My eyes popped open the second I heard him snicker.
I was so tired, but I still laughed.
I was pretty sure he said something else, but I had zero energy, I couldn’t even find it in me to overthink Rip being in the same bed as me or me telling him to give me a poke. I fell asleep instantly.
And I was pretty sure my dreams started up instantly too.
Maybe it was the stress of getting burglarized. Maybe it was my worry and anger over Thea… Maybe it was the fury that speaking to my dad fueled me with. Or my beef with Kyra now too…
But I fell into a dream that starred my dad in it. Again.
Some part of me knew it wasn’t real, knew that it wasn’t actually happening, but despite all of that, my panic felt real. Too real as it started off with Kyra saying she was hungry while we all sat in my bedroom while we worked on our homework. I made my way into the kitchen from the back of the house, grabbing two boxes of macaroni and cheese from the secret hole I’d cut into the sheetrock in my closet. I could hear my dad and the girls’ mom arguing from the living room, and I tried to rush—to somehow make the water boil faster so I could go back to the room—but it hadn’t happened.
Something broke in the living room, and I thoughthurry up.
But I hadn’t been fast enough. I was standing there when I heard, “What the fuck are you doing?”
I tensed. Shook. Wanted to throw up.
I don’t know what I responded with, but I was aware of what was going to happen before it did. I tried to wake up. Tried to force myself to wake up before… before… but I didn’t, and the metal was as cool as ever as it hit the base of my neck first, and—
I woke up with a gasp in my dark room. Woke up on my back with my entire body strung tight. Woke up with goose bumps all over my arms and my hands instantly going to my face to rub it.
It was just a dream.
I knew it was. I was fine. I was safe.
Something heavy landed on my stomach a moment before Rip’s voice pulled me even further back into the present with a rough, “Luna?”
Crap.
“I’m fine,” I whispered, hearing the lie in how my voice wobbled.
The mattress moved as I figured he rolled. “Bad dream?”
It was still so dark, we must have not been asleep too long, but I still felt guilty for waking him up. It was bad enough when it was just me. “Yeah.” I took a breath through my nose and rubbed my face again, my fingers trembling just a little but more than enough. “I’m okay. I’m sorry for waking you up.”
The warm breath on my upper arm told me he was facing me. “What happened in it?” he asked unexpectedly.
I held my breath, thinking over the details. It only kept the goose bumps on my arm for longer.
“You’re not the only one who knows how to keep secrets,” his voice rumbled.
I froze, staring blindly into the darkness. I had never told anyone about what happened the day before I left. Not even Lenny. Not Mr. Cooper. Nobody.
I hadn’t been in the middle of making macaroni for the girls like in my dream, but…
“Luna,” he said my name carefully.
I sniffed and reached back to rub at the nape of my neck, touching the spot that had never felt the same after that day.
“Baby, you cried out,” a sugar-sweet voice murmured a moment before what I knew were his fingers reached for my arm, sliding down it until his hand took mine and swallowed it whole. “Tell me what happened. It’s not real. You know it’s not.”
I took a breath through my nose, my nape itching again. “It was real, Rip,” I sniffed, feeling him squeeze my shaking fingers.
“Somebody do something?”
I tried to rub my fingers over his rough ones.
