When my alarm went off the next day, dread like I hadn’t felt in years instantly made me want to vomit.

It had been a long, long time since I’d been so nervous or overwhelmed that I wanted to puke.

But I still dragged myself out of bed. I had to get up. I didn’t want to, but I had to.

I showered even though I had the night before, put on makeup, got dressed, and headed to the kitchen, ignoring the way my knees wanted to shake and my stomach wanted to revolt. I heard pots clanking from the kitchen area. I was usually on my way to work by this time, and my sister Lily was usually in the shower, so it surprised me to hear her banging away.

If the clangs meant anything, it was that she was still mad at me. I hadn’t seen her at all the last two days. She’d been in her room by the time I got home and hadn’t bothered coming out to say hi.

Sure enough, the second I entered the kitchen and found her, violently scooping what looked like oatmeal into two bowls on the counter, it confirmed she was in a bad mood. Lily was like me: she was a morning person. Unlike our other two sisters, I had never had to be on her case about waking up on time for school. I was usually in a good mood, but Lily was always in a better mood than me.

Today being the exception from the look and sound of it.

“Morning,” I told her pretty softly, hating that we were in this position in the first place.

She didn’t look at me, and it gave me the chance to see she hadn’t showered or anything yet. She was still in her pajamas. “Morning,” she pretty much grunted, almost making me smile.

Eyeing her, I went to the cabinets beside her, watching as she scraped cut-up berries from a small cutting board into the bowls and then shook some walnuts out too. Filling up my glass with water, I tried my best to ignore how much my stomach ached. I didn’t want to go.

“You have time to eat, don’t you?” my beloved little sister grumbled, sounding grumpier than I had ever heard her.

“Yes,” I answered before gulping down the entire glass of water just as she slid one of the bowls across the counter.

She grunted before turning back toward the stove and picking up the saucepan she’d cooked with. “Eat it. Who knows when you’ll have lunch.”

I didn’t feel like smiling, I really didn’t, but affection for this not-so-little girl made my chest ache... with love, of course. With so much love it reminded me of why I was going today. So she wouldn’t have to. “Thank you, Lily,” I told her as I opened one of the drawers and pulled a spoon out.

Lily grunted again as she turned on the tap at the sink and waited, then put the pot under the stream of water.

I didn’t say a word as I scooped up one spoonful after the other of steel cut oats as she finished washing everything. I ate so fast that by the time she was done, more than half of it was in my stomach, and I honestly wasn’t sure if I had tasted more than the first bite.

I didn’t want to go.

“What time will you be back?”

I blinked at her back as she stood in front of the sink, hunched over it. “I don’t know for sure. I’m guessing maybe around three.” I tapped the tip of the spoon against my nose, seeing her spine curl further into the sink area. “I’m not going to be there longer than I need to, sugar lumps, I promise.”

The deep breath she took made her shoulders go up a few inches; I could even see her ribcage expand too. But she didn’t make a sound. She didn’t turn around either.

I wanted to go and give her a hug, but my feet wouldn’t move. I wanted to tell her it was going to be fine. That I didn’t want to go in the first place but that I owed Grandma Genie for taking care of her for years.

But…

I wasn’t sure I could handle it if she pulled away from me or told me not to touch her. It wouldn’t be the first time one of my sisters had done that. So like a coward, I stayed there, fisting my hands at my sides and just watching my little sister struggle with whatever she was thinking. She was the last person in the world I would want to hurt or have mad at me.

“Lily, I love you. I don’t want to go, but one of us has to, and if Dad and your mom are there… I don’t want them to see you. I don’t want them to see any of you. Nothing good would come of it, and somewhere deep down inside, you know that,” I told her quietly. “It’ll be fine. I promise. Your mom will probably be too high and Dad…. Don’t worry about me, okay? I showed you that picture of Ripley. No one’s going to want to mess with him, and I can take care of myself.”

She sniffed.

And still I just stood there, really wanting to go to her but just… not able to. My eyes caught onto the clock on the stove, seeing the 7:25 and sighing. “I’m not going to work afterward. If you don’t have plans, we can go do something.”

My little sister sighed right back. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I asked her to be sure.

She nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

Pressing my lips together, I scooped the rest of the oatmeal into my mouth as I grabbed a bottled iced coffee from the fridge. Next, I filled up a water bottle from the filter and had just picked up my purse when Lily muttered, “Do you have your pepper spray?”

I froze. Then I glanced inside my bag to make sure it was in there. “I’ve got it,” I told her, looking down at the gift she had bought me for my birthday last year.

I turned toward her, holding my things in my hand, and found her still facing the sink. I wanted to give her a hug. I really wanted to give her a hug, or get one in return, but I was going to need all my bravery for later.

“I need to go, but have a good day at school, okay? Thank you for breakfast.”

“Good luck.”

I smiled at the back of her head and held my things to my chest, then turned around. I had barely made it down the hall when my little sister called out, “I love you, Luna! I’m not mad at you! I just want you to be okay!”

I bit my lip and shook my head, relief flooding through me. “I know. I love you too! Don’t worry about me and have a good day at school!” I called back, making sure not to let my voice betray me.

I got my keys and headed outside, trying my best to ignore the way my heart beat steadily but a little faster than normal. I had barely locked the front door and sat on the top step when a familiar yellow pickup pulled up in front of my house. According to my G-Shock, right on time.

I didn’t wonder how Ripley had known my address, but I had figured he would have asked for it if he needed it. A few of my coworkers had visited since I’d bought my place, and the Coopers of course knew where I lived. At just around fifteen hundred square feet—and with the price tag that had come from it being a foreclosure—it was perfect for me… and the one sibling I still had. It had needed a stupid amount of cosmetic work when I bought it, and even after so long, it still did. What had been worked on, I had done mostly by myself and with a little help from my sisters, friends, and their families. It was getting to where I wanted it.

At the rate I was going, it was more than likely going to be a couple more years before it was the house that I’d envisioned, and only for a second did I wonder what Ripley thought of the old bungalow.

Then I decided that he probably didn’t care and might have not even really looked at it in the first place, even if it was possible to ignore the dark purple house with medium gray and white accents and trim.

It had taken me months to change the color from the faded white and blue it had originally been, but every time I pulled into my driveway, seeing it… it just made me happy. And if something made you happy, it was worth the cost and effort every single time.

As I walked down the steps of my stoop and then the pathway that my best friend’s grandpa had helped me redo before starting on the painting, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder at my house.

And I smiled.

I was so lucky.

I was so damn lucky I forgot how lucky I was.

Rip was looking at me through the passenger window as I walked up to his truck door and opened it.

“Morning,” I greeted him as I got inside and shut it behind me.

He was still watching me as I pulled the seat belt across my body and clipped it in, noticing the black jacket on the seat between us. Only then did he say, “Morning.”

Setting my purse and drinks on the floor, I slid my hands down my thighs to smooth my black skirt down and then shot him a smile. I had to play it easy and cool and not at all like I’d woken up that morning on the verge of praying for a natural disaster that wouldn’t let us make it to San Antonio. “Want me to navigate us or do you know how to get there?” I asked as I finally got a chance to look my boss over.

And look him over I did.

The first thing I noticed was the thin black and white scarf he had on.

In June.

Then the second thing I noticed was the freaking rest of him.

I had warned him we were going to a funeral, but I hadn’t been ready for… this. Ripley dressed up like I had never, ever seen him before. In a charcoal gray button-up shirt beneath the scarf wrapped around his neck, his eyes seemed even brighter than usual. I glanced at his shiny black dress shoes—shoes that looked brand new. Black dress pants that looked brand new. I looked down at the black jacket between us and thought it looked like it had never been worn either.

Forcing my gaze back to his face, I took in his close shave, and the way his short hair was styled gave me the idea that he’d slicked something through it that made it look more controlled than normal.

Lucas Ripley had dressed up.

And if they were there, I was taking him to see the most awful people I had ever met in my life.

Probably.

More than likely.

Who was I kidding. This was me. It would be my luck ten times over that all of them would be there. Even my older brother. Why not.

I didn’t have the same hair color or length anymore, but they would know who I was.

I could do this. I would do it. It was only a couple of hours.

I needed to get it together before he figured out just how much I didn’t want this to happen. So I said the first words that came to mind as I sat there. “You look dapper.” Which was an understatement, but I didn’t need to cake it on.

How did he respond? By reaching up to pull at the collar of his shirt, digging beneath the scarf he had on, tugging at it and muttering, “I feel like a dumbass.”

I surprised myself when I laughed. “You don’t look like one.” My smile wasn’t forced or fake either. “You look great,” I told him.

What did he do? He rolled his eyes, but I didn’t miss the way his cheeks seemed to get a little pink. I didn’t know somebody was bashful.

“So, GQ? Need me to navigate us or do you know how to get into the city?”

He rolled his eyes again as he put the truck into drive. “I know how to get there.” And if I thought he muttered, “Unfortunately,” then I would have been right.

Neither one of us talked much over the next three hours.

Rip had put the radio on the oldies station, which had made me smile while I looked out the window because that was the last thing I would have figured he’d listen to. I’d caught him humming along to a few songs, and that had made me smile even more. He wasn’t exactly trying to hide it. I played solitaire on my phone until I got nauseous, then played it again once the worst of it had passed.

But as the minutes went by, and then an hour, then another hour and another hour…

My nausea got worse for reasons that had nothing to do with looking at a tiny screen in a moving car; all the breathing exercises in the world didn’t do anything. Neither did closing my eyes and telling myself that I needed to buck up and that I could handle whatever happened. All the optimism I’d felt that morning had slowly melted away as the reality of where I was going became more and more present.

The truck wasn’t going to break down and end up making me miss the funeral.

I was going and it was happening.

But I was going to survive it, and that was the most important part.

We drove further along into the city and slowly I took in a lot of things that were familiar from when I had lived in San Antonio. The city had changed a lot over the last almost ten years but not enough to be completely different from where I had grown up.

I hadn’t planned on ever coming back.

I turned on the navigation app on my phone and put in the address that the lawyer had sent me. The app said we had twelve minutes left to travel. The service was supposed to start in twenty, so the arrival couldn’t have been any better.

I laced my fingers together and stuck them in between my thighs. I kind of wished I had paid more attention to Mr. Cooper when he recited an Our Father when he was riled up and needed to calm down.

“You gonna be all right?” Rip finally spoke up after hours of near silence.

I glanced at his profile for what might have been the twentieth time—maybe the fiftieth time—since we’d gotten into the car. The tightness at his jaw had only gotten more pronounced mile after mile. The lines at his eyes had deepened. His coloring was different. More flushed.

I wasn’t imagining the fact that he honestly looked like he was dreading this as much as I was.

But was it because he was with me and he didn’t want to be?

“Yeah, sure,” I told him honestly but watched him even closer. “Are you?”

His fingers flexed on the steering wheel and his voice was rough when he answered simply, “Yeah.”

He was full of it. He really was dreading this.

Just like that, guilt made my stomach feel off all over again, for a reason that had nothing to do with me and what I wanted.

Maybe he didn’t handle funerals well. Maybe they made him feel terrible. How was I supposed to know? I’d worked surrounded by men for almost the last decade, and over that time, I’d learned that even if they didn’t want to do something—and I mean they really didn’t want to do something—they would if it involved or compromised their pride.

I wouldn’t force someone to do something they didn’t want to for my sake.

“You can just drop me off and go back. I can get myself back to Houston,” I offered, watching the lines along his mouth tell me just how uncomfortable he was.

Because I had put him into this situation.

The man beside me slid me a look so slow that a sloth would have managed to catch it. His eyebrows went up at about the same pace, and he locked those blazing blue-green eyes on my face and said in that hoarse voice of his, “Not doing that.”

Pride was a bitch.

“I’m being serious, Rip.” I gave him a smile that was tight and probably totally fake. “I can go by myself. It isn’t a big deal. You’ve done enough.”

I’d swear he rolled his eyes. “Shut it, Luna.”

He was such a liar. “You look like you’ve got the flu, boss.”

“I’m all right,” he tried to insist.

I pressed my lips together and looked at the coloring on his face. “Is that why you’ve been squeezing the steering wheel so hard your knuckles have been turning white for the last hour?” I asked him, pressing my lips together again immediately afterward because… well, it was the truth.

That hard jaw jerked from side to side, and he even shook his head a little. “Luna, I’m good,” he tried to tell me.

“I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to do.”

He didn’t say a word for a moment, but I watched as his shoulders lost some of their tension and lowered unexpectedly. His voice was calm as he said, “I got no problem going to the funeral or the service. You can drop it.”

I bit my lip and watched him, trying to decide whether I needed to keep arguing with him. It was obvious he didn’t want to be here. I wasn’t that blind or dumb. I also believed him when he said it wasn’t the funeral he had an issue with.

But then what else could bother Rip… that wasn’t Mr. Cooper or Lydia? Or screwups at work?

Just as I opened my mouth to tell him to wait in the car, his fingers flexed on the steering wheel again, and he told me, “I’m doing this with you. I owe you. It’s fine.”

He owed me.

That was the only reason he was here. It wasn’t like I didn’t know that, and it wasn’t like that should hurt my feelings. Because it didn’t. What it did was make my heart clench up a little at the reminder that it was only a favor… a favor I had earned through a lie… for why he was with me right then, sitting not even two feet away in a dress shirt, pants, and a scarf with a coat between us. Looking more handsome than I ever could have imagined, if I did that kind of thing.

I kept my mouth shut and nodded, even if chances were he didn’t see me do it.

The navigation gave an instruction for an upcoming turn a quarter of a mile away, and he got into the lane a second before asking, “Who’s funeral are we going to?”

I squeezed my fingers together tighter. I owed him that much information, didn’t I? “My grandmother.”

His “Oh” was just about what I was expecting. What I didn’t expect was the way his question came out. Maybe it was the fact that he even asked the question in the first place. The last time I’d been sick, he hadn’t asked if I was feeling better, he’d asked you contagious still? So the “You good?” right then, caught me totally off guard, especially when it came out soft.

But I still lied. “I’m good.”

I didn’t miss the way his eyes slid in my direction, his expression mirroring the tone of his voice—thoughtful, different. “You don’t look good.”

He didn’t need to know that I didn’t feel good about this whole thing. So, I made a face. Then I shrugged the shoulder closest to him. “I’m just…”

Should I tell him?

Nah. I was greedy and enough of a liar to keep the bad to myself since we were so close already. Plus, he was being a liar about being fine coming with me, when it was clear he wasn’t.

“I haven’t been home… to San Antonio,” I corrected myself, hating that I called this city home, “in a long time.”

His hands flexed on the steering wheel once more, and I wasn’t sure I imagined that his voice seemed to get deeper, losing that almost sweet edge to it. “You used to live here?”

“Yeah,” I told him vaguely. “I grew up here.”

Those teal-colored eyes came my way again, and a muscle in his cheek tensed. “When’d you move away?” he grumbled the question. These were more personal questions than he’d asked me in the three years we had known each other.

I squeezed my fingers together. “A few months before my eighteenth birthday. So that’s nine years.”

He made another thoughtful face that had his eyebrows knitting together and that little dash between his eyebrows indenting, probably wondering why I would have moved away at that age. So when he asked, “You got family here?” I figured he was trying to figure out just that.

While I might have told him everything a week ago… I didn’t want to do it then.

I looked forward and stopped myself from frowning. “My grandmother’s the only person I would still call family here, and I haven’t seen her in years. I just found out about the funeral on Monday right before I asked you to come with me.”

His eyebrows did that thoughtful thing again, and some more guilt filled my stomach.

Should I tell him? At least warn him? If I was in his position….

I should tell him. I had never been good at playing games. I had never liked other people playing games with me either. It was the right thing to do.

“Rip?“

“Hmm?”

I could do it.

“Look, I want you to know that I have people I’m related to that might be at the funeral and… things are complicated with them… and I asked you to come with me because you’re the biggest person I know, and I don’t think anybody would willingly mess with you, and I don’t think you’d let anyone mess with me too much if you were around, even if… you know… you didn’t think you owed me one…,” I rambled, trying to think of my words and not sure what the hell else to say that wouldn’t be me admitting just how much my family sucked.

I squeezed my fingers again. “My plan is to mind my own business, go to the funeral, and head back home. I just want you to know why we’re sitting by ourselves. I don’t want to talk to any of them if they are there,” I told him, leaving out the part that warned him that half the people in the room might end up looking at us like they wanted to kill me.

There. He couldn’t say I hadn’t warned him. That’s what I was going to tell myself at least.

The last thing I expected was the smirk-like quirking way the corner of his mouth went to the side.

Then I waited until he let out a sigh that wasn’t unhappy exactly because… because he was still doing that smirk thing.

“What?” I asked him slowly.

He was still making that facial expression when he said, “I didn’t think you invited me to go somewhere because you didn’t want to go alone.”

I pressed my lips together before grumbling in an almost-whisper, “But you thought I wanted you to pretend to be my boyfriend.”

That had that smirk of his going away real quick, and I definitely didn’t imagine the harshness in his voice when he replied, “No, I didn’t.”

I burst out freaking laughing, remembering, remembering him asking if we were going to pretend we were getting married.

Married. Me and Rip. Pssh.

Rip, on the other hand, decided to ignore me there in the seat beside him cracking up as he went back to the original topic. But nothing could hide the color on his cheeks or the way his spine went straighter after I’d started laughing. “I figured there was something else you wanted, all right? If it was something important, I figured you would’ve said something.”

And that had me shutting my mouth. Then it had me biting my cheek.

The sigh out of his mouth went straight to my heart. “I didn’t, and I don’t give a fuck what you want, Luna. If I could do it, I would.”

Because of the favor.

“I’m sorry—” I started, feeling guilty all over again, because no matter how much he might deny it, I could still sense he was put off about something with this entire situation. He was here because of his pride and that white elephant wasn’t going to let him admit anything.

“Don’t,” he cut me off. “It’s not a big fucking deal. It ain’t even a little fucking deal.”

Somehow I managed to hold back a sigh. I hoped he still thought that when we were heading back to Houston. I hoped he thought that when we were sitting in the funeral home to begin with.

“Okay.” I still felt bad regardless of what he said.

Maybe to him, this wasn’t a big deal, but to me, it was, and regardless of why he was here, I really was grateful this was the case.

In no time at all, Rip was pulling his truck into a funeral home that looked faintly familiar. From what I could remember, my grandmother hadn’t lived too far from this side of town. Twice, I had ridden my bike—something I had bought by slowly stealing small bills from my dad’s wallet over the course of six months when he’d pass out around the house—to her house when I couldn’t stay at my house a minute longer. While she hadn’t lived on a nice side of town, it had still been way better than where we had lived.

Then again, at a lot of moments, Hell would have been a better place than where I had lived.

I swallowed down that memory and did the sign of the cross inside of myself. The lot was only about halfway filled, mostly with late-model cars. I didn’t see the beat-up Voyager my nightmares had memorized, but then again, I wasn’t expecting to.

Rip pulled the truck into a spot and parked it, his body shifting toward mine, all broad shoulders and huge chest contained within that beautiful dress shirt, before he asked the same question as before. “You good?”

No. “Yeah,” I lied, hearing it sound weak and full of shit even to me, but you had to fake it till you made it, or something like that.

He blinked, and at that point, he definitely knew I was full of it. But he watched me with those eyes for a moment longer before he turned off the ignition. “Ready then?” he asked, calling my bluff.

Now or never, Luna.

“Ready,” I agreed, giving him a cheerful smile that inside felt way more like a grimace.

I opened the door a second before he opened his and we both slammed them shut at about the same time.

I was fine. I was loved. I had everything and more than I had ever wanted. I was choosing to be happy for the rest of my life.

None of this was going home with me. I wouldn’t let it.

I swallowed as I made my feet take me one step closer and then another step closer toward the brick building.

My heart pounded in my chest, and honestly, part of me felt like if I would have really wanted to, I could have passed out. Passing out would have been a perfectly acceptable excuse for not going into the building.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

When Rip’s tall, beefy body caught up to walk beside me, closer and closer to the building, I forced myself to let out a deep breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

I could do this. There was nothing to be scared of. I had survived living in a house with these people for seventeen years.

Nothing was going to happen.

I didn’t have a single word to share with Rip as we approached the doors. He opened one and motioned me forward, his face grave but focused on mine when we made eye contact. I managed to give him a tight smile as I stepped inside.

The foyer was cool and open, and immediately I found a huge photo of my grandmother in a gaudy gold frame with her name on a plaque along with the years she had lived on it. I had seen the blown-up picture before. She’d gone to one of those Glamour Shots what had to have been twenty years ago at least, I guessed… She looked the way I remembered her the best: with her blonde-brown hair that I shared with her styled into short waves, her face full and highlighted by the brightest pink lipstick I’d ever seen. I had gotten my love of lipstick from her. She had never been afraid of some crazy fun color, and she never left home without it.

The thing that struck me the most though was that she wasn’t smiling. She had never been one to smile, but her lips were pressed together into something resembling one. She looked proud and even a little snobby. It was weird to think that this successful hair salon owner, a single mom who had raised two children on her own, would also be related to two sons who would grow up to be mean, violent men. I had overheard her once say she was ashamed of them. I had been too.

How could I have gone the last six years without seeing her?

She had been the only one to show me kindness, even if it hadn’t been warmth and comforting love, but it had been something.

If it hadn’t been for her offering to take them when I’d finally gotten so desperate to leave, I might have ended up staying for longer in a place that was pretty close to Hell. And who knows what would have happened to my sisters if they had been stuck in that house for longer.

My grandmother had put the seed to leave in my head one day when we had gone over to her house to shower because our water had gotten turned off and told me Go, Luna. I’ll take care of the kids. But you need to go.

I had gone when I couldn’t stay longer… after doing the one and only thing that would ensure Lily and Thea and Kyra wouldn’t be stuck in that house any longer.

I wasn’t sure what would have happened if she wouldn’t have called me when she found out my dad was getting out of jail so that I would go get my sisters.

I had sent her a birthday and Christmas card every year since, but she had never sent me anything back or called when I had left her my phone number in one of the cards. It didn’t change anything though.

Grandma Gen, I’m sorry. I did love you, and I’m always going to be grateful for you helping me get out of here and taking care of the girls as long as you could.

Rip brushed against my arm as he stopped beside me. He was looking around the building, and if I wasn’t imagining it, he was back to being tense again. I could see him lingering on the portrait of my grandmother.

Seeing her last name was… weird. It hit me stronger than when I saw it on the end of my siblings’ names. I hadn’t seen it on my own since I had decided I didn’t want a reminder of it.

A few people seemed to be hanging around a doorway to the left of the portrait, and I watched them. They didn’t look familiar though.

Now or never, right?

I could do this. I was going to. Then when this was done, I was going back to my house to see my sister, and then I’d have a job to go to the following day.

Breathing in through my nose, I told Rip, “We can go sit.”

He glanced down at me, at six four compared to my five seven, and nodded. We walked forward, him beside me the entire time, as we headed toward the opened doorway. The man and the woman standing there both gave us a serious nod as we went by them. The room was filled with row after row of pews with a raised dais-like area at the front, where a casket lay. Opened. Like I had expected from the parking lot, only the first three rows of pews were filled, and I couldn’t help but glance from the back of one head to another.

I stopped. With the back of my hand, I touched Ripley’s loosely hanging fingers and whispered, “I want to go say bye. If you just want to wait back here, I won’t be long.”

His whispered response wasn’t hesitant at all. “I’ll go.”

I raised my hand and rubbed at my brow bone with it, not because he wanted to go with me—that wasn’t it at all—but just because… that casket and the backs of those heads made me feel hesitant and bad at the same time.

I still nodded at Rip, not able to even muster up any kind of facial expression that told him I was okay. Because I wasn’t really feeling that okay. I wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t okay.

Ripley tipped his chin down at me, and it was that, that made me keep moving. We headed down the center aisle, where Rip walked to the side as I took a step up onto the raised area.

It was surreal, looking inside it, and it was more surreal—and honestly sad—to take it all in.

Thankfully, it was easy enough to ignore the gazes on the back of my head. Maybe I was imagining it, but I doubted it, and even then, I just couldn’t find it in me to care as I looked at a face that looked familiar but didn’t at the same time. It had been a long time.

A dozen thoughts went through my head, and I told my grandmother a few different things.

Thank you.

I hope you were okay.

Things worked out for me.

The girls are all doing great.

Lily is graduating at the top of her class.

They’re all going to be in college.

Leaving was the best thing I could have done.

I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to you more.

It was only the sound of the doors being closed behind me that made me realize how long I had stood there gazing down at the woman with her eyes closed. The familiar but not familiar face. The first person who had taught me that doing the right thing wasn’t easy and would more than likely never be.

It was only then that I took a step back and gave my grandmother’s face a bittersweet smile before I eventually turned around and immediately spotted Ripley maybe four feet away, standing with his back to the wall…

With his gaze on the pews.

I knew what I was doing as I glanced in the direction of what he was focused on. Some part of me knew that chances were I might not like what I saw. But I did it anyway.

It was my luck that the first face I landed on was the last face I would have ever wanted to see sitting there. Staring straight ahead. Face blank. Pretending like I wasn’t even there.

My dad looked twenty years older than he had the last time I had seen him. Like my grandmother, he looked familiar but didn’t. He looked like hell.

A lot could happen in a decade, I guessed.

The main one being that I didn’t feel any kind of terror going through me as I took in his face. My knees didn’t shake. Bile didn’t rise up in my throat.

If anything, this coolness flooded over my skin and through my veins as I took him in.

When my eyes flicked to the woman sitting beside him, I wasn’t sure what to think when I barely recognized her too. Her face was blank and dotted with sores. She was thinner than she had been before. A lot thinner. But if he looked twenty years older, she looked thirty years older. The years hadn’t been kind to her. Not that they ever had.

On the other side of her was a man I had grown up with but barely knew.

My cousin.

Of course they were here. All of them—minus my older brother and my uncle, who was still in jail—but that wasn’t shocking at all. These were the people who were at the top of my list for those human beings I didn’t want to have anything to do with.

I didn’t let myself think as I pivoted where I was standing and went to Rip just as a man in a suit walked down the center aisle. I was looking at Rip as his attention went from the people in the pews that I didn’t want to look at for another second to me, then back to them. They finally went back to me just as I stopped a foot away, his jaw doing that tensing thing again.

Okay.

I nodded, and he blinked slowly enough to agree with me. We moved together down the aisle along the wall. My heart beat, beat, beat just faster than normal as we passed one aisle after another until I stopped at one only a couple of rows before the exit. Sliding all the way in, I took a seat as the man in the suit stopped behind a pulpit set up just to the right of my grandmother’s casket. Ripley took a seat directly beside me, the material of the jacket he’d put on as we walked toward the building brushing against my bare elbow. I had rolled up the sleeves of the black button-down shirt I had tucked into my skirt.

The body contact did nothing for me.

I could see the backs of their heads in the second row, but I made myself focus on the man who started talking about my grandmother in vague, vague words that I wouldn’t remember and that I had a feeling he had to have used generically for others all the time. My face went warm and stayed warm as I sat there, listening but only barely. This hum started buzzing around in my ears, but I did my best to ignore it and the way my heart seemed like it wanted to beat its way out of my chest.

Rip’s arm moved, brushing against my elbow even more.

But I kept my gaze straight forward.

In less time than I ever would have expected, the man stopped talking and explained the instructions for the motorcade that would head to the cemetery where Grandmother Genie would be buried.

And still, my ears buzzed.

I didn’t mean to get up so fast, but I did, and luckily so did Rip. We were the first people out and the first ones walking toward the lot. The tension in Rip’s body was something I could have easily tasted. I felt it everywhere, even if I didn’t understand it and wasn’t in the mindset to as we walked out.

I knew something was wrong the second we got into his truck and he slammed the door shut, my name slithering out of his mouth, ending on a hard vowel. “Luna?”

I was looking out the window at the side mirror. My cousin was out of the door, his head swinging around the parking lot. Probably looking for me. “Yes?”

His breathing had gotten loud, but it was steady; I had no problem hearing it. “Is your last name really Allen?”

Shit.

This throbbing sensation instantly pierced right through my right eye socket and had me rubbing my lips together. My fingertips even went numb before I winced—on the inside and the outside.

That was just about the last thing I would have ever, ever, expected him to ask.

Somehow, somehow, I managed to get the truth out, because there was no way I could lie. This wasn’t the kind of thing I could try and hide when there were a handful of people who knew the truth. “Legally, yes.” The pain from my head got stronger before I admitted slowly, “But it hasn’t always been.”

Had he recognized my grandmother’s last name? The one I’d had for the first eighteen years of my life?

This was exactly why I had changed it. This was what I’d been trying to avoid. Only a handful of people—including Mr. Cooper—knew that I hadn’t always been an Allen. No one else at the shop, not even the other guys who had worked there nearly as long as I had, knew about it. They had no reason to know that my siblings had a different one. I was the only one so far who hated it enough to not want to keep it. Lily had mentioned before that she wanted to change it too, but she was still too young.

Rip had closed his eyes at some point. His forehead became lined as he frowned. I could see that great, big chest inhale and exhale, and his voice was incredibly calm as he breathed out. “Okay.”

Okay?

Did he… know?

Had he read the paper and recognized the name and seen what my family looked like and pieced it all together?

It hadn’t been a huge bust. Dad had only gone to jail for three years. His brother was a different story. But while I’d been growing up, everyone knew the Miller last name hadn’t been the greatest. Maybe they hadn’t known specifically about the meth, but they had known there was something, and no one ever did anything.

Until I did.

I couldn’t even find it in me to be ashamed if Rip knew that part of the truth I had tried so hard to get away from.

“It used to be Miller.” I tried to keep from making it seem like it was something I had tried to hide. Even though I had. “According to my birth certificate, my mom’s last name had been Ramirez, but when I changed my name, I didn’t want to choose anything that any of them might think of. You know Mr. Cooper’s first name is Allen, and I thought Luna Allen sounded like a nice name.”

The lines at his forehead and along his mouth got even deeper, and I couldn’t miss the way he shook his head slowly, thinking who knows what. The skin at his cheeks changed color and got… pink? Why?

“I changed it eight years ago,” I explained to him, glancing out the window to look through the side mirror again. More people exited the building, but none of them looked familiar.

I wondered if my dad had already gotten to whatever car he was now rolling around in, without me noticing.

“Mr. Cooper and Lydia drove me to the courthouse two days after my eighteenth birthday so I could start the process. They paid for the filing fees. The judge eventually granted my petition, and… I changed it,” I explained, still looking through the side mirror, the pain behind my eyeball still sharp. “No one but my sisters, the Coopers, and now you, know I changed it.”

The breath Rip let out was low and long, and the leather creaked as he shifted around.

I was a coward and didn’t want to look at him. “Did you see it on the news?”

He didn’t respond. The leather just creaked more, and the next sigh he let out was even louder than the last one. The deepest one I had probably ever heard from him.

Out of the side mirror, I watched a hearse pull around to the front of the building and a police officer appearing out of nowhere on a motorcycle.

It was time to go.

To go and see my dad, whose smallest offense had been selling drugs. The man who I would have forgiven for doing that, if he’d just been a decent person. If he’d just been… different.

“If you don’t want to go to the burial, I understand,” I found myself telling Rip as I fought the urge to scrub my face with the palm of my hand.

There was another sigh—not as deep but still off—and then he said, “We can go.” The words had barely come out of his mouth when he started the truck and then put it into drive.

I could feel the wheels in his head turning. Could sense his tension. I didn’t like it.

Did he think…

“I’m not… like them,” I told him, just in case he was thinking that I was. I was reliable. I had never actually lied to him before. I hadn’t stolen a single thing in years, and even then the stealing I had done was subjective. At least I thought so. “I’ve never done a single drug in my life. I rarely drink. I would never do anything to hurt anyone at the shop or anywhere else, even if they deserved it.”

His scoff almost made me jump. His fingers flexed on the steering wheel for what might have been the hundredth time since he’d picked me up. “That’s not what I’m thinking.”

I held my breath and kept on looking at him and his facial features, but they didn’t give a single thing away. “It’s not?”

Rip scoffed again, shaking his head while his attention was on the other side of the windshield. “You’re a good girl. Everybody knows that.” He paused and a muscle in his cheek twitched.

“Nobody’s fucking perfect, Luna, but I know a good girl—a good person—when I see one.” His breath was more of a sigh. “And you are. I’m not about to start a fucking tally with you about the shit we’ve done in the past. I know you’re not like… them in there.”

My nose tingled, and I didn’t… I didn’t want to talk about those things I’d done. “I haven’t seen them since I left when I was seventeen,” I rushed out. “I told you, I’m not… it’s complicated. We don’t… like each other.”

A line had somehow formed while we’d been talking, following the hearse that had just driven off. Rip squeezed the truck in between a Chevy Impala and a small Toyota pickup. I looked behind me to make sure that it wasn’t anyone I knew in the truck.

I wouldn’t put it past the cowards I called my family members to do something stupid like accidentally run a light or look down. That’s who and what I was related to.

Crap. What the hell had I been thinking? I had no business being here.

Yes, you do, Luna. You have every right. You think they were close to Grandma Genie? You think they’d be here if there wasn’t some other motive? They never do anything unless they can get something out of it.

People don’t change. Well. Most don’t.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I told him. “I guess I’d hoped that they wouldn’t come.”

He didn’t say anything. He just drove, and as the silence stretched, all I could do was stay where I was and, after a moment, look out the window. The ache behind my eyeball got worse as we drove on.

We pulled into the cemetery and parked after a moment. I held my breath as we got out of the truck and walked in the direction of where two heart-shaped sprays of flowers were located. Rip walked beside me the whole time, the tension still just pouring directly off him. It said something about how much I distrusted the people I was related to that I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure none of them were following us.

I was pretty sure if I looked up the Miller family history, the word “backstabbing” had to have been stemmed from an ancestor somewhere down the line.

Luckily, I didn’t see any of them, at least not directly behind us. As we stopped at the gravesite, a hole that seemed too small for a casket, I kept my head aimed down, but I didn’t close my eyes.

Rip’s arm brushed my elbow as he settled in so close beside me I could feel the heat of his body. It wasn’t unwelcome. The size of him, the knowledge that he more than likely wouldn’t let anyone physically hurt me, even if he was unhappy about all of this—including finding out I was related to a felon—made me feel better. It was too warm for my long-sleeved shirt, and I could only imagine how hot he had to be in his jacket and dress shirt, but he didn’t complain or act in any way like it bothered him.

I had a feeling it was him there that kept me from walking off as I watched the three people I hadn’t seen in years approach slowly.

My sisters’ mom didn’t look at me.

But my cousin was staring. Beside him, the man who was half responsible for my existence acted like I was invisible.

I stood there and watched them both.

I wished that later on I could have looked back on that moment and been the bigger person. That I could and would have looked away from them while the chaplain or whatever he was said some more generic words about a woman he had more than likely never met. I wished I could have let myself focus on Grandma Genie and the few memories I had of her.

But I didn’t do anything like that.

As the man went on, I stood there and took turns staring at my cousin and the man that my birth certificate said was my father.

My cousin basically snarled.

My dad looked right through me with those green eyes I saw every time I looked in the mirror.

Rip’s arm brushed mine a few times, but I was too caught up in my own moment to worry about how bored he must be. Or how disappointed he might be in me for being related to these people. There were a million other things that he might have been thinking, and none of them were good.

It was only when the chaplain stopped speaking and the thirty other people around us approached the casket with mementos that I snapped out of it and took a step forward to drop the small picture of my sisters and me that I’d put in my purse the day before in the hole.

I was ready to leave, and it had nothing to do with the people on the other side of the casket.

I just wanted to go back home to the place that made me feel safe, to the people who made me feel loved, to the life that made me happy—that I swore from now on would only make me happier.

Turning to face Rip, who it seemed had his entire attention focused on me, I met his eyes and nodded.

He nodded back, his gaze flicking behind me for a beat, and we headed back toward his truck, avoiding old headstones and flowers.

Fortunately, I hadn’t been able to relax or let my guard down, because I heard the hurried steps coming and was partially expecting the hand that wrapped around my wrist, the hold tight and hurtful and mean, a second before it yanked at me.

Or tried to.

Because I didn’t let that happen. I’d spent years with Lenny at the gym so I’d know how to defend myself. That was how we’d met. She had taught a self-defense course I’d taken. Then kept on teaching me things after it ended. So I didn’t hold back when I threw my elbow as hard as I could backward, and in a move that would have made her proud, I kicked my right leg out, feeling it connect with a left leg. The second the person behind me stumbled forward, I grabbed their right arm and extended it across my body into a straight armbar position—a submission move that hyperextended their elbow—his elbow, if you wanted to be specific, because I knew who it was.

It was the same move that Lenny and I had worked on time and time and time again, so many times, I had gotten sick and tired of doing it. She had done it to me lightly before and it had hurt for days. It had been totally worth it, I guessed, because instinct had just… kicked in, like she had said it would.

“What the fuck!” the voice I didn’t recognize anymore hissed.

“Don’t touch me,” I snapped at my cousin as I took in his face, tightening my grip even harder, knowing I was hurting him and not giving a single crap.

I had seen Rip out of my peripheral vision jerk to a stop and turn around, but I had this.

I had always had this. Even when I was younger. Because maybe I was an Allen now, but I had been a Miller, and being a girl, being younger, didn’t mean anything. I had gotten into fights with every single Miller kid around my age growing up, even some that weren’t my age. They were all bullies and jerks. Every single one of them.

This one specifically had been the first one who had knocked me around. I still had a tiny scar on my forehead from one of those times. As I looked at his own cheek, I could see the one I had given him when I’d been fourteen and had punched him right in the cheekbone as hard as I possibly could.

“Put your hands on me again, and I will break your hand,” I told him, dead serious.

His face, thin and oval, was pinched and in pain as he tried jerking his arm away, but there was no way he could. “Let me go, you fucking bitch.”

I wasn’t him, I reminded myself as I did finally let go, shoving him away at the same time so that the man who was only a few inches taller than me, stumbled back.

He looked terrible too. I could see the staining at his teeth, the gauntness at his cheeks, and the discoloration in his eyes.

This was what I’d avoided. This was what my sisters had missed.

Thank God. Thank God.

I took a step back and stopped only when I bumped into the hard mass of a body that belonged to Ripley. His hands didn’t touch me. He didn’t do anything but stand there.

Hopefully he was at least shooting my cousin that face that I knew damn well made the guys at the shop turn around and walk away.

“I only came here for Grandma Genie,” I told my cousin as calmly as I could, even though I didn’t feel all that calm. “Just leave me alone.”

“Leave you alone?” my cousin snarled as he clutched his arm. “You came here. You knew what the fuck you were doing. We told you not to come back.”

He was right.

It had been a mutual decision in a way.

But it didn’t change the fact that he could have let me walk away.

“I came for the funeral. I don’t want any trouble,” I tried to tell him, but he was already shaking his head before I’d even finished the first sentence. “I’m never going to come back after this.” I almost added “believe me” to the end, but I knew it would be pointless.

Honestly, I had an idea what he was going to say before he said it, and my cousin had never been the brightest or most creative crayon in the box. “You fucking bitch—”

My hand formed into a fist, ready.

But I felt it then. The hands on my shoulders.

I heard it then. The deep grumble from the man behind me.

Then I caught onto everything that came out of Rip’s mouth, the rumbling rattle of each word etching themselves into me for the rest of my life.

“You can shut your fucking mouth.”

Then I held my breath again as I took in the calm within Ripley’s voice.

What I witnessed though was the way my cousin opened his mouth to say something, then he closed it. He made a face that said he didn’t want to do that, but he had, and he took a step back. And another step back, the snarl on his face growing as he backed further and further away.

Keeping his mouth shut the whole time.

It wasn’t until he was at least twenty feet away that the hands on my shoulders fell off them.

Only then did Rip take a step back.

By the time I turned around to look at the bodyguard I’d had to use my one and only favor on, his hands were at the scarf around his neck.

He was tightening it for some reason.

His cheeks were more flushed than any other time I had seen, and the tendons in his hands popped with restraint.

And his gaze… it had been on the ground, his lips thin.

I had made it. I was fine. I was loved. I had a home. I had everything I wanted and needed and more.

Yet knowing all that didn’t stop my body from breaking into a shiver.

Maybe the adrenaline had disappeared and left me feeling shocked at the sight of what had happened to the people who I shared genes with me. Maybe it was at the reminder of what I had left. Of how desperate they had made me feel that I’d left their house at seventeen years old, not knowing what I was going to do, not knowing where I would live. Of how scared I had been after. Of how mad.

But mostly, maybe I just felt overwhelmed at how empty I had felt for so long. Of how much I had wanted things to be different. Of how much I had suffered from yearning for things that I had never been given.

It could have been any of those things and all of those things.

I’d felt lonely on and off for so long, the reminder that my little sister was finally leaving me soon hit me like a wrecking ball straight in the chest.

I wanted love, and even after all these years, I had found it, but I hadn’t.

I was almost twenty-seven years old and I was still looking. I hadn’t stopped wanting it after all this time. Here I was, not able to hug my sister because I was worried I wouldn’t recover if she didn’t let me. Because I had two other sisters who had pushed me away out of anger years ago, and I had never been able to get over it. This was who I’d become because of them.

I hated them.

I stood there, and all I could do was suck in a breath that sounded almost like a gasp.

I had never in my life done anything malicious just for the sake of being an asshole. I had sacrificed for my sisters. I had busted my ass for us, day after day. I had tried to be a good, decent person because that was who I wanted to be.

And here were these people who had treated me like total shit my entire childhood, trying to do the same thing after so long.

I hated them. I hated them so much I couldn’t catch my damn breath. I couldn’t catch my own freaking breath because of them.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I hated myself too for letting my stupid cousin get to me now.

I didn’t see Rip’s eyes as they sliced over me, and I didn’t watch as that hardened, rough expression turned into one that was still hard but surprised. I would never see the way his head reared back, his chin tipped down, and his nostrils flared.

“Luna…”

I grit my teeth as tears bubbled up into my eyes all of a sudden, but I made myself look up at him. I wasn’t ashamed. I wasn’t ashamed about any of this. All it did was piss me off.

I was choosing to be happy. I was choosing to be happy every day for the rest of my life, and nothing and nobody was going to take that away from me. No freaking way.

But why couldn’t things have been different?

“You all right?” he asked, still taking his time with his words, his expression seeming like this mix of horrified and shocked as he watched me.

“Yes.” I bit my cheek and then shook my head immediately afterward. “No.”

Those eyes sliced to somewhere behind me for a split second before returning to my face. That foreign expression disappearing into that mean-muggin’ Rip face that was my favorite. His chest expanded with a big breath, and he was totally serious as he asked, “Want me to go whoop his ass?”

“Yeah.”

One of his big feet moved.

“But don’t.” I reached up to wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand, thankful I’d worn waterproof mascara and put a setting spray on my face that morning just in case. I knew better than to let this get to me. I knew better. I was better.

“Luna….”

I wiped under my eyes with my index finger and felt a shudder go right through me, violent and uncomfortable, starting at my shoulders and making its way down, and just… sucking. Just sucking, sucking, sucking. Had it really been that much to ask for, for things to be just a little bit different? To just come to a funeral and get through it without a reminder of what I had grown up around and tried my best to move on from?

I knew I had lost my damn mind when I asked him in a voice that wasn’t totally steady, “Give me a minute would you?”

He didn’t even think about it. “Sure.”

I licked my lips.

When I had been a teenager, I had wondered what things would have been like if my mom hadn’t died giving birth to me. If she would have been a better mother than the only one I had grown up knowing. I wondered if maybe our dad would have been different.

But as I got older, I realized that things might have been worse.

I had to accept I would never know how differently things might have been.

All I could do was stand there and slow my breathing, inhale and exhale.

“Just thirty more seconds,” I told him, quietly, trying to ignore the ache in my chest.

But he didn’t listen. He moved, and before I knew it, something warm and heavy fell over my shoulders and arms.

What had to be his hands draped themselves on my shoulders, over what had to be his jacket, and slid down over my arms, his hands molding themselves loosely over my muscles and bones. The skin on his palms and fingers eventually landed on my wrists. He was warm. Those palms kept moving downward until they were cupping my hands. His fingers lingered there. Holding them there.

Then they dropped away.

I always knew he was really a decent man.

That was when I forced myself to take a step back. To breathe. There at the cemetery, with Ripley’s jacket on my shoulders, I sniffled and wiped under my eyes with my finger one more time, looking at everything and nothing at the same time.

It wasn’t so hard to glance up at Rip as I wiped at my eyes again. His face was back to that cool, detached expression. Not mean. Not surprised. Just… cool.

“Thank you,” I told him in a voice I was honestly proud of. “Can we go now?”

It was only his nostrils flaring that said something was going through that brain of his because his features didn’t tell any other story.

The only words we shared over the next three hours were when he pulled up to a gas station and asked if I wanted to get something quick from the fast food inside, but that was it.

When he pulled up to my house after all that—my phone telling me I had an hour until Lily got home—I reached over and put my hand over his where it sat on the steering wheel. We hadn’t done more than accidentally brush fingers in years, and here, twice in a day, we had done more than that. Weird how things like that worked.

“Thank you, Rip.” I met those blue-green eyes and told him, “My sister is graduating on Saturday. If you’d like to come over after six, you’re more than welcome to. We’ll have food and drinks and stuff.”

I gave it a squeeze, just one, and then pulled away.

I opened the door and slid out. Then I closed the door, took a step onto the curb and lifted my hand.

He didn’t wave back.

But he waited until I’d opened my front door before he drove off.

I went to my room, changed out of my clothes and then, then, I cried.

For Grandma Genie.

For my sisters.

For the mom I had never met.

For the past, the present, and the future.

But mostly for myself.