He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jorts, shoulders hunching like he was embarrassed. “After everything was finalized with Arthur’s house, every penny from that land deal went here. To places that could actually make a difference. In your name, Luna girl. Because that’s what you deserved all along. Not secrets. Not pain. A legacy.”
Tears blurred the words on the page, spilling faster than I could catch them. “You did this... for me?”
“For you. Always for you.”
“But your debt? How could you?—”
“I’ve got a job with Ledger. I start in a month. Working with kids... doing something real. I’ll save up, I’ll figure it out. This was never about me. It was about you.”
I shook my head, clutching the paper tighter against my chest. “I cannot accept this. I can’t— Jer, it’s too much.”
“You have to.” He cupped my face. “Youhave to,because it’s already done. It’s yours. Your name’s on it. This is me, this is what I can give you.”
The sob that tore through me sounded like anger and heartbreak tangled together. “Why are we like this? Why are we always so hot and cold? Why can’t it ever just stay good between us?”
“Because we’re scared. Because we’ve been broken so many times we don’t know how to exist without the cracks showing. But maybe—” His thumb brushed the tears on my cheek. “Maybe this time we stop running from it.”
The first time Arthur touched me like that, the world stopped making sense.
I remembered every second of it in sickening detail—the way the floorboards creaked when the door closed behind him, the way the smell of whiskey clung to his breath, him pressing me down when I tried to wriggle away. His voice telling me not to make a sound. And then nothing but pain—stretching, tearing, burning pain that made my lungs seize in my chest.
When it was over, he left like it was nothing. Like he hadn’t just shattered me into a girl I wouldn’t recognize in the mirror anymore. The room—the special room he said was mine—felt like a cage closing in, so I stumbled out into the night air, clutching the torn strap of my nightgown. My legs wouldn’t move right. My skin burned all over. I couldn’t even cry properly.
The cornfields behind the house stretched wide and endless. I pushed myself between them until the world blurred. The dirt was cool when I fell to my knees. I dug my fingers into it, wishing I could bury myself whole. The damp earth smeared across my palms, but nothing could scrub him off me. Nothing could undo what had just been done.
“Luna?”
The sound of my name snapped me upright. My chest seized with panic—I thought it was him coming back—but then I saw a boy’s silhouette in the moonlight. Skinny, small. Messy black hair sticking up, like he’d been tossing in bed.
Jer.
He stopped when he saw me on the ground. I tried to hide my face, tried to curl in tighter, but he was already moving toward me.
He didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t ask why my dress was torn or why my legs were shaking or why I looked like I’d just been split in two.
“Hey,” he said softly, dropping into the dirt beside me.
His voice cracked, the way it always did when he was nervous, but his hand—small and awkward—reached out anyway. He hesitated only a second before pulling me against him.
I collapsed into his chest, my face soaking his shirt, the sobs tearing through me now that someone was holding me. His arms were bony, not strong enough to stop anything, but he held me like he would’ve fought off the whole damn world if he had to.
“You’re okay,” he whispered, rocking us both even though he was trembling himself. “You’re okay. I got you.”
I wanted to scream that I wasn’t okay. That I was ruined. That something had been stolen from me that I’d never get back. Yet, all I could do was cling to him, the one piece of safety in a night that had left me wrecked.
“You’re my best friend.”
I tilted my head up, and he was looking at me like I was something precious. Like he didn’t see the dirt or the tears or the brokenness. Like he didn’t see what Arthur had done to me.
He saw me.
I curled tighter into his chest, letting his warmth anchor me while my body shook itself to exhaustion. I fell asleep in his arms in that field, his shirt damp with my tears, his small body curled protectively around mine.
He never knew what really happened that night. He couldn’t. But he gave me something Arthur could never touch. Jer gave me safety.
57
jeremy
