Until I did.
I couldn’t even find it in me to be ashamed if Rip knew that part of the truth I had tried so hard to get away from.
“It used to be Miller.” I tried to keep from making it seem like it was something I had tried to hide. Even though I had. “According to my birth certificate, my mom’s last name had been Ramirez, but when I changed my name, I didn’t want to choose anything that any of them might think of. You know Mr. Cooper’s first name is Allen, and I thought Luna Allen sounded like a nice name.”
The lines at his forehead and along his mouth got even deeper, and I couldn’t miss the way he shook his head slowly, thinking who knows what. The skin at his cheeks changed color and got… pink? Why?
“I changed it eight years ago,” I explained to him, glancing out the window to look through the side mirror again. More people exited the building, but none of them looked familiar.
I wondered if my dad had already gotten to whatever car he was now rolling around in, without me noticing.
“Mr. Cooper and Lydia drove me to the courthouse two days after my eighteenth birthday so I could start the process. They paid for the filing fees. The judge eventually granted my petition, and… I changed it,” I explained, still looking through the side mirror, the pain behind my eyeball still sharp. “No one but my sisters, the Coopers, and now you, know I changed it.”
The breath Rip let out was low and long, and the leather creaked as he shifted around.
I was a coward and didn’t want to look at him. “Did you see it on the news?”
He didn’t respond. The leather just creaked more, and the next sigh he let out was even louder than the last one. The deepest one I had probably ever heard from him.
Out of the side mirror, I watched a hearse pull around to the front of the building and a police officer appearing out of nowhere on a motorcycle.
It was time to go.
To go and see my dad, whose smallest offense had been selling drugs. The man who I would have forgiven for doing that, if he’d just been a decent person. If he’d just been… different.
“If you don’t want to go to the burial, I understand,” I found myself telling Rip as I fought the urge to scrub my face with the palm of my hand.
There was another sigh—not as deep but still off—and then he said, “We can go.” The words had barely come out of his mouth when he started the truck and then put it into drive.
I could feel the wheels in his head turning. Could sense his tension. I didn’t like it.
Did he think…
“I’m not… like them,” I told him, just in case he was thinking that I was. I was reliable. I had never actually liedtohim before. I hadn’t stolen a single thing in years, and even then the stealing I had done was subjective. At least I thought so. “I’ve never done a single drug in my life. I rarely drink. I would never do anything to hurt anyone at the shop or anywhere else, even if they deserved it.”
His scoff almost made me jump. His fingers flexed on the steering wheel for what might have been the hundredth time since he’d picked me up. “That’s not what I’m thinking.”
I held my breath and kept on looking at him and his facial features, but they didn’t give a single thing away. “It’s not?”
Rip scoffed again, shaking his head while his attention was on the other side of the windshield. “You’re a good girl. Everybody knows that.” He paused and a muscle in his cheek twitched.
“Nobody’s fucking perfect, Luna, but I know a good girl—a good person—when I see one.” His breath was more of a sigh. “And you are. I’m not about to start a fucking tally with you about the shit we’ve done in the past. I know you’re not like… them in there.”
My nose tingled, and I didn’t… I didn’t want to talk about those things I’d done. “I haven’t seen them since I left when I was seventeen,” I rushed out. “I told you, I’m not… it’s complicated. We don’t… like each other.”
A line had somehow formed while we’d been talking, following the hearse that had just driven off. Rip squeezed the truck in between a Chevy Impala and a small Toyota pickup. I looked behind me to make sure that it wasn’t anyone I knew in the truck.
I wouldn’t put it past the cowards I called my family members to do something stupid like accidentally run a light or look down.That’swho and what I was related to.
Crap.What the hell had I been thinking? I had no business being here.
Yes, you do, Luna. You have every right. You think they were close to Grandma Genie? You think they’d be here if there wasn’t some other motive? They never do anything unless they can get something out of it.
People don’t change.Well. Most don’t.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I told him. “I guess I’d hoped that they wouldn’t come.”
He didn’t say anything. He just drove, and as the silence stretched, all I could do was stay where I was and, after a moment, look out the window. The ache behind my eyeball got worse as we drove on.
