I needed to leave.

That much was clear. Not because I didn’t want to demand the entire story behind Josh, but because I knew I was not in any condition to have a conversation with anyone other than a trained assassin, to get rid of Josh. Josh. With his fucking generic name. Josh.

Joshua.

Jesus.

Fuck.

Leave, Knight. Leave. Otherwise, I would lose my shit, and there was no way of knowing what I’d do. I would never hurt Luna physically. But I didn’t trust myself not to say something that would bury her. I didn’t trust myself not to tear her fucking house down, brick by brick, and ruin everything in her life like she’d ruined me. But I couldn’t go downstairs and dash out the door like some damsel in distress. She didn’t deserve to see the devastation on my face when I finally got the wake-up call.

Ring, ring!

“Hello, who is it?”

“Reality. Guess what, dumbass? Luna isn’t different. She just didn’t want your sorry ass that way.”

Feeling pathetic, and subhuman, and half-functioning, I did what I’d done a thousand times before: I opened her window and slipped out.

The words chased me all the way up to my room.

Miss you.

Can’t stop thinking about our night together.

Thank you for the most precious gift.

Slamming the door didn’t help. The text messages seeped through the crack. I could still see and feel them on my eyeballs. My phone started buzzing.

Luna: Knight?

Luna: Where are you?

Luna: Did you go back home? Why?

I paced back and forth, running my fingers through my hair, tugging at it until I felt chunks of it ripping out. Calm down, fucker. Calm down. My body was sizzling with adrenaline, and I knew once I crashed, devastation would take its place. But first, I was going to explode. And I couldn’t explode on her. No matter how much I hated her right now. How much I wanted to smash her fucking heart for doing that to mine.

A few minutes later, Luna put two and two together.

Luna: Oh God.

Luna: I’m so sorry.

Luna: I didn’t want you to find out like this.

Luna: What business did you have looking at my phone?

Find out? Find out what? That she had a boyfriend? That she’d moved on? That she was in fucking love? That while I’d been waiting and pining and agonizing for eight years—since age ten when Lilith Blanco slipped me a note asking to be my girlfriend, and I’d told her it would never be serious, because all the parts of me she wanted already belonged to Luna Rexroth—she was fucking another dude in college. I turned off my phone, stuffed it into my duffel bag, and threw my door open.

“No visitors,” I barked. “And no questions, either.”

Dad yelled at me not to yell. Mom coughed that I was her favorite psycho, and she was here if I needed to talk. Lev was in his room across the hall, probably with Bailey on the phone, listening to her bullshit ballerina stories.

She is friend-zoning you, bro. That’s where your dick goes to die. Break the cycle before Bailey finds herself a Joe or Josh or FUCK.

The doorbell rang on cue, and I heard Dad telling Luna I was under the weather.

Damn straight I was under the weather. I was so far down under the weather, I was in goddamn hell. It was hard to make out Luna’s reactions, because it was in sign language, but Dad kept telling her he was sure everything was okay, and I was a moody sonovabitch, and she should enjoy her time in Todos Santos and not worry about me.

Ten minutes later, I heard scratches outside my window. I was still standing with my back to it, staring at a wall, wondering if it was wood or concrete, and calculating the odds of breaking all my fingers if I punched it.

The scratches turned into knocks.

“Go away.” My voice was too husky, even to my own ears.

I didn’t turn around, because I knew if I did, I’d see her face, and she’d disarm me from my anger. She turned me down three times, slapped me for messing around with other girls, then slept with some douchebag. I had every right to be furious, and I was done being the understanding, designated BFF.

Good thing she didn’t get us friendship bracelets with hearts and unicorns. I’d probably wear that shit, too, just to see a smile on her face.

Another knock on my window.

“Not fucking interested. You’re mute, sweetheart. Not deaf. Even that isn’t real, though, right?”

I began to stuff my gym clothes into the duffel bag just to do something with my hands. What the fuck was I saying? I couldn’t even control the bullshit leaving my mouth. I already regretted it. It was a low blow, no matter what she’d done. As far as she could tell, I’d fucked the better half of the town, in several positions, so I got it—the hypocritical angle. Thing was, I didn’t care.