didn’t know. There’s nothing little about that.”

I guess there was no arguing that. I put my hand over my face and took a breath, sliding my gaze over to him, trying to be sneaky about it so he couldn’t see me doing it. Who was this man? Not that I was complaining that he was actually talking to me and asking me things and trying to be nice, but….

“Why are you being such a pain in the ass about me going with you?” he asked all of a sudden, forcing my thoughts back.

I stopped trying to be sneaky with my glances and just stared. “I’m not being a pain in the ass. You are.” I flexed my fingers, remembering this was my boss. “I say that with all the respect of you being an owner of Cooper’s and me being your employee, by the way. Please don’t fire me.”

He shook his head, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he wasn’t going to fire me or if I was just getting on his nerves.

Knowing Rip, it could be either.

“Look, I do appreciate you coming with me. I really do, Rip. I like your company. You know that.” I didn’t miss the way he turned to glance at me, just for a second, just for one single split second, but I didn’t miss it. The thing was I didn’t know what to think about the wary expression on his features when he did it. “But I told you, you don’t owe me. Honestly, I would have probably called my best friend to go with me if you hadn’t… volunteered.” I wasn’t sure I would call him telling me to get my shit as him volunteering, but close enough. “I really do appreciate you coming with me, but I don’t want to be an inconvenience.”

Those long fingers flexed again, but his attention stayed forward then. “You’re not.”

“You’re screwing up at least some part of your weekend off driving me to Dallas.”

“I’m not screwing up shit, Luna.” He flicked his gaze toward me and shook his head again. “Who told you that you’re an inconvenience?”

I didn’t mean for my body to get tight, but it did. “No one,” I tried to tell him as brightly as possible.

The look he gave me said he thought I was full of it.

He would have been right, because I was, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I didn’t like that he got that idea, especially so quickly.

“I don’t like to bother people, that’s all. I don’t like asking anyone for a favor, and if I can….”

Dear God.

I realized what the hell I had just said.

I didn’t like asking anyone for a favor. It was the truth. I would rather go without than ask anyone for anything.

And for three years, I’d been holding this favor that Rip felt he owed me, over his head.

No wonder he wanted to get it over with. It made total sense.

Hell.

“I’m sorry you feel like you owe me, and I get why you want to get this favor over with,” I muttered, feeling my face heat up as I accepted what I had done and why it was stupid of me to keep arguing with him over a favor that he was never, ever going to forget about. No matter how much I might try and talk him out of it, he’d gotten it into his thick head and nothing was changing.

“You’re not asking. I offered,” he suggested like I would really look at it like that.

I shifted my gaze out the window and nodded. “You’re right.”

There was a sigh, then, “You’re not gonna give me a hard time anymore?”

“Nope.”

His “huh” had me side-eyeing him.

“I appreciate your commitment and how… patient you’ve been with me over this,” I told him, a little more grudgingly than I needed to.

Rip hummed.

“I’m not sure how long this is going to take. If you want to drop me off and then—”

“What is with you always trying to get me to drop you off?” he snapped all of a sudden.

I made my eyes go wide at his freaking attitude. “Because, I told you, I don’t want to bother you. I don’t like to bother anyone. Don’t take it personal, okay?”

I wasn’t 100 percent sure, but I was pretty freaking positive he frowned at me.

Rubbing my hands against my pants, I decided to mess with him some more by muttering, “At the rate you’ve been going lately, I’m going to start to think that I don’t get on your nerves as much as you make me think I do, boss.”

The laugh that burst out of him literally had me clutching the door I was leaning against. It was so sharp, so out of the blue, like a freaking firework going off right inside the cab.

I jumped. Then I grinned.

And I kept it going, because why not? I’d made him laugh. Rip. Laugh. “Next thing I know, we’re going to be friends,” I kept muttering, barely able to keep from laughing.

His reply was a shake of that handsome head and a chuckle that continued on.

“But really, thank you for coming with me. And taking me home. And for having enough pride and honor to keep your word when you insist on doing me a favor that I really don’t think you owe me,” I told him, smiling even though he couldn’t see it.

The deep inhale of breath he took was loud and clear. That time for sure, I knew without a doubt he did look at me. “I don’t have that much honor, Luna. Don’t give me that much credit.”

I watched him, seeing he meant it. “Well, I think you do. Most people would have just given up and pretended like they forgot if someone told them a thousand times that they didn’t need anything.”

His “hmm” didn’t sound that convinced, but I knew I was right. There was no point in me forcing it down though.

Bringing out my phone, I pulled up my messages with Lenny and sent her one.

I couldn’t even say I was really that heartbroken about missing my first date in… six months? Maybe even a little longer? I doubted I’d be that disappointed if he couldn’t change the date either.

Lenny texted me back not two minutes later as Rip fiddled with the radio.

I knew there was no way I would stay until Sunday with her. I was definitely going home at some point tomorrow. Unless she insisted, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath. She was busy. At least that’s what she always said. It would take all of my fingers and Ripley’s to count the number of times I had asked her over the years if she wanted me to visit with the answer always being the same: it wasn’t a good time for her.

Dang it. That’s what happened when someone knew you too well.

At least that was done with.

Music played softly in the background the entire drive to my sister’s, now that Rip and I were done arguing at least. I dozed off a couple of times, but he didn’t complain or give me a hard time. I’d left my phone between us with the navigation going. When I checked the arrival time and saw that we were only five minutes away, I sat up straight and started paying attention.

I hadn’t realized that my sister had moved.

When I had first trailed her up to Dallas three years ago, I had just followed her.

The place I had been to was a decent apartment complex that hadn’t looked too sketchy. It hadn’t been anything fancy by any means, but it had been all right. It had basically been the same kind of place that we had lived in after moving out of Mr. Cooper’s.

But this place, this place was nice.

Too nice.

Way too nice if the Mercedes and Audis and BMWs that were on the other side of the gate meant anything.

I gave Rip the code for the gate—Thea had texted it to me along with her address— and I couldn’t help but feel really weird about everything that I saw. Every single car was a late-model luxury car, with a handful of Hondas and Kias thrown in. Now that I thought about it, Thea hadn’t driven herself to Houston in forever. She usually met up with Kyra in Austin and rode with her.

Why wouldn’t she have told me that she moved?

“I thought you said your sister was in college,” Rip said as he slowly drove past one building and toward the other, following the complex’s signs.

I spotted a Range Rover just as I told him, my own voice sounding off and weird, “She is.”

“This is the nicest complex I’ve ever been in.”

“Me too,” I muttered, feeling really uneasy and maybe even a little hurt that she wouldn’t have told me. Did she think I’d be jealous or something?

But really, how the hell did she afford something like this? She had a job at the university. She took summer classes. She had an internship and loans.

I paid for her meal plan at school.

There had to be a reason she hadn’t told me she was living somewhere else.

Maybe she had gotten a new roommate who was rolling in it?

That would make sense. I was still living in my house that I was fixing up, and she didn’t want me to know that she probably had a walk-in shower and granite countertops while I was still saving for mine. Thea had never been the kind of person to be that humble but….

“What number is it again?”

I told him the apartment number she’d given me.

Right by it, Rip turned the truck into one of the spots that said they were reserved for guests. Based on the apartment number, the place was on the third floor. We got out, and he let me lead the way as I looked for the stairs or an elevator. I found the stairway first and headed up, with him following behind. On the third floor, it didn’t take long to find the number I was looking for.

I rang the doorbell and took a step back, bumping into Rip’s side. Peering up, I found him looking down at me, and I smiled at him. “Thank you again for coming with me.”

He watched me with those blue-green eyes. His voice was low, “Sure.”

“Let me see what she wants to do, and I’ll see if I can get a hotel room or something for you to stay at.” My eyes slid toward the door that still hadn’t opened and something that was pretty close to unease slid over me. “I had planned on just staying here, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”

Why hadn’t she told me?

I punched my finger to ring the doorbell again, then knocked on it too. It wasn’t even one in the morning yet. I knew she wouldn’t be asleep.

The door still didn’t open.

“Call her,” Rip said.

I pressed the buzzer again.

Still nothing.

Pulling out my phone, I dialed her number from memory and heard it ring inside. Abruptly, the chiming stopped like she had hit ignore or silenced it.

Was this really happening?

I glanced up at Rip and found him still looking down at me, this strange expression on his face.

Frustration and hurt built up in my chest instantly, and the next thing I knew, I raised my fist and banged the outer part of it against her door as hard as I could. Then I did it again, yelling “Thea!” into the door.

That did the trick.

Two seconds later, what sounded like a deadbolt turned and the next thing I knew, the door was swinging open to show my sister standing there. In a robe, with her blonde hair down and her eyes big and puffy and rimmed in red, she looked like a mess. Not that I was one to talk, but she genuinely looked like a mess, and she never did.

“Luna,” she muttered, genuinely sounding surprised.

“Hi,” I told her, trying not to sound awkward.

My twenty-one-year-old sister wiped at her face with the back of her hands, and I watched as she glanced at Rip behind me and let her eyes linger for a moment, this weird, weird expression coming over her before she took me in again. “I wasn’t sure you were coming,” she tried to claim in her equally weird voice.

I blinked. “You asked me to. I texted you twice while we were on the way.” I tried to give her another smile, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded. Had she really been about to ignore my call?

“Yeah, I know, I just—” She shook her head and took a step back, sniffling as she did. “Come in.”

I took a few steps inside, Rip directly behind me. She barely closed the door when I looked over at her and gestured at Rip. “Thea, this is Ripley. Rip, this is my sister Thea.”

It was my sister who put her hand out first, Rip shaking it firmly but quickly before stepping back beside me. Her eyes slid to mine, and I didn’t like the sigh she let out. “The cops came and left about an hour ago.”

I nodded. “What’d they say?”

“Come on, come into the living room,” she said, her gaze sliding back to Rip for a second before leading us down a short hallway that opened into an airy living room and kitchen. Three pieces of velvet navy blue couches decorated the room with a nice glass table in the middle. There were lamps and pretty knickknacks decorating side tables, a huge TV mounted to the wall with floating shelves holding what looked like a DVD player and some kind of sound system.

It was nice, really nice.

And nothing looked… out of place. Or missing. It was all immaculately clean, like I knew Thea liked her things.

“Want something to drink?” she asked, clasping her hands in front of herself. Almost wringing them.

My throat suddenly felt dry. “I’d like some water.”

“I’m good,” Rip replied, his voice not like him, but I didn’t overthink it.

Thea nodded and headed into the kitchen, pulling out a bottle of water from the fridge. I noticed it wasn’t a no-name brand either. When I had left Thea in Dallas three years ago, everything in her pantry had been generic brand. Hell, most things in my pantry were the generic brand unless Lily insisted. Even when I bought organic stuff, if there was the generic label, that’s what I would get.

My sister handed me the bottle of water and just stood there.

I took it from her, unscrewing the lid and sucking down half before putting it back on. Glancing at the man to my side, I held the bottle out to him, just in case he really was thirsty. He was. He took it from me without hesitation and chugged the rest.

In any other circumstance, I would tell him that friends shared bottles of water, but… well, that wasn’t the time, and I wasn’t in the mood when my sister was being so strange.

“The cops came by and asked what was taken, made a list, and then they left,” Thea said, biting her lip every few words. “They didn’t take fingerprints or anything. They said they would talk to the property manager to look at the cameras, but I don’t know if they did.”

Exhaustion hit me right in the shoulders as I stood there, and I couldn’t help but glance around the rest of the apartment. There was a doorway right across that seemed to lead into some sort of hallway, and closer to where we were standing, there was a cracked door that showed like it had a half-bath, and another few doors that might have led to a pantry, maybe another bedroom, and I wasn’t sure what else.

But nothing seemed out of place.

The place was clean.

Too clean?

“What did they take?” I found myself asking my little sister.

Her hand went up to her face to wipe at her eyes again. “My laptop. Some clothes. Some jewelry.”

What jewelry did my sister have that was worth stealing?

“They went through my room and all my drawers and opened up everything in the kitchen, but I already set everything back where it was supposed to be,” she explained, shakily.

Oh. “Thea, I’m so sorry.” If she had been Lily, I would have hugged her, but it was my heart that wouldn’t let me raise my arms, and my brain that wouldn’t let me embarrass myself if she didn’t accept my comfort. Again. “What do you need help with?”

My little sister bit her lip again, shaking out her hands, and swallowing so hard I was sure her throat had to hurt. “I’m sorry, Luna. I don’t really need anything. I don’t even… I shouldn’t have even called you.” She swallowed again, and I couldn’t help feeling my eyes narrow. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come. I was just freaked out, and you were the first person I thought of to call. I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to apologize for asking me to come,” I told my sister. “I’d come if you just asked me to for the hell of it, Thea. You know that.” But….

Her hands flexed at her sides and she nodded, giving me a watery look. “I know, Luna, but I shouldn’t have asked you to. I just freaked out.”

None of this felt right. None of it. “It’s fine. You’re all right though, yeah?”

My younger sister nodded.

“Do you have rental insurance?”

She lifted a shoulder.

I pressed my lips together and ignored the growing ache in my chest. “What about your roommate? Did they take anything from her?”

Her “no” was the sharpest one she’d ever given me.

I held my breath. “Where is she?”

She did it. She scratched at her cheek. If I hadn’t known her as well as I had once upon a time, I wouldn’t have known that was her tell when she was full of BS. But she sounded pretty freaking convincing as she said, “She’s out. She’ll be back in a little while. She had to work tonight.”

Work? At midnight? With a place like this, she wasn’t exactly a waitress.

Thea lifted her hands and scrubbed at her eyes, putting me more on edge. “I’m sorry for making you drive all the way over here for nothing.”

It wasn’t that easy not to flinch.

“I’m fine. I know… I know it’s just stuff they took. I’ll find out if we have insurance that’ll cover it. The only thing I’m worried about is my laptop.”

Her laptop. For school. I tried to push down my disappointment in her lying—because I’d seen that scratch—and her regretting making me drive so far to come over… and told myself that I loved this person. I wanted the best for her even though she was making my chest hurt and it wasn’t the first time she had done so.

“How much is a laptop?” I managed to ask, clinging onto that thread of love like it was going to save me from falling off a cliff.

“You don’t have to do that, Luna. It’s fine. I can figure it out,” she said.

“But you need it for school. I can send you some money over—”

Thea shook her head sharply. “No, it’s fine, Luna. I’ve got it.”

She had it? How?

“I promise,” she insisted, just making me even warier. And hurt.

Okay. I forced my hands loose, forced myself to stay calm. To stay focused on that love inside of me. “What can I do then? What do you need?”

“I don’t need anything,” she said, but it felt more like a slice to my Achilles.

Beside me, Rip shifted and his voice was low as something touched my lower back briefly, so lightly I almost didn’t feel it. “I’ll wait in the car.”

I ignored the sandpaper-quality filling my throat, focusing on the woman in front of me. Because she was a woman. And for some reason I didn’t, and more than likely wouldn’t, understand, I told him, “You don’t have to. You can stay if you want.”

“Luna.” Thea’s voice went a little too soft. “I promise I’m fine. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

She might be a liar, she might be hiding things from me for some reason, but I loved her. I did. “I’d do anything for you. You know that.”

“I know, but I really am sorry.” Her eyes slid to the side, the way they had plenty of times while she’d been younger. “My roommate will be here in a little bit, and I need to talk to her.” She rubbed at her eyes again, still averting them. “I have to be at work at eight tomorrow, and I’ll be there all day.”

“Okay.” I knew what she was trying to say. I knew it.

“We agreed not to let people stay over…,” she kept going.

There it was.

“I’m so glad you came. Only you would. You’re the best half-sister I could ever ask for.”

It was the half-sister that finally, finally made me flinch.

She had only called me that every once in a while, and only over the last five years. Before I had always been her sister. Her big sister. And now, now I was her half-sister.

“I wish I didn’t have to work tomorrow, but I need the money.”

She needed the money.

“I don’t know when I can come down again, but I’ll try to real soon.” My sister gave me a smile that fell flat, that sliced me again, this time straight across my stomach. “I miss you. I wanted to stay longer this last time, but I just couldn’t.”

All I could do was stand there.

With my heart feeling awfully close to breaking.

With a knot in my throat that seemed to be growing by the second.

I loved my sister. I genuinely loved Thea with everything in my heart. She had been the first person to be put into my life that had loved me back.

And she was, in few words, asking me to leave after I’d traveled almost four hours to come and see her.

My mouth watered and not for a good reason.

But I wouldn’t pitch a fit. I touched the LOVEYOU bracelet on my left wrist. I wouldn’t beg.

I just… nodded and gave her a smile that didn’t feel all that understanding, but I hoped it didn’t make her feel guilty either. She had just hurt me, but that didn’t mean I had to hurt her right back. What I couldn’t let go of right then was that freaking ache in me. I wasn’t going to give her a hard time for kicking me out.

But…

But I couldn’t just walk out of here, letting her think that she’d pulled a fast one on me. As much as I might want to believe she wouldn’t do that… she had. Or at least, she was trying to, and I couldn’t let that small thing go away. Not this time.

“Why didn’t you tell me you moved?” I asked her, ignoring how numb my voice sounded.

She paused, and the face I knew so well grimaced just a little but just enough. “I just…” Was she trying to think of a lie? “I… I didn’t want to bother you.”

She didn’t want to bother me.

Maybe I had literally hours ago said those exact words to Rip, but that had been because I didn’t want to ask him for help.

My sister moving out of her apartment wasn’t bothering. Why would that be bothering? How would that be bothering?

Thea must have realized how weak that excuse was because she gave me a smile that time that was just as fake as her last one had been. “My roommate invited me to come live here with her, but she doesn’t like people coming over, so I didn’t see a point in telling you and then….”

Having to tell me I wasn’t allowed to spend the night? After I had paid for our apartment all on my own while she had lived with me for three years? I would have understood.

She knew that.

I wasn’t unreasonable. I could have stayed at a hotel.

But she had always shut down every time Lily and I brought up coming to visit. Every single time. Instantly. Over and over and over again over the years.

Hadn’t Kyra come and stayed with her a few months ago? I wondered for a moment before deciding I didn’t want to know. In case she was lying to me.

I scraped my tongue against the roof of my mouth as I stood there and nodded like I understood. But I really didn’t. Not even a little.

Thea watched me carefully, back to wringing her hands.

I bit my bottom lip.

I was loved. I was happy. I had my own place. I was a decent person.

And Rip had driven me all the way to Dallas to come see my sister because she had asked.

I wasn’t going to feel ashamed or bad. I wasn’t going to let this get to me. Even if she was one of the last people in this world who I would have ever expected to hurt me the way she just had.

I was going to choose to be happy after this.

“Okay, Thea,” I told her carefully, not able to muster up more than just a smile that consisted of a twisted cheek. “Let me know if you need anything, all right?” I still found myself offering.

She… she just nodded.

I took a step back and thought about that hug I wished I could or would have given her, but she didn’t step forward or make a move to make it seem like she wanted one either.

So I let my hands drop to my sides.

“Take care,” I told her, hearing how wooden it came out.

She didn’t even flinch. “Drive safe,” she told me like she had a hundred other times when things between us were fine and normal. The scratch she made to her cheek was the only thing that told me that she might feel a little bad. And just a little. I didn’t expect much more than that.

I thought I was a strong person. I was forgiving. More patient than most people I knew. I wasn’t really that petty. I didn’t expect a lot from anyone, ever.

But as I walked around my sister with my eyes glued in front of me, I felt shittier than I could ever remember in the last ten years.

It honestly, genuinely, felt like my heart was breaking. Or maybe the fracture had always been there and it was getting wider and deeper, cutting into me even more than before. I hadn’t thought it was possible.

I went down the hallway and opened her door, fisting my hands at my sides and breathing in through my nose and out of my mouth.

She didn’t call out after me.

She didn’t change her mind about me leaving.

I felt Rip’s presence, heard the door slam shut behind us. I bit the inside of my cheek and jogged down the stairs, not running but not walking. And when I hit the first floor, with Rip’s steps close by, I stopped there, giving him just enough room to go around me.

I wasn’t going to feel bad. I was going to be happy. I was fine.

My hands went to my hips, and I took a deep breath in through my nose, feeling myself shaking my head more than actually being aware of the decision that I did it.

There was no way for me to ignore the subtle but sharp pain going on right in my solar plexus as I stopped there.

“I just need a minute,” I told Rip quietly, still in front of him so that he couldn’t see my face.

His “all right” was just as low and soft as my request had been, but I was in no condition to analyze it in any way.

I nodded, hoping he’d seen it, and I started walking again.

I was choosing to be happy. I was choosing to be happy. I was—

Not.

I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t even wrangle a little bit of it. Not a speck of it.

My feet took me into the parking lot, past Rip’s truck. They took me down the middle of the lot in the muggy Dallas air. I walked to the end of the building and back, breathing in through my nose and out of my mouth, shaking my head every once in a while. The entire time, not letting myself think about how sad and hurt I felt. Not letting myself think of how not happy I was in that moment.

I tried with everything in me to force my mind blank as I turned around and walked back in the direction I had come.

I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to get upset.

This was not the worst thing that had ever happened to me. My sister telling me I couldn’t stay with her. My sister referring to me as her half-sister. My own fucking sister not wanting me around for whatever reason.

I had driven out here because she had asked. Not because I expected anything.

But I had expected more than to get sent home after ten minutes of being inside her place after she’d called me upset.

I specifically didn’t let myself think of how she had disregarded me.

Pushed me aside.

I bit the inside of my cheek again and cracked the knuckles of my hands as I kept walking.

Rip didn’t care. He would never shame me for what happened or make fun of me, I knew that in the center of my bones.

Nope, this burn had nothing to do with him.

Nothing.

One single tear slid out of my eye and right along my nose, brushing the side of my mouth as it kept slipping down and over my chin.

I blinked.

She hadn’t even tried to hug me.

After everything—

She didn’t even bother wanting to take a second and talk to me. Just in and out. Out you go. Bye.

I squeezed my hands harder into fists as I approached Rip’s truck and found him leaning against it, arms crossed over his chest, him watching me. His face was blank, for all intents and purposes. He even had one foot crossed over the other.

I tipped my head back to look at the sky, covered in charcoal gray clouds and lit up by city lights.

And I took a deep breath.

Then I took another.

But those breaths didn’t do a single thing.

Not one single thing as another tear escaped my eye and followed the track the first one had left for it.

This croak built up in my throat, and my instincts tried their hardest to keep from letting it out. I even had my mouth closed, but this tiny sound escaped, sounding like a whine. Sounding pathetic and sad and like a note something made when it broke.

And another tear came out.

Then another.

And another closed-mouth noise escaped.

“One more minute,” I slipped out, sucking in a shuddering breath that probably mutilated the words and had them sounding like something totally different.

I heard his “all right” just as I sucked in another breath, just as another tear slid out of my eye.

I had no reason to cry.

My sister loved me, I knew it. She was just… I didn’t know what she was doing or why she was being that way.

Sometimes you outgrew people.

Maybe that’s what she had done. Moved on from her high-school dropout sister who painted cars for a living. Her half-sister since that’s how she thought of me now.

And it was that half that was the prick I needed for more tears to roll out of my eyes. One after another, after another, until I had the meaty parts of my palms tucked into my eye sockets, diverting the flow of one traitorous tear after another.

“Luna,” came the deep, deep grumble of a voice.

“Fifteen seconds,” I tried to tell him as I told myself to stop. Stop.

Stop, Luna.

You’re fine.

Quit being dramatic.

You’re taking this too personal.

Stop it.

I’d swear I heard a muttered “Fuck” from somewhere too close, but I could never be sure.

What I could be sure of was the body that stepped right up to mine. The body that didn’t give me a chance to stop crying or even drop my hands because that body wrapped itself around my own. An arm curled over my shoulder, another right below it, draping itself across my shoulder blades.

The body was warm and hard and molded to mine, crushing my arms between us like they weren’t even there in the first place.

Legs and thighs pressed against me, and something warm grazed my cheek as gentle, almost delicate words filled my ears. “It’s all right, baby girl,” they started.

“You’re a good girl.”

“A nice girl.”

“The nicest.”

“Sweetest.”

And more tears just came right out of my eyes with each thing said into my ear, spilling over my fingers and wrists, down my arms as I stood there, letting my boss, a man who barely talked to me on a good day, hug me and tell me I wasn’t a sad, pathetic person who deserved to feel so small.

You’re such a dumbass, Luna, my dad had told me so many times, it sounded like he spoke the words into a tap that sent him directly into my brain.

“You got your ‘love you’ bracelet on. You’re all right.” The arm closest to the top, directly over my shoulders, tightened, and warmer, soothing words tried to drown the old ones away. “I’ve got you. I’m here,” the man holding me said.

He had me.

Maybe just for a minute. Maybe for ten. And even though I knew it was dumb and that I had no right to and I needed to get it together, I leaned into him. I went a little limp against his body, even tilting my head forward until it rested right between his neck and collarbone.

For one moment in time, I let Lucas Ripley hold me up while tears just dropped out of my eyes, making the ones I’d shed in my bedroom after my grandmother’s funeral seem like nothing.

All I had ever wanted was to be loved.

And one of the only people I had expected to give me that unconditionally for the rest of my life had let me walk right out of her place, without as much as just... talking to me about how school was going. Or work. Or anything.

We had driven all the way over here and….

One of the arms around me moved, and what had to be his hand landed on the back of my head, fingers dipping into my hair, running through the ends before coming back up to do it all over again.

“Ten more seconds,” I mumbled into my hands, into his shirt, into him.

“Ten more seconds,” he agreed into my cheek, his hand cupping the back of my head again.

I sucked in a breath through my nose and pressed my face even closer into the high point of his chest, feeling bones and hard muscles beneath it—a reminder that this man was immovable. Tough. Hard. Even leaning into him with more of my weight than I had ever let someone support, he held it without an issue.

His fingers worked their way through my hair to touch my nape.

Those rough, calloused fingers worked their way to straddle the back of my neck, to hold my head in place, right where it was.

Thea loved me. I knew it. But it didn’t feel like it. It didn’t feel like it.

“I just… I just….” I tried to say but couldn’t find the words.

“I know.” Those fingers kneaded my muscles lightly, the band around my shoulders tightening. “I know. You’re good. You’re fine.”

I was good. I was fine.

I sucked in a breath through my nose and nodded against him.

I was.

I had food. I was fine. I had everything I wanted and needed.

I wasn’t going to be upset over Thea.

I wasn’t.

I wasn’t.

I was good. I was fine. I was loved.

I was—

“Five more seconds,” I told him, knowing somewhere in the back of my head that it was more like five minutes after my initial request.

Those fingers went through the ends of my hair some more. “Five more,” that gentle voice agreed.

I sniffed, fighting the urge when more tears popped up in my eyes again. I was fine, I was fine, I was fine. But I still didn’t move. When his fingers went through my hair once more, I whispered, “That’s really nice, Rip,” hearing it sound all broken and chopped.

I was fine.

I would be fine.

“It always made me feel better when my mom would do it for me,” he told me, doing it all over again, so soft, so naturally. “Didn’t matter if I was scared or sad or mad; everything always felt better after she did it.”

It was hard to picture Rip as a little kid having his mom soothe him.

But it was even harder to picture that it was him soothing me right then the only way he knew how. Maybe. Possibly. I didn’t know. I was starting to think I didn’t know anything.

“She’d put me to sleep doing it too,” he kept going in that gravelly voice that felt like a secret itself. “Two more seconds?”

It wouldn’t be until later, much, much later, that I’d realize he had been teasing me.

But I still said, “Yes, please” as my sniffles stayed sniffles, but the tears slowed down.

I was fine. I was all right. I didn’t need to cry. This wasn’t going to kill me today, tomorrow, a week from now, or ever again.

So what?

So what if my sister had changed her mind after I’d driven all the way here?

So what if she had lied to me? I had lied a hundred times in my life.

I was fine.

But I still said, “One more.”

And Rip still replied, “All right.”

Sorrow so deep I didn’t think I was capable of, covered everything around me. The tips of my fingers, the tops of my hands, right between my shoulder blades, right at the center of me.

But I wrapped it up, the memory of my sister pretty much telling me to leave, and I threw it into the trash so it wouldn’t hurt me anymore.

I had no idea what was going on with her, but there was something. I could only hope it had nothing to do with me.

I was choosing to be happy. I wasn’t going to let this bother me anymore. I wasn’t.

“Thank you, Rip,” I whispered, still catching those notes in my voice that reminded me I had been hurting, and if I lingered on it any longer, I would again.

When the arms around me loosened a little, I dropped my arms from where they were between us. I was going to pretend like my hands didn’t shake—just a little—before I set them on his hips. Swallowing hard, I reminded myself I was fine. I was.

“Thank you,” I repeated, forcing myself to tip my head back so I could look him in the eye.

That brutally handsome face was focused down on me. Those blue-green eyes moved, looking from one of my eyes to the other and back again. The arms he had around me slowly dropped back to his sides, sandwiching mine where they were on his hips.

“You’re good,” he told me.

“I’m good,” I confirmed.

Those teal eyes still bounced back and forth as he said in that perfect, boss-like voice, “I know.”

Lifting my hands off his waist and trying not to make it seem like it was a big deal they’d been there in the first place, I used the backs of them to wipe at my face as I asked, pretty timidly, “What else did your mom do when you were upset?”

There was a pause and then, “She’d give me ice cream.”

I couldn’t help but smile a little at that as I dropped my hands and sucked in a breath through my nose.

I was fine. I was fine, I was fine, I was fine.

“That was probably the best ice cream ever, huh?” I asked him with a swallow. “But I’m starving, and if you don’t mind driving us, I’ll treat you to food and a hotel room for the night. I’m sure it’s way past your bedtime. I know it’s past mine.”

Hard eyes and a hard mouth watched me closely for a moment before nodding gravely. “I’ll drive.”

It was my turn to nod, and I pressed my lips together before telling him carefully, “I’m sorry you brought me all the way over here for no reason.” I tried to give him a smile, but I wasn’t sure I managed it. “At least we’re even now, huh?”