Vaughn had shrugged her decision off, and my parents reported she was doing great.

Great.

She was fucking doing great.

Awesome for her.

Not.

Me, I wasn’t doing so fresh. Luna was my center. My fuel. I was running on an empty tank. I’d self-destruct if it wasn’t for Mom. But I couldn’t do it to her. So I ran on autopilot, acting like everything was fine, but as soon as the weekend rolled around, I was all about drinking myself to death and popping whatever pills were available at parties.

Look, I was mad.

Okay, fucking furious, more like.

Luna had left. She’d just left.

I bailed on her ass one miserable night to show her that, in fact, it wasn’t cool to slap me because she was a Jelly Nelly, and she’d. Fucking. Left.

Like my biological mom.

Like Val.

Like the people we hated.

All right, Debbie Downer, time to shut down the pity party before the fun police throw you in the can.

“Just a sec,” I growled, answering Mom when I saw her face peering from the kitchen window.

She was probably wondering what kept me in our front yard. Come to think of it, Mom never called out for me. My bad. But she was here now, leaning against our doorframe, wearing a brown polka dot dress and looking beautiful with her hair twisted in a loose chignon. Rosie Leblanc-Cole offered me a pumpkin cupcake from an orange tray. I shook my head, turning off the hose.

“You are so transparent.” She dipped her finger into a half-baked cupcake, sucking the batter.

She loved half-baking shit. Lived for the batter. I liked that she liked imperfections. It made believing she actually loved me easier.

“Oh, yeah?” I tore my eyes from the Rexroths’ open garage to her.

Normally, I wouldn’t entertain that type of observation, but Mom had more leeway. I wish I could say it was because I was a good son. Truth was, it was because I was a guilty one. Not that I’d done anything overtly wrong, but with Mom’s situation and everything, being a shitface felt excessive and wrong.

“She’s going to be here any minute.” Mom grinned, calling me on my bullshit.

I dug through the pockets of my gray Gucci sweatpants. “Shit, Mom, I think I ran out of fucks to give.”

“Funny, you look like you’re full of them. Why else would you be standing here for four hours straight?”

Forty minutes, four hours. Who was counting? Not this asswipe, that’s for sure. Apologies to California were in order. I might have created a drought.

“Didn’t you tell me to take care of the front yard? Practically begged me, in fact?”

She didn’t need to beg. For better or worse, I was motherwhipped. I hated people who took their parents for granted. My thirteen-year-old brother, Lev, and I didn’t have that luxury. Lev was Mom and Dad’s biological child. I wasn’t. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting, that I didn’t wonder if they loved him just a little more. That I’d become a quarterback for All Saints High just because I wanted to, and not because I’d wanted to continue my father’s legacy. That the clothes, rowdy reputation, and destructive smile weren’t calculated moves to look and feel like Dad.

That was the real kicker, by the way.

Fate had a twisted sense of humor, because I even looked like my adopted parents. I had the same green eyes as Dean Cole, the same shade of light, copper brown hair as Rosie LeBlanc-Cole. The loss of a parent was a concept I was familiar with, seeing as my birth mother had given up on me. So the idea of losing Mom was…yeah. Not a place I could ever let my mind go.

“What about Poppy?” Mom arched an eyebrow.

Man, Mom was on top of her shit.

“What about her?”

My parents showed up at all of my games. So did Lev, although he sat with Jaime and Melody Followhill because he had the hots for Bailey, their daughter. I didn’t have the heart to tell my little bro that falling in love with your best friend is trash. Akin to sentencing yourself to life in prison. I’d be better off never knowing Luna Rexroth existed.

“That kiss seemed real,” Mom pointed out.

I dropped the hose and headed toward her, to the door. “Hate to piss on your parade, but it wasn’t. I barely know Poppy, and sure, it’d be nice to catch up with Luna, but I’m not waiting for her ass to make a royal entrance.”

I tramped back into the house, peeling my clothes off on my way upstairs and throwing them on the floor. I didn’t want to admit how weak I was for Luna. It was pathetic. And unstoppable. I’d tried getting over her plenty of times, especially the last few months. I wasn’t such a saint that I’d enjoyed twiddling my thumbs and waiting for her to realize we were the real deal.

After taking a shower, I plopped on my bed and tried to ignore the fact that the light in her window was turned on. Instead of peeking into it (bad form), I checked the emails on my phone. There were a bunch from a few colleges I was considering—all close by. Being near Mom was imperative. That meant waving goodbye to college football, but that was a small price to pay. I was good at football—great, even—but my parents were more than capable of paying my way through higher education, and I didn’t want to take the space of someone who needed that opportunity. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to play ball. I did. I just didn’t want it enough to rob someone else of a chance to get out of their shitty ’hood.