What?
“Her front door,” he repeated, like I’d literally asked the question out loud. “She said her place got broken into, but there was nothing wrong with it. I’ve seen places that got broken into, Luna; it didn’t look like anybody had fucked with her shit. The doorframe was intact. She had an alarm system, for fucking sake.”
It took me a second to process his words. Tothink.
But when it came down to it… he was right.
There hadn’t been anything wrong with the front door. I had rung the doorbell. I had knocked on it. Banged on it. And she lived on the third floor. How would they have gotten in unless they went all Spiderman and climbed up the balconies, but for what though? To get in through the sliding door? All that effort to steal a thousand-dollar laptop, which I didn’t even think was that expensive in the first place? Wouldn’t they have broken into more apartments to make it worth it?
Rip grumbled out as I sat there. “I’m just sayin’. It doesn’t add up.”
Huh.
Huh.
He had a point.
And that point made my ears buzz. Because something hadn’t felt right about the entire thing, but I hadn’t been able to pinpoint what or why. I had just thought it was Thea acting weird, but it wasn’t.
Or maybe I just wanted to assume that was it.
I didn’t expect her to be my best friend, but I hadn’t taken her to lie to me either, not after everything we had been through together. But she had. For whatever reason, she had started lying to me from the moment she had moved out of her place and not told me.
…maybe even before.
That betrayal felt worse than anything else. Why would she make something like that up? Had someone broken into her place after all?
I wondered if Kyra knew something was weird with Thea. I doubted Lily did.
For once, I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was… think about it.
And feel disappointment.
It was that disappointment that robbed the words from my throat for a long time after that.
* * *
“Thanks,”I mumbled to the receptionist after settling my bill for the doctor’s visit, an hour and a half later.
The woman reminded me again, “The pharmacy will have your prescription ready in about thirty minutes.”
I repeated my “thank you” before escaping through the door that led into the waiting room, where I found Rip. He was sitting sprawled out in one of the chairs, arms crossed over his chest, basically bursting out of the poor seat. For a second, I wondered what his couches at home looked like; then I told myself to stop. He climbed to his big feet and looked me over, like I’d have a sign on that gave my diagnosis. “Ready?”
“Yeah,” I told him, giving him a smile that was only partially forced. I wasn’t mad at him for bringing up Thea’s… thing, but it weighed heavily on me. So heavy I really didn’t know what to say to him. What to think, more than anything.
I rarely let people hurt me, but Thea not being honest with me… it hurt more than it should. I mean, hadn’t I lied to enough people over my life to be an enormous hypocrite over someone doing the same thing to me? I knew the answer to that. My lies weren’t always white.
I needed to snap out of it though.
So I balled it up and set it aside. For now.
I was fine. I was loved. I had everything.
Just not my sister’s honesty. And possibly her loyalty.
Andthere I went again.
“I’m okay,” I made myself tell Rip as we walked out of the office and down the hall toward where he’d parked his truck earlier. “They did an X-ray. The doctor says everything is fine, but I’m just a little banged up.” I kept thelike I told youto myself. “He called in a prescription for me that’ll be ready in half an hour, but I don’t see a point in getting it. I won’t take it.”
