Chapter 14 - Luna
The slam of my bedroom door is still ringing through the house as I stop in the middle of my room, close my eyes, and just breathe.
In for four, hold for four, out for four.
My hands are shaking, and my skin is still warm from the light that spilled out of me.
The anger and panic that tore through me downstairs are both still circling, looking for somewhere to reattach.
I breathe through them anyway, the old exercises rising up from two years of practice, and slowly, the circling stops.
I need to get control of this, because there's no way we can live a life where the guys never leave my sight again.
Supply runs, and a hundred other necessary things are coming, and I cannot white out every single time somebody reaches for their keys.
My reaction wasn't logical, and it wasn't reasonable.
Knowing that changes nothing about how completely it hijacked me, which is precisely the kind of thing I'd bring to my therapist. A dark little laugh slips out of me at the thought.
It would be great to squeeze in a session right about now, but something tells me Dr. Patel is busy at the moment, what with the end of the world and all.
A few more deep breaths settle my chest, and then my door opens without a knock, because Kara has never once knocked in her life.
She steps in, closes the door behind her, and studies my face for a long beat, cataloguing whatever she finds there, and then she gives one short nod. "Are you good?"
"Yes, no, I don't know!" My hands fly up on their own. "I don't know what to do, Kara. There's no way I can have a panic attack every time one of them leaves my sight. That's not a life, that's a hostage situation, and I'm both the hostage and the kidnapper."
Kara lifts one shoulder in an elegant shrug. "Okay, then, pick your flavor. Do you want oh sweetie, or do you want listen bitch? Because I can go either way, and I'm equally gifted at both."
A laugh huffs out of me at the choices she’s giving me. "Let's go with listen bitch, because I don't think we have time for the soft sweetie approach right now."
"Alright then, bitch it is." Kara lifts her chin, crosses her arms, and stares down at me with the cool, polished expression she usually saves for rude waiters and men who man-splain things. "Get the fuck over it."
I blink at her, and she keeps going, every word deliberate.
"Yes, you've had important people leave and never come back, and it's incredibly tragic, and it would scar absolutely anybody.
Nobody in this house is saying otherwise.
And yes, all the guys left, and something horrible happened, and you spent a week alone in the dark with it.
But they came back, Luna. Every single one of them fought and clawed and swam and walked through hell to get back to you.
The real question isn't whether they'll leave, because life is going to make them leave sometimes whether any of us likes it or not.
The real question is, do you trust them?
Do you believe, all the way down, that no matter what this broken world throws at them, they will keep fighting to get back to you? "
My eyes squeeze shut, and I make myself sit with the question instead of flinching away from it.
The proof marches through my head one face at a time.
Gage fell out of the sky and walked a week through hell.
Reid and Jules crossed a drowned city and a thousand kilometers.
Torrin drove home from Winnipeg through the end of the world.
Even Mars, two years late, still came back.
Every road led here, and every single one of them pointed themselves at me and refused to stop.
I open my eyes and nod, slow and sure. "Yes, I do."
"Then there's your answer, and there's your job.
" Kara's voice gentles without softening, which is a trick only she has ever managed.
"Stop guarding the door and start trusting the people walking through it.
Believe in them and then fight just as hard to stay with them as they fight to come back.
That's the deal now, and it's the whole deal. "
She crosses the room and takes both of my hands in hers, thumbs pressing over my knuckles, and her cool expression cracks open into something raw and real.
"I don't know what's coming, Luna. None of us do.
But from everything Gigi told us at that table, it's going to be brutal, and it's going to test every person in this house.
I think all of us, every single one, are going to have to dig deep, lay our baggage and our traumas down at the door, and find whatever strength is buried underneath them, because that's the strength we're going to need if we're all going to survive this.
We don't get to carry the old wounds and the new world at the same time. They're both too heavy."
The words settle into me, and they fit so I square my shoulders under them and feel a small smile forming.
"So, what you're really saying is... stop being a pussy and deal with my shit?"
Kara's head tips back on a full, delighted laugh.
"Oh my God, when you give up the no swearing thing, you go all in!
There's no gradual descent with you. It's straight off the cliff to truck driver levels.
" We're both laughing now, the good kind we've needed for days, and it takes a while for it to wind down.
When it finally does, Kara tucks a white streak of my hair back behind my ear and lets her hand fall, and her voice drops with it. "I have to ask, what's the deal with Mars?"
The knots come right back. "Honestly, Kara, I have no clue. I don't know what he's doing here or why he came back after two years. He keeps trying to get me alone to explain but I don't think I'm ready to hear it."
"Well, that’s part of getting over your shit so we should go." One perfect eyebrow arches. "Because he's about to tell all of them downstairs. Gigi cornered him with a serving spoon, and that man is not leaving that kitchen until he explains himself."
My heart kicks hard. Two years of wondering, two years of building walls around the question, and the answer is happening one floor below me whether I'm ready or not.
"Really, right now? Then I guess I'd better go hear this for myself."
We slip out of my room and down the stairs on quiet feet, and Kara's hand finds mine on the way down. Downstairs we stop in the living room, out of sight of the kitchen, because Mars is already talking, and his voice stops me where I stand.
"...the night of the accident, I told Atlas about Luna and me."
Every muscle in my body locks. There it is, out loud, in my kitchen, the secret I have carried alone for two years, and my lungs stop working.
"About you and who?" Gage asks in a stunned tone. "You and Luna were together? The two of you were together, together?"
"Yes. We were just getting started but it had been building up for awhile.
" Mars's voice is surprisingly steady, every word clearly rehearsed a thousand times over the last two years.
"I never told any of you because of the way we all treated her like she was off limits, the untouchable little sister of our best friend.
But we were serious. That night, the night of the accident…
I told Atlas about us. I told him I loved her and we were going to make it official, be something real. "
Beside me, Kara's grip crushes my fingers, and her wide eyes swing to my face. She mouths, You and Mars?, with a look of pure disbelief. All I can do is nod once, and her arm comes around me and pulls me into her side.
"He flipped out." The steadiness in Mars's voice starts to fray.
"Atlas told me I wasn't good enough for her and that I didn't deserve her, and we went at it, a full screaming match right outside the arena with their parents waiting in the car.
Then he got in the car with them, and I watched him tear out of that parking lot, reckless and furious, and I knew he was behind the wheel, and I knew I was the reason he was upset.
I stayed behind, told myself I'd give him space, let him cool off.
That we'd make it right in a few days." His breath drags in, audible from a room away.
"But then the call came, and they were just gone. "
A single no starts somewhere under my ribs and grows louder, because that's not what happened, and he doesn't know that's not what happened.
"That’s it. There's the explanation everyone's been waiting two years for.
" Something in his voice finally breaks.
"I lit the fuse. Atlas drove off furious because of me, because of what I wanted, and he's dead, and their mom is dead, and their dad is dead, and how the fuck was I supposed to stay?
How was I supposed to stand at those funerals and look her in the eye when I'm the reason her whole world died?
I wanted something I didn't deserve, and Luna paid the price for it.
Her family paid the price for it. So, I took myself out of her life, because after what I cost her, my face was the last thing she ever needed to see again. "
The living room tilts around me. All this time.
The words keep repeating, useless and looping, all this time, all this time.
Two years of empty chairs and unanswered questions, two years of hating him for leaving, and he wasn't running from me at all.
He was running from a crime he never committed, dragging a debt he never owed, and nobody ever told him, because nobody ever knew there was anything to tell.
My feet are moving before my brain finishes the thought.
The kitchen goes silent when I step into it.
Every face turns toward me, and they read whatever’s on mine and move out of my way without a word.
Jules steps back, Reid pulls Torrin aside, Gigi's hand rises to her mouth as tears start tracking down her face, and a path opens straight through my family until there's nothing between me and Mars.
He watches me come with everything he just confessed sitting wide open in his eyes, braced, and the pure devastation in them takes my breath away.
Two years he's been living with this inside him.
He spent all that time punishing himself for the deaths of my brother and my parents, convinced he killed my world, serving a sentence in some self-made prison all alone.
I stop in front of him, reach up, and cup his cheek in my hand. His body shudders at the contact.
"You're such a fucking idiot, Mars." The whisper comes out thick with everything crowding my throat. "Atlas wasn't driving when the accident happened. None of it was your fault."
His face goes blank, and then it goes to pieces.
The sob that rips out of him doesn't sound human, and his knees give out all at once.
He crashes down in front of me with his arms wrapping around my waist and his face pressed hard against my stomach.
My hand on his cheek slides into his hair as the sobs keep tearing through him, two years of them breaking loose in great heaving waves.
He clings to me hard enough to bruise, and I hold his head against me and let him pour it all out.
My own tears burn and blur, but I blink them back, looking up over his bowed head at the ceiling. Through all the grief and the pain crushing my heart, one thought rises up over all of it. Stupid fucking boys.