Chapter 12 - Mars
Torrin's shirt fits me close through the shoulders, and I button it up in his room while frustration eats at me. A hot shower and clean clothes should feel good after the week I've had, but none of it matters, because I still haven't gotten one single minute alone with her.
And now I'm being shipped out to a farm for half the night with Gage and Tor, away from her, again. It's only been a few hours since I swore to myself that I'd never put distance between us that I didn't have to.
My jaw aches where I've been grinding my teeth. Every time her eyes pass over me downstairs, they do that thing that guts me, that flicker of confusion chased by distrust. This is the same girl who used to light up when I walked into a room. The pain of knowing I’m fully to blame for that change stabs deep.
I need to get her alone. Then I need to explain everything, all of it, the whole ugly truth of why I walked.
After that I'm getting on my knees to beg that girl to forgive me, and I will stay down there as long as it takes.
The guys aren't going to make it easy, and honestly, I get it now.
It took me all day to see the shape of how things are now, but the picture has filled itself in, one dropped detail at a time.
Luna teasing about all the laundry on Reid's bed. Jules and Gage heading straight to bedrooms that had their showers and clothes in them and the new dog treats every one of them as if they’ve always been here.
Then there's this room, Torrin's room, with two years of a life in it, books doubled up on the shelves, photos pinned to the mirror frame.
They live here. All of them live here together in her house, and going by the pictures, they've been here since right after the funerals.
It was a gut punch to realize that the four of them have build a whole life with my girl.
They circled her when the world took her family, and they never left.
Every protective look, every intercepted conversation, every time Gage plants that big body between her and me, it all comes from the same place.
I hate it and I'm thankful for it. God knows I'm glad that they stepped up when I stepped out.
She had four good men watching over her through the worst thing that ever happened to her, and I will owe them for that until I die.
But gratitude only stretches so far, and I'm not going to let them run interference between me and her for much longer.
Two years changed a lot of things, but it didn't change the one thing that matters.
That's my girl down there. Whatever wreckage I left behind me, I'm going to find a way to earn her back.
The door opens and Tor comes in from the hall bathroom in a pair of boxers, towel around his neck, moving slowly with that scraped-hollow exhaustion he keeps pretending isn't there.
"Look, I know everyone's dealing with a pile of shit right now.
" The words come out of me before he's even reached the dresser.
"But I need to talk to her. I need to explain everything to her, and it can't keep waiting behind ash clouds and body disposal and farm runs.
I'm not going with you and Gage tonight. I'm staying here."
He doesn't answer me. Instead, he drops the towel, pulls on a shirt, and steps into his jeans, all of it unhurried, all of it silent. The silence gets heavier the longer it stretches. Finally, he turns, crosses his arms, and hits me with a look so dark it doesn't need volume behind it.
"As long as we're clear on what you need." Each word comes out measured and cold. "Fuck what she needs, right? Your needs come first. Glad to see at least you're staying consistent."
The hit goes straight through the center of me, and regret and shame flood in through the hole it leaves. I can't find a single word to put up in my own defense, because there isn't one. He watches me not find it, and then he keeps going.
"That's your fucking problem, Mars. It always has been.
You made her trauma all about you, and now you're standing in my bedroom doing it again.
" His arms drop and he steps closer, and tired as he is, wrecked as he is, there's steel all the way through him.
"Well, fuck you. You don't get to come first. She comes first, every minute of every day, for all of us, because that's what love is.
I don't give a damn about what you need or what you want.
If she comes to you, then fine, that's her choice and I'll respect it.
But I'm not going to let you heap two years of your baggage on top of what she's already carrying, not yet.
Not until we're settled and safe. Not one day before. "
He scoops his boots off the floor and walks out, and the door doesn't slam, which is somehow worse. I stand there in his clothes in his room in her…their, house and run the gut check he just handed me.
Every word of it was right. That's the part that burns.
For two years I told myself that leaving was for her.
The truth I've only just gotten strong enough to admit is that it was for me.
It was my guilt, my punishment, my inability to sit at that table and look at the empty chairs.
Making her loss about my penance was bad enough, and here I am planning to make her healing about my forgiveness, and Torrin saw it in under a minute.
I make the vow again, and this time I make it right.
I will show him, the others, and her that I'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe and protected, even when the thing she needs protecting from is me.
If that means shutting my mouth and hauling boxes until she comes to me, then I'll haul boxes.
Should she never come at all, I'll protect her from a distance for the rest of my life and call it fair.
I head downstairs on that resolution, and it survives about four seconds of the kitchen.
Light floods the whole main floor, harsh and white and pulsing, and in the middle of it, Luna is burning bright enough to bleach the color out of everything.
Her breath is tearing in and out of her in shallow, ragged gasps, her head shaking and shaking.
Around her, Gage, Torrin, Jules and Reid press in with their hands up and their voices low and colliding.
Four big men are trying to reach her at once and getting nowhere.
Everything I just vowed on the upstairs goes red hot.
Her power is spiralling out of control and none of us really knows what it can do.
It needs to be contained in case it isn’t just light, in case it can also be a weapon. This, this I can help her with.
The shadows come to me in an instant. They pour out of me and across the floor to push the guys back with a wide sweep of darkness.
Then I'm through the gap and the shadows come up behind me in a curved wall.
They wrap around the two of us until the kitchen is gone, and there's nothing left except the dark surrounding us and Luna glowing in the middle of it.
"Breathe, baby, breathe." I take her shoulders, and her light beats against my hands with actual heat that somehow feels cold.
Outside the wall, muffled and furious, the guys are shouting my name and hammering somewhere against the dark.
I'll pay for this in a minute, and I don't care.
"Come on, little moon, breathe with me now, in and out, nice and slow. "
Her breath keeps shredding, and her eyes are everywhere and nowhere. I cup her face in both hands, tilt it up, and make her find me, and the terror filling those green eyes guts me.
"What is it?" My thumbs stroke along her cheekbones, catching wetness. "Tell me so I can fix it, baby. Whatever it is, I swear I'll fix it."
"They're lea-ving a-again." The words ride out on a gasp, hitching, and her hands come up and fist into my borrowed shirt. "They're all leaving me again. Everyone leaves me, and I can't, I can't... I can't do this again! Please, please stop leaving me."
Then she dissolves, sobs breaking her next words apart into pieces too small to carry meaning, and the guilt doesn't stab me, it slays me, because I taught her this.
Her parents and Atlas left her in one single night, and I hammered that lesson home by leaving too.
I looked at this girl at her lowest and I walked out the door, and I taught her that people who say they love you leave.
Now she's falling apart in her own kitchen because we were going to drive to the farm for a few hours.
I wrap her up and hold her against my chest, her light soaking through the dark around us. She gets the minutes she needs, and I take a few for myself, until my own voice will come out steady.
"I promise, Luna." My lips move against her hair.
"I promise you, no one is going to leave you again.
Not them, and not me. I made such a huge mistake, and I'm so sorry.
I know words are never going to be able to tell you how sorry I am.
We can talk about all of that later, whenever you want, or never, that part is yours to decide.
But I promise you, from right now, we all stay together.
Every trip, every plan, every mile, together.
I promise, and the others will promise too, and I'll make sure of it. "
Her sobs wind down slowly, her breath evening out against my chest. When she finally lifts her face, her tear-soaked eyes come up to mine and the glow bleeding off her skin dims, softening from a blaze down to a shimmer. Hope rises in me so fast it's dizzying.
Then she pushes back out of my arms, one step, two, three, and stops.
Those few steps put a mile between us. I watch it come into her eyes as the softness closes over and her guard goes back up. When she speaks, her voice is hoarse from crying but completely steady.
"You've made and broken promises to me before, Mars. I’ve lived through what that costs." She swipes the heel of her hand across her cheek. "Keep your promises to yourself because I don't fucking believe you anymore."
Every word stabs into my heart but I stand there and take it, because taking it is the only thing I can do to start making it up to her.
I watch as she lifts her hands and light pools into her palms, gathering strength, bright and liquid. She waves them at the wall of darkness wrapped around us, and my whole understanding of this new magic I have tilts sideways because her light, it wipes my shadows away.
She doesn't fight them or burn through them, she wipes them, cleanly and effortlessly away.
The kitchen and the shouting and four furious faces come rushing back in as my darkness dissolves under her light.
I thought I had control of those shadows, that they would only answer to me, but I was very wrong.
They just answered to her without asking me at all.