But mostly, maybe I just felt overwhelmed at how empty I had felt for so long. Of how much I had wanted things to be different. Of how much I had suffered from yearning for things that I had never been given.
It could have been any of those things and all of those things.
I’d felt lonely on and off for so long, the reminder that my little sister was finally leaving me soon hit me like a wrecking ball straight in the chest.
I wanted love, and even after all these years, I had found it, but I hadn’t.
I was almost twenty-seven years old and I was still looking. I hadn’t stopped wanting it after all this time. Here I was, not able to hug my sister because I was worried I wouldn’t recover if she didn’t let me. Because I had two other sisters who had pushed me away out of anger years ago, and I had never been able to get over it. This was who I’d become because of them.
I hated them.
I stood there, and all I could do was suck in a breath that sounded almost like a gasp.
I had never in my life done anything malicious just for the sake of being an asshole. I had sacrificed for my sisters. I had busted my ass for us, day after day. I had tried to be a good, decent person because that was who I wanted to be.
And here were these people who had treated me like total shit my entire childhood, trying to do the same thing after so long.
I hated them. I hated them so much I couldn’t catch my damn breath. I couldn’t catch my own freaking breath because of them.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I hated myself too for letting my stupid cousin get to me now.
I didn’t see Rip’s eyes as they sliced over me, and I didn’t watch as that hardened, rough expression turned into one that was still hard but surprised. I would never see the way his head reared back, his chin tipped down, and his nostrils flared.
“Luna…”
I grit my teeth as tears bubbled up into my eyes all of a sudden, but I made myself look up at him. I wasn’t ashamed. I wasn’t ashamed about any of this. All it did was piss me off.
I was choosing to be happy. I was choosing to be happy every day for the rest of my life, and nothing and nobody was going to take that away from me. No freaking way.
But why couldn’t things have been different?
“You all right?” he asked, still taking his time with his words, his expression seeming like this mix of horrified and shocked as he watched me.
“Yes.” I bit my cheek and then shook my head immediately afterward. “No.”
Those eyes sliced to somewhere behind me for a split second before returning to my face. That foreign expression disappearing into that mean-muggin’ Rip face that was my favorite. His chest expanded with a big breath, and he was totally serious as he asked, “Want me to go whoop his ass?”
“Yeah.”
One of his big feet moved.
“But don’t.” I reached up to wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand, thankful I’d worn waterproof mascara and put a setting spray on my face that morning just in case. I knew better than to let this get to me.I knew better.I was better.
“Luna….”
I wiped under my eyes with my index finger and felt a shudder go right through me, violent and uncomfortable, starting at my shoulders and making its way down, and just… sucking. Just sucking, sucking,sucking. Had it really been that much to ask for, for things to be just a little bit different? To just come to a funeral and get through it without a reminder of what I had grown up around and tried my best to move on from?
I knew I had lost my damn mind when I asked him in a voice that wasn’t totally steady, “Give me a minute would you?”
He didn’t even think about it. “Sure.”
I licked my lips.
When I had been a teenager, I had wondered what things would have been like if my mom hadn’t died giving birth to me. If she would have been a better mother than the only one I had grown up knowing. I wondered if maybe our dad would have been different.
But as I got older, I realized that things might have been worse.
I had to accept I would never know how differently things might have been.
