Broken Knight by L.J. Shen

Knight, 18; Luna, 19

“She’s not here. You can tuck your vagina back in, Cole.” Hunter Fitzpatrick yawned, flicking a red Solo cup against some tool’s head.

Said douchebag turned around from his conversation with a sophomore cheerleader, ready to talk smack. As soon as he saw that it was Hunter, he bit the inside of his cheek, glowering.

“Ew. Why so constipated?” Hunter growled in the Joker’s why-so-serious voice.

Downing the last of my fifth beer of the night, I pulled my gaze from the front door, tucking the empty bottle into the back pocket of some girl’s jeans. She turned around and laughed when she saw it was me.

I cupped and lit my joint, sucking on it as I watched the amber flickering under my nose. I passed the joint to Vaughn, releasing a plume of smoke and sinking back into the plush couch until it swallowed most of my upper body.

“Suck a dick,” I told Hunter, my voice hoarse from the smoke.

“Any tips from a pro?” he teased, mumbling “Sláinte” and knocking back a shot of something electric blue.

“Let me call your mom and ask,” I quipped.

“Friday is a busy night for her; better call Hunter’s sister.” Vaughn, who somehow still held the title of my best friend, had a profile like an eagle and a voice so low it felt like black smoke seeping into your ears. “Side note: Knight wasn’t looking at the door.”

I had been. But I was also high and drunk, and a little off guard. Nothing a few harmless flirts couldn’t fix.

“Sure, sure,” Hunter said in his Boston accent.

I pulled him into a headlock, messing his perfectly moussed, wheat blond hair.

There was just one crack in my unshakable, good-natured, billion-dollar smile, and hot-motherfucker-jock stereotype persona. A barely noticeable chip. You could see it from one angle. Only the one. And only when Luna Rexroth entered the room and our eyes met—for exactly the first half-second, before I rearranged my features back into my usual smug grin.

Other than that—as far as anyone else knew, at least—you couldn’t rattle me if you tried. And, seeing as I was an untouchable legend among the mortals inside the walls of All Saints High, many people did. Often.

Why I thought she’d be here was beyond my basic-ass logic. The shit I was smoking was obviously more powerful than a nice tall cocktail of bleach and antiperspirants. Moonshine didn’t frequent parties. She had no friends other than Vaughn and me, and she only hung out with us when we were riding solo, sans our harem of fangirls and shit-for-brains entourage.

Maybe I thought she’d come because summer break was crawling to its inevitable end. My eighteenth birthday had come and gone, and Luna was still dragging her feet about college.

Her dad told my dad he was trying to convince her to go to Boon College in North Carolina. It was highly populated with gifted students who had mild disabilities. She fit the profile perfectly. But she’d been accepted to Columbia, Berkeley, and UCLA as well. Personally, I found it damn near offensive she’d think about moving out of Todos Santos at all. There were a few academic establishments in San Diego, a stone’s throw away from us, that should do her just fine. Luckily, I knew Moonshine, and she’d never leave home, so it didn’t really matter.

“I’m in the mood for some ass.” Hunter slapped my thigh, probably sensing I was spending too much time in my head. He leaned toward the coffee table to grab his beer, elbowing Vaughn in the process. “You in?”

Vaughn stared at him blankly, as if the answer were obvious. With his icy, pale eyes and raven black hair, he looked like a dropout from a Twilight movie—a vibe a surprising amount of girls dug. More than anything, Vaughn had perfected the art of making you feel like a dumbass for asking him a simple question, the way he’d done to Hunter right now.

Fitzpatrick swiveled to me. “Cole?” He wiggled his brows.

“Bouncing chicks is my side hustle.”

That was my official statement, anyway. Also that I wasn’t hung up on Luna Rexroth, who’d friend-zoned me so fucking hard even my nocturnal emissions were platonic at this point.

Hunter, an Irish polo prince—too posh to play football like me and too remarkably untalented at anything to be an artist like Vaughn—put two fingers in his mouth and let out a whistle that pierced through the music. The guys around us clinked their beers, trying to bite down their excited grins. When we wanted a piece of ass, that meant they were in for a treat, too.

“Ladies, line up toward the entertainment room. Make it neat. No cutting in line. Chop, chop. If you’re lovely, daring, and willing, you’re an applicant we want to see. Just be sure to remember—we won’t call you tomorrow morning, won’t follow you on social media, and won’t acknowledge your existence in the hallways. But we will carry you with us forever, like hepatitis B.”

A herd of junior and senior girls scurried up the stairs of Vaughn’s mansion in pairs, whispering and giggling in each other’s ears. Vaughn threw parties every other weekend while his parents were in their Virginia castle, probably fucking the memory of their devil spawn out of each other’s minds. The girls lined up outside the entertainment room, spines rod-straight against the textured gray walls. The line started at the base of his spiral stairway, snaking all the up way to a heavy set of black doors.

Vaughn, Hunter, and I strolled past them silently, lit joints clutched between our teeth. I wore white, destroyed Balmain biker jeans and a shabby I Fucked Your Girlfriend and Didn’t Even Enjoy It tee that had cost me a grand, paired with vintage Gucci sneakers and a beanie I was pretty sure was made out of real unicorn fur or some shit. Vaughn still wore his painting attire and looked just a little dirtier than a third world-based hooker looking for her next fix, and Hunter was wearing a full-blown suit, bless his Great Gatsby, weird-ass heart.

Our names, moaned and whispered like a prayer among the buzzing girls, drowned in the angry tune pulsating against the walls.

“A Song for the Dead” by Queens of the Stone Age vibrated in my stomach as we glided the length of Vaughn’s hallway, which was complete with Gothic, high ceilings and giant paintings of his family members. It was actually creepier than a Stephen King book: Vaughn’s scowling face staring back at you, life-sized.

Let’s admit it, the fucker gave the Grim Reaper a run for his money in the menacing department. And he looked extra dead in those paintings.

Extra pale. Extra cruel. Extra Vaughn.

Since the girls couldn’t explicitly proposition us without staining their precious reputations—I’d always hated the double standard of guys are players, girls are sluts—they pretended to talk to each other, sipping their drinks.

We stopped to examine the line. The rest of the football and polo squad were behind us, loyal and on guard, like the good puppies they were.

I was captain of the All Saints’ football team, so I had that shiny quarterback title and shotgun rights. But Vaughn had the street cred of Dracula, and Hunter’s family was the fourth richest in North America, so suffice it to say, all our dicks were fool’s gold and had pussies in their cards tonight.

Hunter stroked his chin, making a whole show of it. Sometimes I truly hated him, but most of the time I was indifferent to his theatrics.

“You.” He pointed at a girl named Alice, with pixie blonde hair and huge hazel eyes. He curled his index, indicating for her to come closer. She exchanged looks with her friends, breathless giggles bubbling from her ample chest.

One of the girls pushed her toward us, whisper-shouting, “Oh my God, Al. Just go!”

“Take pictures,” a brunette coughed into her fist.

Hunter jerked his chin to Vaughn. The latter ran his arctic pupils along the line, careful and methodic. He looked like he was searching for someone specific. Someone who obviously wasn’t there.

“You’re choosing a fuck buddy, not a mortgage. Hurry up.” Hunter rolled his eyes, throwing an arm over Alice’s shoulder. She bathed in the attention, smiling up at him with stars in her eyes.

Vaughn ignored Hunter, as he did ninety percent of the people who talked to him.

I examined the line, my eyes settling on a girl named Arabella. She had huge blue eyes and tan skin. A senior, too. She reminded me a bit of Luna—when she wasn’t talking. But that was the thing about high school girls, wasn’t it? They always fucking talked…other than the one whose words I wanted desperately.

No. That one never spoke a word to me.

“Arabella, baby.” I opened my arms in her direction.

She unglued herself from the wall to strut toward me in her high, hot pink heels and black mini dress.

Vaughn finally picked a girl, though he was grunting like a caveman about it. I’d have made a mental note to ask him why, but Vaughn never talked about girls.

Or feelings.

Or, you know, life in general.

I wanted to tell him if he didn’t feel like dipping his dick in someone tonight, no one was forcing him. But clearly, that would have been hypocritical. Not to mention false.

We confiscated the girls’ phones before they walked into the room and dumped them into a fruit bowl outside the door, to be guarded by a designated freshman who wanted to fit in with the cool crowd.

What happened in Vaughn’s entertainment room stayed there, too. We weren’t bad guys, despite what people might have thought. We never spoke about the ladies who entered here—not between ourselves, and definitely not to other people. If the girls wanted to brag, that was their prerogative. But there were never any pictures, any vicious rumors, any drama. The rules were simple: you got in, you had your fun, and on Monday morning, you acted like nothing happened.

Because nothing really had happened, as far as we were concerned.

In the entertainment room, Hunter was full-blown fucking Alice against a pool table from behind while having a civilized, flat-toned conversation with her about her summer. He’d tugged her mini dress up and gone at it, barely even bothering to slide her panties aside.

Turned out she’d lost her virginity a few weeks earlier to some tool at Christian camp and needed a redo.

“I just want to come,” she whined.

“Then you’re not getting out of here until you do.”

Her fingers were buried in the holes of the pool table, her half-bare tits dragging along the green, fuzzy surface. Hunter smoked a cigarette, his eyes drifting to Spaced, a British comedy, on the huge, flat-screen TV in front of us while fucking her.

And they say guys are not good at multitasking.

Vaughn, who was obsessed with Spaced, stood against the wall, letting some chick I didn’t know suck his dick. Arabella stood next to me, waiting for some action, but I just propped my shoulder against the wall, angled in front of Vaughn, ignoring the girl on her knees between us.

“Hope she’ll go out-of-state,” Vaughn said, verbose, one hand holding the ashy hair of the girl beneath him, the other scrolling through his phone.

He didn’t have any social media profiles and was soundly against trying to impress anyone on purpose, just like me. I’d once caught him checking some chick’s Instagram, though he’d locked his phone as soon as I noticed. I never got her name, and it was pointless to ask.

Anyway, Vaughn was talking about Luna now, so that was my cue to check out. I hated talking to him about her.

“Haven’t you wasted enough years on this shit?” he probed, tucking his phone into his back pocket.

This shit? Oh, screw you, Spencer.

“Haven’t you?” I clipped through a locked jaw. “You hate girls so much you won’t even fuck them. Blowies are as far as you can manage without being repulsed by human touch. At least I’m capable of feeling.”

“I’m capable of feeling.” He lifted a cocky eyebrow, yawning. “Hate. Jealousy. Disdain.” He looked down at the girl bobbing her head up and down, the apathy in his icicle eyes confirming no one was home behind them. “Besides, unreciprocated love is like a nice Jag—one you have to carry on your fucking back instead of driving. Nice and shiny on the outside, but such a drag to manage by yourself.”

“Drop dead.” I smiled cheerfully.

“Eventually, and at least I won’t die a virgin,” he said blandly, running his paint-smeared, rough hands through the girl’s silky, clean hair just to taint it.

I was about to knock his lights out mid-blowjob when Arabella dug her fingernails into my neck.

“You look a little tense. Let me help,” she purred. “I heard you were a kinky bastard, Knight Cole. Care to compromise me?”

I’d yet to pay her any attention, let alone touch her. I wasn’t stupid—she wasn’t here for me. They all came here for the story. For the glory. It didn’t matter who got them in the door as long as they were chosen.

“Not in the mood. But…”

I grabbed her jaw and yanked her into my embrace. She moaned as I crashed our lips together, her grunt of pleasure swallowed in my mouth. Her tongue tried to pry my lips open, but I slammed them together, ignoring the wrongness of it all. I never, ever, ever kissed girls like this, but I was too stoned to care, and besides, my resolve was thinning after years of getting slammed down by Luna.

I smeared her lipstick like it was war paint, burying my fingers in her hair and messing it so it looked like she’d gotten fucked into the next decade. Then I pulled away, smirking down at her. Lipstick had smeared all over her chin, nose, and cheeks. I could only guess I looked just as wild.

“Maybe some other time?” Hope flared in her eyes, her smile drunk with newfound power.

“In a heartbeat, baby.”

Arabella got her story.

I faked mine.

Twenty minutes later, we ambled out of the entertainment room, heading down to wrap up the party. I made a stop in the kitchen to grab my sixth beer and found Arabella, Alice, and Vaughn’s piece leaning against the kitchen island, giving their exaggerated versions of what had gone down to their doe-eyed friends.

I knew my secret was safe with Arabella. No girl would admit that an All Saints’ legend hadn’t touched her after taking her to the room. Truth was, I didn’t want any of the other chicks to set the record straight either, and the only thing kinky about me was my fondness for watching breath-play porn (don’t judge).

I swung the fridge open and looked around for the Bud Light. I was still reeling from Vaughn’s comments about Luna needing to go somewhere else. Somewhere far. The notion that I could forget her just went to show he’d never been in love.

And then there was the other thing. The reason I’d drunk myself to near-death tonight. I searched the kitchen counter for vodka and took a generous swig before resuming my hunt for beer.

Dear life,

It’s cool. You can stop throwing shit at me. I’m already neck-deep.

Yours,

KJC

My mind had started doing weird shit shortly after Mom’s parents, Grandma Charlene and Grandpa Paul, died in a car crash and left Mom an orphan. That was five years ago. I didn’t care about my losing them; it was Mom’s pain that killed me.

That’s when I’d first started secretly drinking, and whaddaya know—I never really stopped.

“Supersized burrito huge, not even kidding,” Arabella exclaimed behind me, perched against the island and looking thoroughly fucked as she fanned her face dramatically.

She obviously hadn’t noticed me, or if she had, she knew I wouldn’t contradict her story.

“Too huge. At first I was like—how am I going to take Knight Cole? Am I even ready for this? But he ate me out for, like, thirty minutes. When his tongue ring hit my clit, I swear I started speaking fluent Swedish.”

Gasps, snickers, and intimate questions exploded in the room. I shut the fridge, turning around with a beer in my hand, and bumped into a small thing.

A small, tan-skinned thing.

With molten silver eyes and a constellation of freckles on her nose and cheeks—a map I knew by heart.

Luna Rexroth.

I could practically hear the chip in my mask cracking open before I cocked my head to the side, nudging the base of the cold bottle against her nose and watching a drop of beer sweat make its way from the tip, dropping to her luscious, full lips. I tugged at a stray curl that bounced over her eye in hello.

Luna Rexroth was beautiful. Sure. But so were a lot of other girls. Difference was, Luna carried her beauty like it was something borrowed. Carefully yet casually, not making a fuss about it. She wouldn’t stand in line for anyone, anywhere. She’d stand out, glowing with quiet pride.

Luna wore a white T-shirt rolled up at the sleeves, boyfriend jeans, and a pair of dirty, checked Vans. No evidence of makeup on her smooth face. Tragically, it only enhanced how much more beautiful she was than the other made-up girls. By the look on her face, I realized she’d been privy to the conversation going on behind me in the kitchen. She always gave me that disappointed look. That you-can-do-better-than-this look.

But I didn’t think I could. Because the best—her—was not available to me. She’d made it perfectly clear.

Three times, in fact.

Three kisses.

All ending in disaster.

Kiss Numero Unowas a bit of a stretch, even I’ll admit.

I’d been twelve, and she’d been thirteen. We’d been in a waterpark, behind a giant blue slide. We were laughing and splashing each other, and I’d just gone for it, the spontaneous fucker that I was. Up until then, the idea of Luna and me was, well, more of a fact. Roses were red. The sun rose in the east. A seahorse could move its eyes in opposite directions (Moonshine told me that herself), and Luna Rexroth was going to be my girlfriend, then fiancée, then wife.

Alas, she’d turned away and let out a little gasp.

Because she couldn’t—wouldn’t—talk, she’d just shook her head. Then, probably seeing the sting on my face, she’d melted, pulling me into a hug. Our hot skin had met almost everywhere. It was the first time I’d realized why I had kissed her.

Boner. I’d had a boner. Which was…not great.

Kiss Numero Dosoccurred when I was fourteen and had a pretty good grasp of the fact that my cock liked Luna just as much as the rest of me.

By then I’d learned a bunch of tricks to avoid attacking her with it, especially since we slept together every night.

I’d been a freshman, Luna a sophomore. I’d been gaining popularity at All Saints High thanks to my last name and ability to throw a fucking ball, which was something the rest of the football team wasn’t so good at.

Girls had been all over me, and I’d hoped Luna might’ve noticed all the notes that poured out of my locker whenever I opened it. We’d still been best friends. Nothing had changed. Well, other than me. I’d started to fill out my skin with muscles, and a few growth spurts had resulted in my reaching five-eleven seemingly overnight.

It had been nighttime when I’d climbed up to her window like I’d done every single night for years after our families went to sleep. When she’d opened it to let me in, I’d pressed my lips against hers, whispering, “Take two.”

Biggest fucking mistake I’d ever made. She nearly slammed the window on my fingers. It had grazed my nails before I’d pulled away. By some miracle I’d managed to hold on to her chimney, and it had taken Luna a second to realize what she’d done. Once she did, she’d pulled me back in and saved me from certain death.

That night, while I’d been pretending to sleep in her bed, she’d been for-real writing me a letter of apology, in which she’d explained that she loved me, but only saw us as friends.

This time, I’d accepted it. Not long-term, obviously. But I knew this was a Luna problem, not a Knight problem. I saw the way she looked at me when girls were around, when notes were passed to me, when my phone lit up with unanswered text messages.

There was hunger there. Desperation—that hot, green liquid that slithered into your soul when you watched something that was yours be admired by others.

And so, I continued to slip into her room every night. I got it. She needed time. Time? I had plenty.

I’d decided to show her I wasn’t some kind of obsessed stalker. That I was capable of moving on. To bring the point home, I’d stopped ignoring other girls’ advances. I’d started dating, texting back, and flirting.

I stayed closest to her, keeping my alliance firmly with the girl next door. But I also had a chain of girlfriends who came and went—a revolving door of glossy-lipped beauties who wore the right brands and said the right things. I paraded them around school and brought them over for family BBQs, expecting Luna to ease back into our friendship now that I wasn’t trying to suck her face every time she looked my way.

Ironically, that’s what brought on kiss number three.

Kiss Numero Treshappened when she was seventeen and I was sixteen. I call it The Kiss of Death, because the damage it inflicted on our relationship was huge. Even now, a year and a half later, I was still dealing with the echoes of its destruction. For instance, Luna before kiss number three would have told me she was coming to Vaughn’s party. Luna after kiss number three barely communicated with me about what she was doing or where she was going. We were still hanging out most days, but it had turned into a bad habit more than anything else.

Back to that kiss. I was fooling around with a girl named Noei at the time. But I’d still cleared the day for Luna’s seventeenth birthday. I’d bought us tickets to a museum, even though the carnival was in town, because Luna hated carnivals—and zoos, and Seaworld, and anyplace where animals were captured for human entertainment. I’d had it all planned out. Luna was a vegetarian, and a vegan curry place had opened in downtown Todos Santos, right across from the museum. I’d bought her a bunch of weird-ass shit from Brandy Melville and had a seahorse tattoo inked on my spine, hoping she’d get the underlying message: that she was my backbone.

Luna loved seahorses with a passion. They were her favorite animals—something about the male seahorse being the one to give birth… Mom gave me so much shit before she signed the consent for the tattoo, but she’d known it was a part of a bigger plan, so she’d let it slide.

And if that wasn’t enough, I’d made Luna seventeen different birthday cards, all the while trying to downplay my excitement that we were spending the entire day together.

The day had been pretty perfect, as far as birthdays go. So perfect, in fact, that when I dropped Luna back at her door, she’d taken my face between her palms and smiled up at me. I’d stared at her like an idiot, thinking, Should I or shouldn’t I?

Darkness had washed over our street. Our families had been inside, probably eating dinner. No one could see us—not that anyone would have cared. It wasn’t a secret I’d chop heads and bring down the sun for Luna Rexroth.

Still, I’d kept on staring at her, searching for the okay in her face. By that time, I was pretty damn good at recognizing the okay in girls’ eyes when I looked at them. But not with Luna, apparently. Every time her eyes said yes, the rest of her said no. I’d decided this time I needed more affirmation before I fucked everything up and earned an unfriendly visit to my house from Trent Rexroth, Luna’s dad, with his even unfriendlier baseball bat.

She’d pressed my hand over her heart through her shirt. It was beating so fast, I’d thought she needed me to squeeze it back into her chest. My fingers had involuntarily twitched against the swell of her breast. The hint of a puckered nipple under my palm had almost made my knees buckle.

Luna had worn thin sports bras. You noticed those things about a girl when you hung out with her all the time. My brain had short-circuited, refusing to come up with words to describe what was happening inside my body. I mean…

My.

Hand.

Was.

On.

Her.

Breast.

Why’d it feel so fantastic? In my mind, we were already fucking three times a day at that point. My morning jerk-off in the shower before practice, the rub-in after I got back from practice in the afternoon, and of course, the whack before bedtime to take the edge off prior to slipping through her window. I’d imagined us doing filthy things I was pretty sure Luna would never even think about, let alone do.

Meanwhile, in real life, I’d just nearly come from touching her tit. I’d been worried for my man card. Also: for my sanity when it came to this girl.

“Do you feel it?”she’d signed.

I’d squeezed my eyes shut and breathed slowly through my nose. Opened my eyes.

“I never unfeel it, Moonshine.” The words had come out laced with pain.

“Promise not to break it?”

Even my dumb teenage brain understood the magnitude of the situation. Never breaking our gaze, I’d put her hand on my own heart, so she’d know, without a doubt, she wasn’t the only one whose heart had a chunk missing.

“Promise.”

Luna had tipped her chin up, giving me the okayest-okay in the history of the goddamn word, and I’d gone for it, still half-expecting to wake up from the dream. And that was it. My lips were on hers. Finally. Consensually. This time, she didn’t pull away.

A low, guttural moan tore from my throat when our mouths met and molded. She’d poured magic into that kiss, and it had depressed me to know, after kissing dozens of girls before her, that I’d been right all along. My mom had said there were a lot of lids for every pot. But there was only one lid for this pothead. Luna.

Her lips had been soft, sweet, giving—like her. She’d smelled like coconut and ocean salt and pencil shavings. Like heaven. Her wild curls had framed both our faces. I’d wrapped a lock around my finger, and it had gripped me like a live wire. I loved her hair the most, because that’s how I recognized her in the hallways. Everyone else either had flat-ironed, thin hair or a tired, in-between mane that wasn’t straight or curly. Some wore theirs in doll-like, perfect ringlets held by hairspray that made them look like fancy divorcées. But Luna looked like nature. It was like kissing the entire fucking forest from our spot in the treehouse.

“Knight. Jameson. Cole!” A loud whine had cut through the air, jerking Luna’s body away from mine.

I’d twisted my head, still drunk from that kiss. Noei had been standing in front of my door, mouth agape, a hand on her hip, one foot tapping on the wide step to my door.

“I knew it! I just knew it! And with the school’s freak no less! I should’ve listened to Emma and Jacquie when they said so. You’re such a cheater.”

No. No. No. Just…no.

Pretty sure I voiced that aloud, because Noei had shouted, “Oh, hell yes!” and “I can’t believe you,” and “I thought you were the one.”

Which, honestly, would have been laughable if it hadn’t been for the unfortunate situation.

I didn’t even entertain the idea of explaining myself to Noei. We’d never been steady. I’d never called or texted her, though I had messed around with her in public every now and again. I’d explained to Noei that my situation was complicated. That I didn’t do relationships. That I had an endgame, and it didn’t include her.

“Moonshine, wait…”

I’d chased my best friend through the snaking, cobbled pavement leading to her doorstep. She’d moved quickly between the green hedges, ducking her head down so I wouldn’t see her face. She’d asked me not to break her heart, and I’d gone and done it, even before our kiss had ended. Frantic, I’d grabbed her wrist. She’d spun around, her waterfall gray eyes breathing fire I knew would leave blisters on my memory. I’d let go of her immediately. She’d raised her finger between us, warning me not to get closer, before launching into the longest speech I’d ever seen her sign:

“I love you, Knight Cole. More than anything. Maybe even more than myself. But I don’t trust you with my heart. And when you hurt me like this, I feel little and vindictive. So vindictive, you shouldn’t trust me with yours. Whatever it is, we need to kill it before it kills us, you understand? We can’t be together.”

“But…”

“Friends.”

She’d mouthed the word. I almost heard it.

“Listen, Luna, it’s not what you think.” I’d tugged at my hair so hard, it occurred to me I might pull it out completely. This was bullshit. I wanted to rip something apart. Maybe my own skin.

“Knight, no. Promise me.”

I’d turned around and stalked back home, and that had been that.

Then, I’d thought I couldn’t handle less than everything.

Now, I knew that when you’re left with no choice—you can handle it. It just hurts like a thousand bitches in heat.

“Moonshine. Can I get you a beer?” I blocked her way to the other girls in Vaughn’s kitchen with my huge frame, rolling my pierced tongue along my lower lip. Long gone were my five-eleven days. I was a little shy of six-three now, with the width of an industrial washing machine, hard and muscled head to toe.

These girls, they hated her. She’d hung out with Vaughn and me, the most popular guys in school, until she’d graduated. Spent summer vacations and trips to the Maldives with us and with Daria Followhill, the alumna Queen Bee of All Saints High. Luna was cool as shit by association, and fuck knows she tried hard not to be.

It didn’t bother me that Luna and Vaughn were tight. I trusted both of them. There was still a dull pang of pain every time she as much as breathed in the direction of a guy who wasn’t me, but I’d learned how to control it over the years.

Mostly.

Now, Luna flashed the girls behind me the middle finger. By their lack of reaction, they either didn’t see it or knew they’d never get away with answering her without feeling my wrath.

“What brings you to the lion’s den?” I brushed my scarred knuckle over her cheek slowly, watching in awe as goosebumps broke over her neck.

She took the beer from my hand, tilted it back to take a small swig, then pointed at me with the neck of the bottle. All eyes in the kitchen were on us, but I was used to the audience. Luna, not so much.

“Just make sure to bring him back in time for our round two!” Arabella barked, staking her claim on me tonight.

Her mini-dressed clones laughed like hyenas.

Luna gave her a hard stare, then pretended to shove her finger down her throat. I bit down a smile. Luna turned back to me.

“Spencers’ bedroom. Five minutes.”

The Spencers’ bedroom was soundproof, which was something Hunter and I gave Vaughn a lot of shit about. Didn’t make any difference that Baron was Vaughn’s dad—it still must’ve sucked to know someone was fucking your mom so hard she needed special walls not to wake up the neighbors.

Even though I couldn’t hear Luna’s tone, I knew she was pissed. I could read it in her delicate frown. Not that she had a case. Way I saw it, she’d rejected me—not once, not twice, but three times. What did it matter if I wanted to fuck every mouth in this room? We weren’t together.

“Wrapping shit and coming up.” I took a sip of my drink, turning around and slapping Arabella’s ass on my way to ask Vaughn for his parents’ bedroom keys.

I was being a little spiteful, but I gave myself some slack because of the extreme circumstances.

Right now, my breath was goddamn near flammable. Substance abuse ran in my family, so usually, I tried to limit myself to one joint and a beer at every party.

But usually I didn’t find out Mom was officially no longer a candidate for a lung transplant, which meant her team of doctors had basically given up on her.

Today, I did.

My mother was sick. Really sick. Rosie had cystic fibrosis. She’d been lucky to reach forty, let alone pass it by a few years. Recently, her treatments had become more intense, more frequent. She stayed at the hospital for longer periods of time. Sometimes weeks. Her lungs weren’t coping. The rest of her body wasn’t doing so hot, either. From the outside, she looked fine. Gorgeous. Vital. But inside, her liver and kidneys were collapsing. So was our family.

Frankly, I was surprised Dad hadn’t ripped out his own lungs and tried to shove them down her throat when he heard about it. It had sent me on a binge this evening, and I wasn’t completely in control of what I was doing. All I knew was I needed to numb the pain of Mom not getting her lung transplant and seeing her earlier, hunched over Dad’s office desk, crying.

Five minutes later, I pushed the bedroom door open, letting Luna in and locking it behind us. The Spencers had the wildest bedroom I’d ever seen. If Pimp My Ride and Buckingham Palace had a lovechild, it’d be this place. Royal navy drapes decorated floor-to-ceiling windows and a matching upholstered, California King bed filled the room. Everything else was in gold or deep, blood red, and there were self-portraits of the Spencer couple on the walls in sexy poses I was pretty sure we had no business seeing—the reason they locked this bitch whenever they weren’t home.

I watched Luna slump on their bed, looking up at the ceiling and making a snow angel on their sheets. She looked faraway. Spaced-out. Perching a shoulder against one of the posters of the bed, I watched her, already on the defense.

“Why do you give yourself to anyone who asks?” There was a snow globe of unshed tears coating her eyeballs when she asked this.

Interesting, coming from Luna, who’d gone to extreme lengths to ignore my antics with girls this past year, as well as the fact that there was a dick attached to me in general. I cocked my head to the side, inspecting her. I wasn’t an asshole—definitely not to her, and maybe not at all. But she was seriously overstepping if she thought she had a say in what—or who—I was doing in my spare time.

“Because I enjoy it.” I shrugged.

She gave me a you-don’t-look-like-you’re-enjoying-it glare.

“Jealous?” I smirked.

She rolled her eyes.

“There’s enough to go around. If this is a booty call, I’ll gladly pick up.”

No fucking way I was risking another blow to my ego—a fourth one—weeks before she started her college courses and could ghost me, even from across the street. I no longer had leverage on her. The All Saints’ hero everyone was afraid of but also admired had officially retired from protecting her at school. I needed to play my cards more carefully to keep her around.

“When did you become such a sexist jerk?” She narrowed her eyes.

“Right around the time I was born. It’s called being a guy.”

I was reducing myself to my reputation, something I knew she loathed. After all, she was the weirdo who wouldn’t talk. She knew that between the stigma and the person laid an open abyss, and in its depth, the truth.

“Don’t give me credit I don’t deserve. I work full-time for my dick and take orders directly from him,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood.

She snorted out a sarcastic laugh, shook her head, and swung her legs to the side of the bed, darting up and making her way to the door.

“Good talk, Knight.”

Whoa. Back. The. Fuck. Up. What?

She didn’t get to shut me down two thousand times and then get pissy when I tried to move on. Or pretended to, for that matter.

I clasped her wrist and turned her around so she faced me. “You came here to throw shit at me?”

There was some anger in my voice, and it made me furious with her. I tried so hard to accommodate whatever wish she had for us. When she wanted kisses, she got them. When she wanted friendship, she got that, too. What about what I wanted from her? What I needed?

“Because I have nothing to apologize for. If you’re here to pick a fight, wait till I’m done with the party. I’ll climb up to your room, and we can talk shit out. Oh, wait, that’s right. You don’t talk.”

“Shut up, dumbass. Shut up before you ruin eighteen years of friendship in one drunken night.”

Her eyes zinged with fury, and she shook my touch off of her arm. “Why wait?” she signed. “So you can squeeze in another girl?”

Her hands moved fast. Luna was still partial to not talking at all, even in sign language, so her Pissed-O-Meter was obviously dinging.

“Two.” I winked at her, knowing I would regret every single word that left my mouth, but somehow unable to stop myself. “I’m a hell of a multitasker, which is something you would know, if you weren’t such a fucking coward when it came to us.”

That was the beer speaking, not me. But let’s be real—the beer wasn’t wrong. I was team beer until the bitter end. Beer had more balls than I did.

I heard the slap before I felt it. It was the first time a girl had ever slapped me. Up until now, I hadn’t been a player, but the fucking coach. I’d abided all the rules of the game. I never led anyone on. With the exception of Noei, who simply refused to come to peace with my terms, girls mostly understood, even if they hated the fine print.

Luna took a step back, cupping her mouth. My gaze was hard on the wall behind her. I didn’t even rub my cheek. Whatever emotion it evoked in me, I didn’t show it. As I said—my mask was made out of solid gold. Nothing seeped in. Nothing poured out.

I was drunk, and scared shitless by Mom’s situation. Ruining one more thing about my life wasn’t going to make any difference. I sighed theatrically.

“Moonshine, baby, we’ve been through this. Next time aim for the balls. Quarterbacks are good at taking hits. Barely even felt it,” I said.

She raised her hand in apology, lowering her head and squeezing her eyes shut. Luna was the type of girl who never hurt a soul—the caregiver, the nurturer of the crew. Vaughn and Daria thought she was obnoxiously sweet, but I’d take her sweetness over their black hearts any day of the goddamn decade.

“Forget it.” I took her hand and kissed her knuckles. I was a fool for Luna Rexroth—incapable of being mad at her, even when she deserved it.

The horror of what she’d done still played on her face as she took another step away from me, the back of her legs hitting the bed. She wasn’t scared of me, I realized. She was scared she’d do it again.

“Why are you here, Luna?” I asked softly.

She swallowed, looking away out the window. The Spencers’ house was a dark castle, a large, ancient-looking property that stood out in the manicured neighborhood like a sore thumb. I wondered if Luna wanted to jump out the window, like she’d jumped in front of that car all those years ago. I also wondered if it really had been by accident that she’d pedaled straight into the car. For all our years of friendship, I didn’t know what she was thinking ninety percent of the time.

“I came to talk to you about college. I’m ready to make a decision.”

I nodded, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed. There was no fucking way she was leaving, no matter what her dad wanted. She hadn’t even left the neighborhood for a sleepover without her family. Was it sick that I liked her frightened? Sheltered? Closed-off? Because it meant having more of her, and less competition.

Yes, fucker. It is wrong on every single level, a voice in me confirmed.

Still, it wasn’t any less true. I thought Trent was insane for even suggesting an out-of-state college, not to mention pushing it down her throat about a week before she had to make a decision.

“So?”she asked. “What do you think?”

“UCLA online.”

Were we actually talking colleges right now? Our shit was faker than a Hooters waitress’ tits.

“They have a good creative writing program,” I continued. “Plus, you won’t have to leave, so you’ll be here with Racer, Edie, and your dad.”

And me.

She nodded, turning toward a window, placing her fingertips on the glass, staring out. She’d just slapped me, after accusing me of being a manwhore. But the truth was, I needed more than a crumb of jealousy to keep me going. I’d been shut down one too many times, and I needed her to throw me a bone with at least a bit of meat before I reassured her that, yes, I was the same pathetic bastard who had loved her from day one. That I wished I weren’t, but I was hers, whether I liked it or not. And fuck knows I didn’t like it anymore. Not for a while now.

“You’re drunk,”she accused.

I may have had a whiskey brain, but my dick, for all intents and purposes, was sober as a priest and admiring my best friend’s feisty nature.

“Okay, Saint Luna,” I threw Daria’s nickname for her in her face.

“Maybe you have an underdeveloped frontal lobe. That’s why you take so many risks.”

She was babbling. She hardly ever talked, let alone about fucking lobes or whatever it was.

“Thanks for the medical assessment, but I don’t think there’s one thing about me that’s underdeveloped. Of course, you would rather slap me around than find out, wouldn’t you? Anything but allowing yourself to fucking feel.”

My good-natured smile was on full display as I advanced to the door. I didn’t stop on the threshold like I’d wanted. The beer, or the joint, or whatever the fuck it was, took charge and told me Luna could use a taste of her own medicine. I breezed right back down to the party, my cheek still stinging from her slap.

Come after me, my heart begged. I need you. Mom feels like shit. I don’t know how long she’s got. I need you.

I looked behind me. Luna wasn’t there.

I grabbed Arabella’s ass as soon as I reached the kitchen, dragging her toward me and slamming my groin against hers. I was rock hard, mainly because Luna had touched me, but as I smirked down at Arabella, I realized that for tonight, she’d do.

“Someone’s ready for round two,” she hummed.

I leaned down for a pucker, showing PDA for the first time since…ever. I didn’t kiss girls in public. It was one of the many things I didn’t do in public to be considerate of a girl who couldn’t bring herself to tell me how the fuck she felt about me.

Vaughn and Hunter were right. I was possessed, and it didn’t matter that I’d grown up with her. I needed to come to terms with the fact that it was possible Luna and I weren’t going to happen.

I closed my eyes, and Arabella did the rest of the job. Our open-mouthed kiss was drowned out by the sounds of her squeaking friends, deafening music, and the squealing of Luna’s sneakers as she pushed past people on her way to the door.

I recognized the sound of her running away from me like it was my first language.

And I vowed, that night, to stop doing the chasing.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I slapped my forehead as I dashed out of Vaughn’s house, so embarrassed I wanted to throw up.

It wasn’t supposed to go down this way.

I was supposed to muster up the courage to go there and tell him I wanted to stay in California. So I could be near. Near him. And Rosie. And everyone I cared about.

I’d been waiting for him to bring it up all summer, but every time we talked about my college plans, Knight yawned his way into another what-are-we-eating question. There was an air of dismissal about his behavior that rubbed me the wrong way. Almost as if I was asking him if he thought I should become a space cowboy or unicorn vet—like the option of my going elsewhere for higher education was so farfetched, giving it thought was ridiculous.

He’d never once said anything about us. Maybe us didn’t exist anymore. Maybe he’d finally given up on the idea of us, and I had no one to blame but myself. I’d done this. I’d pushed him away.

What killed me the most was that deep down, I knew he’d been right. I hadn’t done my own thing my entire duration on this planet. I was frightened, dependent, and completely out of sorts whenever he or my parents weren’t around. I’d managed to sail through life with no friends—no human connections outside of him and our families, and minimum communication with the world. I was, for lack of better description, a glorified bubble girl. Knight was a friend, but he might as well have been my babysitter. So even though I was angry at him—for the one-night stands, for taking me for granted, for being right about my insecurities—I also couldn’t resent his dismissal.

I wanted to prove him wrong. To go to Boon, just to make a point.

We were growing apart anyway, going in completely different directions.

He was growing upward, in full bloom, while I was developing deeper roots, chaining myself in place.

Besides, what was the point of staying? We were never going to be together.

He was always surrounded by girls. Girls who were nicer than me. Who spoke with real words. Some of them even had great voices. Girls who wore makeup and trendy clothes and curled and flat-ironed their shiny hair. Girls who had sex with boys and knew how to use their bodies to seduce him.

Girls like Arabella.

Those girls were always going to be there, swarming around him, competing for his attention. I couldn’t imagine myself being with him without being eaten alive by the notion that my competition had more to offer. Problem was, not being with him hardly made any difference. Jealousy still wrapped its green claws around my neck and squeezed every time I had a front-row seat to just how enchanting he was to others.

Case in point, I’d slapped him after seeing him with Arabella. Shame and embarrassment flooded my cheeks with heat. I rushed through the Spencers’ front yard, skipping over people making out on the lush lawn. Twisting my head back to see if Knight was chasing me, I bumped into a hard chest. I stumbled backward, then looked up, and of course, it was Vaughn, propping a fresh keg on his ripped shoulder, his dirty black shirt riding up to expose his lower abs and glorious V-lines, peppered with red-lipsticked kisses.

Just your luck, Luna.

Vaughn shifted the keg to his other shoulder and gave me a light nudge back toward his door. His mouth, forever pressed in a disapproving scowl, twitched with a taunting smile.

“What’s the hurry, Rexroth?” He waited expectantly for my response.

Vaughn knew sign language and could read my lips and hands easily. All my parents’ friends’ kids had learned so they could communicate with me. Seeing as he made it a point to stress how little he cared for people in general, I was surprised Vaughn had made the effort. Then again, it was hardly an effort to him. One day his mother gave him an ASL book. The following weekend, he was fluent.

He looked behind my shoulder. I instinctively followed his gaze. Through the glass door to the kitchen, Knight stared at both of us, a beer in his hand, an arm draped over Arabella’s shoulder. She kissed his neck, dragging her hand past his belt and into his…I snapped my gaze back to Vaughn, squeezing my eyes shut.

“Oh, that’s the hurry,” Vaughn finished in his signature arsenic voice.

I wanted to throw up. I took a step sideways, trying to get around him, but he clasped my shoulder on a dark tsk.

“Now that the knight is not here to save his princess, let’s have alittle talk.”

He led me like a captured animal, his hand on the back of my neck—caught prey dragged through the savannah—until we were in his cobblestoned courtyard. He spat me out on a curved stone bench tucked into a darkened corner between the tall walls of his mansion, nestled between carefully clipped pink rosebushes.

The Spencers didn’t have a pool at their manor. Instead, they nurtured elaborate gardens that would leave Versailles’ landscape pale in comparison. But the absolute best thing about the Spencers’ estate was the heavenly slice of lush green grass with a white gazebo, surrounded by cherry trees their landscaper treated with hysterical delicacy.

Vaughn crouched before me, like a father figure would, not a friend. But he had never been either of those things to me. He was Knight’s cousin and best friend. His fondness of me—or lack of blazing hatred, more like—stemmed from familiarity and solidarity with Knight. We weren’t as close as people thought we were. I knew where his loyalties lay. He cared for me, but he’d tear me limb from limb if I hurt Knight, and would dump the rest of me like roadkill.

“You haven’t picked a college yet,” he pointed out.

I stared at him, waiting for the punchline. I felt like a punished kid under his scrutiny. Usually we only hung out when Knight was with us, and then Vaughn took his Vaughnness down a notch or two. Now we were alone, leaving him free to unleash the demons lurking behind his aqua eyes.

“Are you waiting for a special invitation from the Queen of England?” he asked in his usual aristocratic, flat-lined manner.

Privately, and only to myself, I could admit that Vaughn scared me. He seemed incapable of so many basic feelings. I’d never seen him cry, even though I’d known him since he was born. I’d never seen him laugh—fully, wholly, without abandon. He’d never had a crush, and he never spoke about, or to, girls. He was, in a lot of ways, like Lot’s wife. A hard statue, made of salt and stone, standing on a cliff, emotionless and proud after watching with glee as Sodom—or Todos Santos—was set aflame by its sinners.

I couldn’t answer Vaughn’s question without looking like a complete, pathetic lunatic.

I was waiting for Knight to tell me to stay.

I was waiting for him to realize I could do it.

I could move.

I could leave him.

I could, I could, I should.

Signing nothing, I fingered invisible lint from my crop top. Vaughn shifted his weight to his toes, leaning forward. He pinched my chin with his free hand, tilting my head so our eyes met. His pupils pierced through mine, rummaging inside the dark forest of my mind, turning every stone and tearing every tree in search of my secrets and truths. I wanted to blink, but didn’t want to cower in front of him like everyone else. So I set my jaw, staring at him, unblinking.

“What’s your game, Luna Rexroth?” he whispered.

Swallowing, I arched an eyebrow.

“Is it the power? Control? What’s your kick?” A cold, dead smile spread across his pink lips. “You’re never going to be with him. You don’t have the balls.”

Something deep inside me screamed at Vaughn to shut up. But I couldn’t deny the truth in his words. I had no plans to be with Knight. Not when he was with everyone else. Now Vaughn was clutching my jaw, no longer gentle, but far from the realm of hurting me, either. He touched me clinically. Like a doctor would.

“Move to North Carolina and get far away from here. Go to Boon, Luna,” he clipped. “End the fucking, never-ending shitshow of Luna Rexroth and Knight Cole. The cat is tired, and the mouse is diseased. It’s a fairy-tale love story that took many fucked-up turns and ended as a parody. I know the general assumption is I don’t have a heart. Perhaps it’s true. My brain, however, is fully functional, and I can see exactly where this is going. Save whatever’s left of Knight’s high school experience. He’s a senior now. Go to a place where you won’t shit on his parade every time he shows signs of getting over you. Let him move on with his life. As for you? Find out who you are. Live. Unchain yourself from your parents and him. It’s high time, Rexroth.”

“But I—“

He took my hands, drawing my curled fists to his chest and coiling his long, pale fingers over them. His chest was warm. I don’t know why it surprised me. He looked cold as a tombstone. I’d always thought of him as a cold-blooded creature. A brutal, callous crocodile.

“Stop,” he hissed. “You’re good, Luna. Anyone can see that from a mile away. You volunteer at shelters. You take care of your own. You’ve always done right by people. I bet if your shitty mom showed up, you’d give her a free pass, too.”

I winced at the mention of Val.

“He pities you.” He let the word roll across the ground. It exploded between us like a smoke bomb, and I found myself coughing. “By the same token, you should show him mercy.”

I couldn’t believe what Vaughn was asking me to do. Except I could. I was frightened that if I let my guard down and truly let Knight in, he’d use me and dump me, and there’d be no escaping him, because he was everywhere. We’d grown up together, and our parents were best friends. Our families were tangled like a tight French braid, with no beginning, middle, or end. And if I stayed, it would be more of the same: us circling around one another. Always in the same universe, never on the same planet.

Vaughn noticed the shift in my expression, a cunning smirk playing on his face. Boon College had a good creative writing program. He knew it was my passion and hit the final nail in that coffin.

“Artists are terminally dissatisfied. With life. With love. With their work. You like being tortured, don’t you, little Luna? Sadness has a bittersweet aftertaste. Keeps us going.” He lit up his joint. “Being an artist is a miserable job. You’re pregnant with your work, only to give the baby away. An entire year of careful strokes of a brush, just to have someone else buy the painting. You can be miserable anywhere, Luna. But Knight? Knight could be happy. Right. Fucking. Here.”

On one hand, I was scared to death. What if I was like the Bubble Boy of Houston? He came out of his bubble to be touched by his mother for the first time, only to die moments later. What if I couldn’t survive outside my bubble?

On the other, I wanted freedom. To make my own choices. Even if just to show Knight I wasn’t a permanent feature in his life, like a piece of furniture. And to shut up arrogant, awful Vaughn Spencer.

He was right, though. The only way to deserve Knight was to outgrow my need for him.

“Put yourself out of your misery.” Vaughn straightened up. His clothes were holed almost as much as his heart. “Because he never will.”

That night, Knight didn’t show up to hold me.

To protect me.

To save me.

The moon shone, peeking back at me, asking why?

I turned around, giving it my back, ignoring its invasive question.

The sun will rise tomorrow, I reminded myself. It has to.