Chapter 21 - Torrin
“Fuck you, you pretentious asshole!”
I run into the living room to find Julian and Luna facing off. Julian has that dick smirk on his face and Luna looks like she’s ready to take a swing at him if he says one more word. So of course he does.
“Stop being such a fucking child. It was a joke.”
She lunges for him, fist first, and I manage to snag her around the waist and haul her around before she connects with his face.
“Whoa, whoa there!”
She thrashes in my arms but I hold tight and carry her from the room and out to the garage, putting a solid door between them.
When I set her back on her feet she whirls around and starts yelling.
I let her rant and rage about what a dick Jules is and just nod along.
This is part of the process. We all took a turn with her therapist to get the advice we would need to help her.
This is the anger stage of grief. She’s been snappy and pissy over nothing this last week and it’s no surprise that it was Jules that finally pushed her to the breaking point.
Even after she apologized and shared where her head was at when she tried to overdose a month and a half ago, he’s never treated her the same.
Where they used to banter back and forth and dish out shots at each other in a teasing way, all his shots now have a slight edge of meanness to them.
They really need to sort their shit out, but that isn't going to happen when she’s like this.
Luna finally runs out of angry words and stomps across the garage to where we have a gym set up and kicks at the punching bag in her fury, giving me an idea that might help.
“Hey, you used to do PX90 with Atlas, didn’t you?
” I ask her as I walk over to the bag and give it a swing.
She’s still steaming and doesn't answer, just glares at me and gives a sharp nod. “All right, slugger. If you’re going to hit something, hit the bag.” I toss her a pair of gloves to put on.
“We’ve all wanted to punch Jules out at one point or another but this won’t break your hand doing it.
Just picture his face on the bag and go to town. ”
Her fingers tighten around the gloves as she turns her glare to the leather bag.
I hold my breath, hoping this might be an outlet that could help her if she just tries.
I let it slowly leak out of me when she pulls the gloves on and uses her teeth to tighten the straps.
Then I step out of the way and take a seat on one of the weight benches as she takes her first punch.
She does a few kicks in between punches as she warms up to it.
At first, she just grunts through the punches and kicks but the more she hits, the more ragged her breathing gets, and she starts to spit out words.
“Fuck you. Fuck you!”
Hearing the garage door open has my head whipping in that direction. I throw up a hand and flash a stern look at Jules so he doesn’t say a word. His eyes track back to her and narrow.
“You fucking lied to me. All your promises were lies.” She half sobs with the next hit.
“You left me! You weren’t there. I needed you and you fucking left m-e!
” Her voice fractures on the last word and her swings get sloppy and loose as she pours her pain out onto the bag.
I think she’s finally letting out her anger at her family dying but her next words have me sucking in a sharp breath.
“Where were you? Where are you? I hate you. I fucking hate you!” She slumps against the large bag and sends a pitiful hit at it.
Her voice goes soft and broken and desperate.
“You promised me! And then you ran away!” She slides down to her knees with her forehead pressed against the bag as sobs overtake her and in a broken whisper says, “You lied to me, Mars, and I’ll never forgive you. ”
My eyes dart to Julian but he’s already backing away and disappearing into the house, letting the door close quietly behind him.
I leave her there, giving her the privacy to mourn something I don’t understand.
When I step into the house, I pull my phone from my pocket and scroll through my contacts until I find him.
My finger scrolls back through all the texts he’s never responded to since he disappeared that night from the hospital. And then I type.
I don’t know what happened between you two. Today I watched her break - again. But this time, it was over you. Don’t ever come back here Or I’ll kill you myself