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“I don’t ever want to go to their stupid Thanksgiving dinner again anyway,” I cried, the area around my eyes stinging from all the tears I’d shed. “Or Christmas. I don’t care if we never see them again!”
I lay in my bed, Mom rubbing my back.
“Luna…” Mom said. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do mean that!” I sat up, my shoulders shaking. “If they never want to see us again, then fine, I never want to see them again either! Because if they don’t love Dad, then I don’t love them!”
“This isn’t about love.”
“Yes, it is!” My voice came out pinched from the snot clogging my nose. “Dad loves them, and he’d never abandon them.”
“They’re not trying to abandon him.”
“But they are! And they want us to abandon him, too!”
“Luna…”
“They said if we visit him, we’re not welcome to come over anymore!”
“People have strong convictions,” Mom tried to explain gently. “And sometimes, they want to take a stand. I know this is hard to understand when you’re nine, but…”
“It’s not hard. It’s simple. They said they loved him, but now they don’t. No one does.”
I never realized how cruel people can be. I never wanted to leave my bed. I never wanted to go to school, ride my bike through the neighborhood, or see anyone ever again.
Except my dad.
“Their love was never real,” I cried. “I trusted them with my whole heart, Mommy. Everything they claimed was a lie.”
I hated that another tear broke free; those people didn’t deserve my tears. I bet they didn’t even think of us anymore.
“I feel alone because I know I’ll never be able to trust anyone again.” Trusting meant surrendering to complete vulnerability, and I’d been so vulnerable and out of control for most of my life that I didn’t have the strength to endure it again.
It was as if you fell off a horse and crushed every bone in your body, suffering agonizing pain that was so intense, you just wanted to die. After years in the hospital and rehab, your body was a severely weakened version of what it once was—and it would never be the same again. To be brave, you were told to get back up on that horse.
But you vowed to never put yourself through that torture again.
“I know myself, and I’ll never be able to fully trust someone,” I said.
“Maybe it’s worth trying.”
The truth was, I wanted Hunter more than I’d ever wanted anyone before, and pushing him away before we even had a chance twisted my insides with barbed wire. But starting something wasn’t fair to him. I knew my limitations, how I’d never be capable of fully trusting him, and without trust, a relationship was doomed. He didn’t deserve to get hurt by me.
“I tried once, in college.” Out of desperation and loneliness, I’d tested the waters by forcing myself to go on dates with a guy and then forcing myself to keep dating him, even though my insides were crawling with mistrust. I thought maybe I could push past it because I was so damn lonely. But I couldn’t push past it. Finding out he cheated on me was merely the icing on the cake—my test had failed.
“What did he do to you, Little Leopard?” Hunter asked as his muscles tensed.
The flashback punched me in my gut.
“It’s over!” I grabbed the takeout containers I’d surprised him with because the thought of the two of them having a meal that I bought? Made my skin crawl. I’d suffered enough humiliation, walking in on my boyfriend with another woman, thank you very much.
“Fine,” he snapped, following me into his living room, still naked. Still excited from being inside of her. “You’re too fucked in the head to have a normal relationship, anyway, what with your psycho dad’s DNA.”
I refused to show him the lump in my throat had grown tenfold, so I stormed out his front door and slammed it behind me.
When I walked past his unlocked car, I told myself people say terrible things they don’t mean when they’re in an argument. And that a noble person would keep walking. Leave it there.
Guess I wasn’t very noble, because as the first tear broke free, I hid the contents of our meals—two fish entrées—under his seat. A littlefuck youbomb, if you will, waiting to explode with the gut-wrenching smell. Not my finest moment. But a girl can only get run over so many times before she lashes out.
