I woke up mostly because my phone’s alarm clock was wailing right by my ear, but the crick in my neck that shot through my shoulders and spine helped too.

“Oww.” Groaning as I tried to fish my hand around for my cell, I forced myself to open an eye when I didn’t immediately find it.

And it was all of a second after I’d opened an eye that I realized where I was.

On the couch. Where I’d fallen asleep the night before. Or, really, more like four hours ago.

My hand found my phone tucked under my chest, and I dragged it out, tapping my finger across the screen from muscle memory to get it to shut up, just as something moved out of my peripheral vision. Something…

They were fingers. Long, thick fingers. And there was only one person I knew who had what looked like an M and C on his ring finger and pinky finger.

Those fingers were Ripley’s.

And Rip’s fingers moved right by my face as I lay there, on the couch, on my side.

He’d spent the night with me. Slept on the couch directly beside me. I’d barely had that thought when the pillow under my head moved.

The pillow under my head moved?

“Fuckin’ tired,” Rip’s voice—this even deeper, huskier sound than usual—said from close by as the “pillow” under me moved some more, almost like it was… stretching?

I had my head on his thigh, didn’t I?

“You all right?” that incredible voice grumbled.

I nodded, still trying to put my thoughts together. How he was there. How I had my head on his lap. Mostly how he was there.

He made this husky sound that could have been illegal. “Time is it?”

I peeked at my phone with my one open eye that was more than likely bulging now at my realization. “Six.”

The man I was using as a pillow grunted.

I moved my head to press my ear flat against the leg beneath me. I needed to get up. I needed to tell him thank you for everything he had done. And I needed to get up just because.

But I didn’t do any of those things.

What I did do was slide the tips of the fingers of my left hand under his thigh, like I was settling in to go back to sleep. Like he really was my pillow. Or like I had the right to touch him.

“I don’t wanna get up either,” Rip yawned, the fingers by my face lifting up… and landing on my shoulder, cupping it.

He didn’t say anything and neither did I. I couldn’t even hear him breathing. But I lay there, just for a minute, and thought about all the things I needed to do, starting with getting up and off him. But instead of all that, my mind said later.

The hand on my shoulder gave it a light squeeze that had my eyes going just that much wider. “Take the day off, baby girl. I gotta go into the shop for a few hours, but I’ll come back and help you after that.”

That had me opening both my eyes and staring straight at my cracked television. My beautiful, beautiful television. Okay, it was time to focus on what I needed to do. But I still didn’t immediately move. “I should get to work too. I can’t really afford right now to take a whole day off, but thank you.”

He yawned once more. “I thought you said you had homeowners’ insurance.”

“I do, but I’ve got a feeling they aren’t going to cover everything, and I don’t know how long it’ll take for them to cut me a check,” I explained. “I don’t want to end up being in debt for the next ten years buying everything on credit…” And there went the money I’d been saving for my granite countertops, I realized. Oh well, I guess. They weren’t going anywhere, and mine still did their job and would continue to.

Rip let out another yawn.

“Plus, I’m behind on what I didn’t do yesterday, and Jason never called me, so I have no idea what he did or didn’t do. I can deal with the rest of this stuff—” Never “—after work and during the weekend. I’ll make it work.”

There was silence, and the muscle under me hardened. The hand on my shoulder gave it another squeeze, just as gentle as the one before it. And Lucas Ripley moved his hand from above my arm to graze my cheek… and I held my breath as those rough fingers stayed there. “All right then, let’s go to work.”

Somehow, I managed to stir up a tired smile against his thigh—it was lovely to meet it, and unfortunately we would never meet again unless something like this happened in the future, but I hoped that wasn’t the case—and then I pushed against the cushion under me and sat up. Rip was sprawled as much as possible in a relaxed seated position on my couch, pretty much as melted into it as possible. I had gotten it because it was comfortable, not to be pretty, and with him on there… it was the best-looking couch I’d ever seen, if I said so myself.

With one arm sprawled on the armrest, his shirt was plastered completely to his entire upper body, wrinkled and rippled along his wide ribs, with stuffing from the ruined couch stuck to different places along his sides. His jeans were tight on his thighs… and opened in a V at the crotch, showing just a tiny triangle of black material underneath. That rough, handsome face had “sleepy” written all over it.

I don’t think he’d ever looked better. This sense of longing just…

Sheesh. How was he so freaking good looking all the time? I didn’t need a mirror to know I looked like hell. I’d been looking at myself in the mirror for the last twenty-six years. I knew my eyes were puffy, my face swollen, my mouth swollen. I hadn’t tucked my hair under my head before I’d fallen asleep, so it all had to be sticking out in random directions.

Oh well.

I smiled at him before slapping my hand over my mouth to yawn. “I don’t have anything your size to wear,” I told him as brightly as possible when I was done.

His blink was even lazier than before. “I got a shirt in my truck. S’all I need.”

I lifted my hands over my head to stretch and yawned out, “My shampoo isn’t too fruity, and neither is the soap, if you want to shower.”

Those teal eyes strayed down for a moment before coming back to my face, reminding me I’d slept in my clothes and hadn’t even bothered putting on pajamas.

“The bathroom is down the hall and to the right, in my room, in case you forgot. There are towels in the little closet in there,” I told him as I dropped my arms with another yawn. “I can get the shirt out of your truck if you want.”

Today was going to be rough. I needed ten more hours of sleep, easy. Maybe I could nap during my lunch break.

Rip watched me carefully for a minute before getting up to his black sock-covered feet with a nod.

“Holler if you need anything,” I said to him, still smiling, because why not? Maybe a lot of things sucked, but he was here, doing what he didn’t have to.

He hadn’t brought up the favor in a while, but I wasn’t holding my breath that he’d forgotten how he felt about it. Maybe he still thought he owed me something, but I hoped he knew he didn’t. For once, I didn’t want to remind him.

He shot me a long look, even flicking his gaze down to my socks before turning and heading in the direction of my room. Sitting there, I took a deep breath, smacked my cheeks a little with my fingers, and got up. It didn’t take long to find his keys and then do the same to the T-shirt in his backseat. Then, I followed in the same direction Rip had gone, heading toward my bedroom to pick out some clothes from the pile I’d set on the bed yesterday. We had thrown away so much stuff the night before, I honestly wasn’t sure what I had left. I hadn’t wanted to look too closely or think about it too much.

But things could always be worse.

I looked at the door connecting to my bathroom and imagined, for just one little second, the naked man on the other side. Then I sighed.

On my lunch break hours later, I headed up the stairs to the second floor of CCC to find two of the guys exiting the break room with funny expressions on their faces.

“Awkward,” the taller one of the two muttered.

“I wouldn’t go in there,” the shorter one said in a whisper.

I frowned.

“They’re fighting,” the taller one explained, still whispering.

Well, it had only been a matter of time.

The other one raised his eyebrows as they passed by me, disappearing down the stairs, as I kept going forward. I had planned on grabbing one of the frozen meals I bought and left in the freezer for emergencies since I still hadn’t gotten around to making my own lunch, and Rip hadn’t gone home, so I couldn’t expect something to magically appear.

I didn’t even need to take a step inside the break room before I heard the arguing.

“That’s fucking bullshit.”

“It really isn’t.”

“No, it really is. You had no right to make that decision without me.”

“I had every right to make that decision without you. You didn’t need to jump the gun—”

“They needed an answer and I gave them one. I tried calling you over and over again, but you didn’t answer.”

“I was busy.”

There was a pause. “So I saw from you taking the day off without saying anything.”

Oh no. It was my fault?

“I get here before everyone else and stay here later than everyone else. If I need to take the day off, it shouldn’t be an issue.” There was a pause and then, “I’m not a kid and you’re not my fucking boss. You don’t get to tell me when I can take time off and when I can’t.”

Mr. Cooper didn’t reply immediately, and I stood there, right outside the break room door, listening and wondering if I should interrupt them or not. Them arguing drove me crazy. It really did.

“I’m not trying—”

“Yeah, you fucking were.”

“Cut me some slack. We’re in this together. I don’t want you getting into trouble.”

“You think I’m doing something to get into trouble?”

“I don’t know, Ripley. I don’t know! You don’t tell me anything!”

“I need to?”

“Why are you trying to—”

Okay. All right. With a sigh, I kept walking, but instead of ducking into the break room, I made it to the office door and knocked before I could stop myself. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do exactly, but I knew I wanted them to stop and it was up to me since the rest of these chickens never did.

Sure enough, a millisecond after knocking, the voices cut out altogether.

“Mr. Cooper, it’s Luna. Have you seen Rip?” I called out, rolling my eyes at myself for being such a bad liar.

“Sure, Luna, come in,” Mr. Cooper called out after a second.

I wondered what faces they were making at each other. Or at me for being an inconvenience. But I was doing them both a favor. They just didn’t know it.

I didn’t wait for them to change their mind, I turned the knob and peeked my head inside, making sure to put a surprised expression on my face when I spotted Rip immediately. He was standing right by the door, those massive arms crossed over his chest. I gave him a smile that wasn’t totally bright—I was too tired for that—but it was good enough to pass.

I still hadn’t told anyone at work what had happened, and if Mr. Cooper thought it was strange that I hadn’t come into work yesterday, he hadn’t bothered calling to check. I figured right then, that Rip had told him something about me separately, but hadn’t said where he would be for some reason. I was going to tell him obviously, but the day was going rough enough. I didn’t want to cry about it again so soon.

“I was looking for you to see if you wanted to go to lunch,” I said quickly, aiming my gaze right at Rip. “I owe you for yesterday.”

I didn’t miss the confused look that Mr. Cooper sent Ripley, then me.

I also didn’t miss the way Rip’s body tightened at my question.

He was going to say no, I knew it, and I was going to be fine with it. The only reason why I’d even said anything was to break this up.

“So?” I asked, giving him another smile that was as big as he was going to get, trying to tell him with my eyes that it was fine for him to say no.

But he didn’t do that.

“All right.” He uncrossed his arms and let them drop to his sides. “But you’re not paying.”

I pressed my lips together and blinked. Okay, then. All right. “Then I wouldn’t be paying you back for helping me, would I, boss?” I asked him sweetly.

Mr. Cooper’s head swung from me to Rip and back again, and I felt bad for leaving him in the dark.

I’d tell him as soon as I had a chance.

“You don’t need to pay me back for shit.” He took a step forward. “I’ve got it. Let’s go.”

I kept that annoying sweet smile on my face, watching him get closer to me. “But really, you should let me pay.”

“Really, I shouldn’t,” he replied sarcastically, brushing his shoulder against mine as he passed by me.

Now he was joking? Okay. All right.

Breathing in through my nose, I swung my gaze over to Mr. Cooper, not sure if I was going to do the right thing or… not. But I knew that if anyone deserved my loyalty, it was Mr. Cooper. It was bad enough I hadn’t told him the other things.

“Would you like to go eat with us?” I asked him, purposely turning my back to his business partner so I wouldn’t see his face if he was making one.

But of course he was.

The question must have surprised Mr. Cooper because he stood there for a moment. I didn’t miss the way he slid his gaze to Rip for maybe a second before going back to me. He plastered on a smile that wasn’t totally fake as he said, “Thank you, Luna, but I already had lunch.”

Had he wanted to go though?

When we had gone to eat on Ashton’s first day, the two of them had gotten along all right. Part of me thought they had been on their best behaviors in front of the new guy. They hadn’t talked directly to each other once, or even made eye contact, but it had gone okay. I’d watched them like a hawk the whole time, expecting something to happen, but nothing had.

Nothing had in a while.

“Next time then?” I asked, giving him a smile that felt more honest than the rest of them before. I really needed to tell him the truth.

Mr. Cooper nodded, his expression pretty freaking curious but… okay. Bright, but okay.

I glanced back at Rip finally, keeping that expression on my face so that hopefully he wouldn’t think I was trying to pull a fast one on him even though I had been. “Ready?”

His eyes bounced on mine, something in them that I wasn’t familiar with, but he nodded eventually.

With a wave to Mr. Cooper, I headed out the door and down the stairs, Rip following behind me. We made it to the bottom before I realized I wasn’t ready to go, and I glanced over my shoulder to find him literally a foot away. “Give me one second to grab my purse, okay?”

Those blue-green eyes slid toward me. “You don’t need money.”

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

“You don’t need money. Let’s go,” he insisted.

I opened my mouth again, but he did the same thing, giving me that exasperated expression.

“You can pay me back some other way, all right?”

“I didn’t invite you so you could end up paying for someone else’s food.”

He stared at me.

“You’ve done enough. I don’t want to take advantage of you,” I told him for what felt like the hundredth time lately, knowing he would understand that.

Those eyes focused in on me, and I watched them go to my ears. I’d put on the first set I’d found in the ruin of my bedroom: fake gold teddy bears. “I’ll tell you if I feel like you’re taking advantage of me. But let’s go, I’m hungry. Those kolaches this morning went right through me.”

Oh, man. He wasn’t going to let this go. “Fine. But I’ll pay you back for my food at least.” I squinted an eye. “Somehow.”

He didn’t agree, but he did give me another side look before he shook his head. “Come on.”

I was going to lunch with Ripley.

I was going to tell myself that wasn’t excitement or crazy high anticipation going through me. Just two coworkers going out to eat in public. No big deal. It wasn’t even the first time we did it.

I led the way out the doors, noticing that no one even looked at Rip and me as we headed out. We had barely gone out the door when those long legs caught him up to me and we walked side by side toward his truck. He’d insisted on driving us to work that morning, even shoving my keys into his pocket so I wouldn’t get any ideas. I swear I didn’t know who this man was anymore. Neither one of us said anything as he beeped the locks and opened the passenger side door, and then went around to do the same on the driver side. He slid in while I buckled up. In no time, we were on the road.

To go out to eat together.

“What do you want to eat, boss?”

“Don’t call me that when we aren’t at work,” he said, his voice easy, not mean or anything like that. Just… him telling me not to call that.

For some reason.

I made a face. “Okay… what can I call you then when we aren’t at work?”

His grunt was his reply to that, but he didn’t look at me as he asked, “What do you think about barbecue?”

“I think I can eat a half pound of brisket,” I told him as I genuinely thought about what else I could call him instead that would be pesky but not too pesky.

His cheek twitched, and I’d take it as a smile. “You hear anything from your insurance?”

Ah. “Yeah, I talked to them earlier. They’re sending out an adjuster, and I have to send some paperwork to them, so I’m betting I’ll be fifty by the time I get a check.”

His fingers stretched out again on the steering wheel and his head ticked to the side.

“It’s fine. I’ll make it work. You fixed my door enough for me to be okay, and it isn’t like the people who came in are going to come back. They already took all the good stuff,” I tried to joke, but really, it sounded like anything but one.

Everything was fine. Things were just… stuff. They weren’t everything. I could live without them. I had survived with less before. But…

“Luna…”

“I’m okay. I know it’s stupid to be worried they’ll come back or the same thing will happen.”

“It ain’t stupid.”

It was and we both knew it.

“You don’t feel safe. Nothing stupid about that,” Rip tried to tell me in that voice I had no defense against. “Thought about getting an alarm?”

“I’ve thought about it,” I told him. “But the company that came by my house once was more than I could afford. They were asking for three hundred dollars down for the equipment. That’s the cost of the fancy tile I want for my kitchen backsplash.”

His fingers flexed on the steering wheel and he tapped them. “I know someone. Let me give him a call and see what he says.”

I couldn’t help but eye him. “You don’t have to do that, Rip.” Because he didn’t.

“I’ll get back to you after I talk to him.”

Of course he was going to ignore me.

Well, I couldn’t do anything about it if he was going to insist. He’d have to understand if I couldn’t afford it. The cops had said there had been a couple of break-ins around the area.

So, it was supposed to be… normal. Getting your house broken into wasn’t unheard of. Even if I hadn’t heard a single thing from any of my neighbors over them hearing about break-ins.

“Thanks for offering,” I told him. “You—”

That handsome face turned toward me, and he rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Quit thanking me for everything.”

I made sure he watched me roll my eyes right back at him. “Okay, but thank you anyway.”

He shook his head again, turning back to face outside the windshield. “You don’t need to thank me.”

“You don’t need to do all the things you’ve done for me either but—”

“Stop,” he grunted.

I would have crossed my eyes if he’d been looking at me. “I appreciate it, okay? You’re being really nice, and you don’t have to. I just want you to know I’m grateful, so suck it up.”

We happened to come up to a stop sign when he glanced at me with those blue-green eyes and said, not softly but not roughly either, just… different, “I want to, all right?”

As quickly as I opened my mouth, I closed it.

He wanted to?

Lucas Ripley wanted to be nice to me?

My first thought was: why?

My second one was: who was I to tell him no? No, sir, please be a jerk and don’t care about me. I wasn’t that dumb.

I had just finished folding the clothes I pulled out of the dryer, when there was a knock at my front door.

I glanced at my phone and took in that I hadn’t missed any calls or texts. No one I knew was coming over; otherwise they would have messaged. I grabbed my biggest kitchen knife, because luckily those had survived the jerks, and headed toward the front door.

But when I got to the peephole, I took a step back afterward.

Then I took another step forward to look into it again. The person was still the same one, and the face on the other side hadn’t magically morphed either.

I couldn’t even think as I flipped the lock and pulled the door open, finding a duffel bag sitting on my porch and a tall man with wide shoulders and a wide chest standing there.

He didn’t even give me a chance to say a word. “You gonna let me in?”

Well. “No,” I told him with a grin even as I moved to the side to let him inside.

He didn’t even try to sneak by either; his entire side brushed my front as he did.

“You eat dinner already?” he asked as I was closing and locking the door.

“Yeah, did you?”

I mean, he’d dropped me off two hours ago. We had both worked late, and he’d offered to take me home whenever I was ready. He was the one who had come by my room right before seven asking if I was done for the day, and I had been. Or at least I’d been pretty close to it.

“Nah,” the man replied, dropping the duffel at the bottom of the stairs.

My eyes focused in on the bag, putting together what he was doing at my house at nine o’clock at night with that.

He was going to spend the night.

“Want me to order you something? I ordered pho, but I ate it all, I’m sorry,” I apologized, still looking at that navy blue bag that had some miles on it.

“No,” he replied, bending over to unzip it and pull out the same kind of container he’d brought me lunch in. But then he pulled out three more just like it too, stacking them up carefully in his hand as he straightened. “I brought food. I’ll put the rest in your fridge, all right?”

“Okay,” I basically croaked.

Those eyes caught mine for a second before he disappeared down the hall that led into the kitchen.

Just like Lenny did when she came over. Or when Mr. Cooper or Lydia came over. Or when my sisters were here.

Like it was normal.

And he’d brought me food. Again.

Man, I could fall in love this man if I let myself. I really, really could. But only dummies fell in love with their bosses—bosses who didn’t do girlfriends or relationships.

There was no use dreaming about things I couldn’t have. There was no use thinking I could fall in love with him even though some tiny part of me quietly whispered that I already was. That was for sure. It was with that thought that I yelled down the hall, “Rip! I’m going to shower but make yourself at home!”

“’Kay,” he called out just as loudly, doing whatever it was he was doing in the kitchen. Eating?

I stopped where I was. “Want some company while you eat?” I yelled.

“I’m good,” he replied.

Okay.

I headed into my bedroom, grabbing the clothes I had organized while I waited for my dinner, and pulled out a navy short and tank top pajama set with pink hearts that Lily had bought me.

It didn’t take me long to shower and get dressed as I did my best to ignore how tired I was. I’d gone on maybe five hours of sleep over the last three days, and I was feeling it. Honestly, all I wanted to do was fall face-first onto my bed. I was too sleepy to even care about the tiny possibility someone might decide to come back.

And… Rip was here.

I even brushed my teeth then moisturized my face, giving the circles under my eyes a sigh. I really needed to get some sleep. And using one of those gel eye masks wouldn’t hurt either. At least the stress hadn’t made me start breaking out.

Sighing again, I opened the bathroom door and stopped.

I stopped right there in place and took in the man sitting on the edge of my bed.

The man sitting on my bed, pulling off his socks, giving me a nice view of pink soles.

The man who looked up the second I opened the door and flashed me a smile that was almost as tired as mine was.

“If you get hungry in the middle of the night, I left food in your fridge,” he told me quietly, folding his socks and dropping them on top of his work boots. “You need to hit the store though. There’s nothing in there.”

“I know, but thank you,” I told him, standing there. “I’ll make time to go this weekend.” I paused. “Did you cook everything yourself?”

His eyes never left mine as he answered, “Yeah.”

I wondered if his mom had taught him how or if he’d had to learn after she was gone.

“Did you want to shower?” I asked, choosing that to focus on.

He shook his head. “I did before I came over.”

Well.

“I can’t make it through another night on your couch again,” he let me know, still speaking in that calm, quiet voice that I didn’t know what to do with.

Oh.

I thought about that. “Lily’s bed is too small, it’s just a daybed, and my other sisters took theirs.”

Oh.

Oh.

I didn’t need to look at my bed to know that while it wasn’t a king-sized mattress, it was a queen. And the biggest in the house.

“You can sleep on my bed. There are some tears in the mattress, but I covered them with the sheets. It’ll still be better than last night,” I offered, giving him a smile. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

…by myself.

Closer to the front and back doors.

That wasn’t going to happen.

“Or in Lily’s room,” I threw out.

Rip stood up, tall, so freaking tall, and I had to tip my chin back a little to keep making eye contact with him. He stretched those muscular arms over his head and yawned, “You look like you need a good rest too, baby girl.”

I did. I really did.

I also needed to ignore the use of that b-word again.

And I needed to quit being a chicken and sleep wherever.

“Nothing’s gonna happen, you know that, yeah?” he asked in his careful voice, making me focus on him.

I nodded.

His breath was deep but true, and he was looking right at me as he asked, “Why don’t you sleep in here too?”

Too? On the same bed?

I mean…

I said “Okay” before I stopped myself, or even realized what in the world I’d just jumped into.

What the hell was I doing?

Before I could stop myself, Rip said, “Let’s get to bed then.”

Just like that.

Well. Hell.

I was so nervous I held my breath as I went to the wall and flipped off the lights, blindly making my way toward the lamp that had survived these assholes coming into my house. The lamp lit the room just enough, showing me that Rip was on the other side of the mattress—the side I didn’t sleep on—already pulling the white coverlet back like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I wished.

Or at least I would if I was asking for a side of heartache.

“Is this a good idea?” I couldn’t help but ask. Sleeping in the same bed with my boss just seemed, like it shouldn’t happen. At least to me. At least not when that boss was Rip.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked right back before slipping under the sheets I had put on earlier.

Huh.

If he thought there wasn’t anything that would make this a bad idea…

I could ignore that this was something new. That my heart beat just a little faster at the idea of sleeping beside him. There was no reason this wasn’t strictly platonic.

I pulled the covers back and climbed in too. Flicking off the lamp, I snuggled into the covers and felt the mattress beside me moving, saying that Rip was adjusting himself too.

I rolled over onto my side to face where he was and slipped my hands under my cheek.

“Luna?”

I closed my eyes without even trying to. “Hmm?”

“You good?”

“Uh-huh, you?”

“Yeah.”

I yawned. “Thanks for coming over. Give me a poke if I’m moving around too much, okay?”

My eyes popped open the second I heard him snicker.

I was so tired, but I still laughed.

I was pretty sure he said something else, but I had zero energy, I couldn’t even find it in me to overthink Rip being in the same bed as me or me telling him to give me a poke. I fell asleep instantly.

And I was pretty sure my dreams started up instantly too.

Maybe it was the stress of getting burglarized. Maybe it was my worry and anger over Thea… Maybe it was the fury that speaking to my dad fueled me with. Or my beef with Kyra now too…

But I fell into a dream that starred my dad in it. Again.

Some part of me knew it wasn’t real, knew that it wasn’t actually happening, but despite all of that, my panic felt real. Too real as it started off with Kyra saying she was hungry while we all sat in my bedroom while we worked on our homework. I made my way into the kitchen from the back of the house, grabbing two boxes of macaroni and cheese from the secret hole I’d cut into the sheetrock in my closet. I could hear my dad and the girls’ mom arguing from the living room, and I tried to rush—to somehow make the water boil faster so I could go back to the room—but it hadn’t happened.

Something broke in the living room, and I thought hurry up.

But I hadn’t been fast enough. I was standing there when I heard, “What the fuck are you doing?”

I tensed. Shook. Wanted to throw up.

I don’t know what I responded with, but I was aware of what was going to happen before it did. I tried to wake up. Tried to force myself to wake up before… before… but I didn’t, and the metal was as cool as ever as it hit the base of my neck first, and—

I woke up with a gasp in my dark room. Woke up on my back with my entire body strung tight. Woke up with goose bumps all over my arms and my hands instantly going to my face to rub it.

It was just a dream.

I knew it was. I was fine. I was safe.

Something heavy landed on my stomach a moment before Rip’s voice pulled me even further back into the present with a rough, “Luna?”

Crap.

“I’m fine,” I whispered, hearing the lie in how my voice wobbled.

The mattress moved as I figured he rolled. “Bad dream?”

It was still so dark, we must have not been asleep too long, but I still felt guilty for waking him up. It was bad enough when it was just me. “Yeah.” I took a breath through my nose and rubbed my face again, my fingers trembling just a little but more than enough. “I’m okay. I’m sorry for waking you up.”

The warm breath on my upper arm told me he was facing me. “What happened in it?” he asked unexpectedly.

I held my breath, thinking over the details. It only kept the goose bumps on my arm for longer.

“You’re not the only one who knows how to keep secrets,” his voice rumbled.

I froze, staring blindly into the darkness. I had never told anyone about what happened the day before I left. Not even Lenny. Not Mr. Cooper. Nobody.

I hadn’t been in the middle of making macaroni for the girls like in my dream, but…

“Luna,” he said my name carefully.

I sniffed and reached back to rub at the nape of my neck, touching the spot that had never felt the same after that day.

“Baby, you cried out,” a sugar-sweet voice murmured a moment before what I knew were his fingers reached for my arm, sliding down it until his hand took mine and swallowed it whole. “Tell me what happened. It’s not real. You know it’s not.”

I took a breath through my nose, my nape itching again. “It was real, Rip,” I sniffed, feeling him squeeze my shaking fingers.

“Somebody do something?”

I tried to rub my fingers over his rough ones.

“Somebody hurt you?” the man beside me repeated himself.

Every day for years. Hurt didn’t have to be physical, but I didn’t tell him that. He could keep secrets, he said, and I believed him. And maybe I shouldn’t tell him, maybe I shouldn’t say the words out loud and make them more real than they already were just living in my own head but…

But I had to try.

Isn’t that what I had tried to do with Lily and Kyra for years? Try to get them to talk about things so they wouldn’t bottle them up and explode from pressure later on?

I was such a hypocrite sometimes.

“I had a dream my dad…” Hell. How could I explain this? “He was always an asshole. Always, you know? When he was drunk or mad or because I was breathing too loud if the TV was on or if something had gone wrong and I happened to be nearby…”

The fingers covering mine moved to linked us together. His palm warm, so much warmer than mine, it felt like it gave me strength. Or assurance. Or something. Something too nice and necessary. And not mine at all.

But I kept going. “He caught me stealing money from him. My little sister Kyra had a fever, and when I asked her mom for money, she told me to fuck off. I told him I was just taking it to pay for the doctor, but he wouldn’t listen. He thought I was trying to steal his product or something, I don’t even know… but he got so mad, so much madder than ever before… and he said all kinds of things, and when I tried to leave the room, he grabbed me by the hair and he… he….”

The soft spot at my nape itched, but I wasn’t about to let go of Rip’s hand to mess with it. I wasn’t. I wasn’t.

“He put a gun up to my head and told me that if I ever did it again, he would fucking kill me,” I whispered, unable to hold back the shake… and trying to pick at the slice of anger of what that man had put me through, of what he had done to me. “Sometimes, I have dreams about it, but it’s really rare. But the back of my head starts to itch, and I feel like I’m back there again…”

The silence between us stretched far and wide, and if it wouldn’t have been for how his fingers had jerked in mine as I told him the last part, I would have thought maybe he had fallen asleep.

But I guessed he just didn’t know what to say, and I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t know what to say if our roles were reversed either.

I hadn’t even been sure I could tell him.

“I went to my grandma’s house that day afterward, you know. I told her what happened, and she told me to go. It wasn’t the first time she’d mentioned it. She said I would never be safe there, and I made her promise me that she would take care of my sisters as long as she could, and she said she would. And I told her… I told her I’d make sure she got them…” I squeezed his hand. “I couldn’t stay there after that, Rip. I couldn’t.

“I called the cops the next day while the girls were in school—while I should have been in school too—and told them there were drugs at my house. I told them where to find it and how there were kids living there. And they came… they came and they arrested my dad and their mom. He screamed at me that he was going to fucking kill me… and I found out later on in the paper that they ended up arresting his brother too.” I had known from the moment I’d been little what my dad did. How the cops were always on his case, according to him. They had told me a thousand times that I better keep my trap shut or else.

What I didn’t share was how I had warned my sisters I was leaving. How they were going to go live with Grandma for a while. How things were going to be so much better. How I told them I was sorry they couldn’t come with me, but I had only been seventeen.

She had never offered to let me live with her for whatever reason she’d had, but she had volunteered for them.

So I did it.

“That was what I didn’t want to tell you. How I ratted him out. How he went to jail for three years because of me. Because I don’t feel bad for what I did. Not even a little bit. I wish he would have stayed in jail for longer. That’s why I went to go get my sisters. Because my grandmother called when she found out he was getting out, and she knew they wouldn’t be safe with her, not with him so close. And so, we made it work and I went to go get them…”

I sniffed again, letting the anger fuel me, letting it remind me of what I’d done and would never look back on. “It’s okay if you think I’m disloyal or a piece of shit for turning my own dad in, you know.”

His fingers jerked while tangled with mine again, and I had no preparation for how he replied. For the strength in his tone, for the assuredness. “I’d never fucking think that about you,” he said in that incredibly husky voice, full of… something. Something I wasn’t sure of. “You did the right thing. You did the only thing you could have. There’s nothing you got to feel bad about. You hear me?”

Did I hear him? Was he serious? I couldn’t help how small my voice sounded, how small I freaking felt. “You still want to be my friend then?”

“Christ,” he hissed before making a choking noise. “Goddamn, Luna.”

I didn’t get a chance to think his words over before the hand holding mine left, and the next thing I knew, a hand snuck between my rib cage and the bed and another went to my hip, and he pulled me toward him. Onto him.

Lucas Ripley pulled me halfway onto his body, or at least that’s how it felt when his bicep turned into my pillow and his hip and thigh a part of my mattress.

“You kill me, girl,” he murmured in the roughest voice I’d ever heard. “I swear to God, you’re a fucking puzzle I thought was all in the box, but every damn day I find a piece or two hidden all over the place.”

I had no clue what he meant by that. Maybe Rip was aware of that because I didn’t expect him to roll onto his side just a little, just enough so that he could look down at me with that face that I couldn’t help but stare at every chance I got. The angles of it were heavy and the room was so dark it made it hard to see little else.

But I saw enough. Felt enough.

It really was too late to think I could love him if I gave myself the chance, I thought, before shoving that idea away as far as possible. I wasn’t reckless enough to mess with that thought though. I wouldn’t be.

My vision was just good enough to watch him as he propped himself up.

“What is it?” I asked, hearing the nerves in my voice.

He didn’t reply though. Rip just loomed there, on a hip and an elbow, looking and looking and looking for so long, I had to lick my lips. For so long I wondered if he thought there was something wrong with me. Until suddenly, he dipped his face down—and I held my breath—and he did the last thing I would have ever expected.

Rip brushed his dry, warm lips over mine. Over the corner of my mouth. Over the length of my lips. Just the quickest, lightest, most feather-like kiss of my life.

And just as quickly as it happened, it was over. He rolled back down to his back, leaving me….

Just like that.

Rip had kissed me. Me.

Was it… was it for comfort? Did friends do that? Kiss each other sometimes to make the other person feel better?

Yeah. Yeah, they did, I told myself as I heard him exhale. That’s what I was going to keep telling myself. He hadn’t slipped in any tongue, that wouldn’t have been friendly. And you wouldn’t have said no, my brain tried to whisper, but I ignored it, for now and forever, to cling onto the one and only thing hanging around in my head that made any sense. My one genuine worry in that moment that had nothing to do with this man maybe-yes-maybe-not kissing me. “You still want to be my friend though?” I asked him.

I’d swear on my life he just scooted closer to me, and I wasn’t going to overthink it. I definitely wasn’t going to think about what had just happened either. “Luna, if you knew the things I’ve done…”

“I would still want to be your friend,” I told him, breathing in through my nose that Irish Spring scent all over him. I licked my lips again and told myself I was only imagining that they tasted different. “Unless you like… hurt a kid or an animal or a woman.”

I could hear the breath he took, feel the tension of his bicep under my arm.

I was lying on Rip’s arm. I was lying on Rip’s arm. After his lips had met mine.

He was comforting me, I told myself. That’s all.

“No, I’ve never done any of that, but other men…” He trailed off, still speaking in that rough voice. “You don’t have a single idea the shit I’ve done, and I don’t wanna tell you.” I could feel the breath he took because it made the chest I knew from touch that was directly in front of my face expand and expand and expand.

There. There. He was telling me a little. Just a little. “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.”

“I don’t want to, but you should know, you should know who you wanna be friends with.”

“Tell me later,” I told him softly, taking in another big gulp of that clean male scent. But I thought. I thought about his words. I thought about all the different backstories I had come up with over the years.

“But can I ask you one thing? One thing that won’t change at all regardless of what you say? Because I swear it won’t matter, but I’ve thought about it a lot and I just… I just want to know. We don’t have to talk about it anymore afterward. And you can count it as my favor. We’ll put it in our box of secrets.”

I didn’t want to think that his “hmm” sounded worried, but I thought it did.

I squeezed his hand again, letting my fingers linger over the two fingers I knew had an M and a C on them. “Were you in a gang before?”

The arm beneath my head went hard again, and it took seconds for it to relax. Seconds that seemed like minutes as his body finally lost its defensiveness. And I couldn’t say I was totally surprised when he said, “Yeah, baby. You can say that.”

Well. I couldn’t say I was surprised. I wasn’t, not even a little bit, but his response tickled at that part of me that had a dozen different questions. I was only going to choose one. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

His “yeah” was a rumble.

“Why’d you do it?”

If the question surprised him, I would never know for sure. What I was aware of was the way he sighed and how I felt it before he answered, “I was mad after my mom died. Real fucking mad. I didn’t go out to join… it. I was raised here; I don’t think I ever told you that. Few months after Mom passed, I packed up my shit and left. Moved around a lot there for a while. I’d spend a couple days here and there, New Mexico, Colorado, California for about a year, then I headed back. I don’t got a whole lot of family, but back then I had an uncle in San Antonio—”

Some part of me startled at the mention of the city I’d grown up in, but I didn’t make a peep.

“He was into that life. My mom’s brother. I was mad as hell over life, and… they… took me in. It was kinda like having a new family, if your family was fucked up and everybody had lost their minds,” he kept explaining in a steady voice. “I spent eighteen years there.”

I curled my toes under the blankets, thinking about what he’d just said. “Were you happy?”

The sound that came out of Rip’s mouth was a twisted, sad, low laugh. “Nah, baby, you don’t really think about shit like that in that life, but sometimes you bury yourself so deep into something you don’t know how to get out until you wake up one day and know you can’t keep going a minute fucking longer.”

His words slipped beneath my ribs and right into my chest. I knew exactly what that was like. Knowing you couldn’t keep doing something anymore without losing too much. I rubbed my fingers against Rip’s and felt his move right back, not holding mine but just there. There and there and there. Warm and strong and present.

“I got tired of being pissed for almost twenty years. Finally thought of what my mom would’ve wanted for me and it wasn’t that. Wasn’t what I wanted for myself as a kid either and being fed up with everything and everybody seemed to be some kinda sign… so I left. That’s when I came back.”

Rip’s knuckles brushed over the fine bones on the back of my hand, and I stared up at the ceiling before I asked the one last question I would let myself wonder over. “Are you glad you came back?”

His chuckle was a puff, and those knuckles moved over me one more time before he said, “Some days, no… but, yeah. Yeah. Coming back was the best thing I ever did.”