She gestures toward a high-top table full of empty shot glasses and a couple of full cocktail ones, causing more of the drink in her hand to spill over the edge. I reach out and gently take it from her hand while guiding her to the table and set it down. Luna turns into me and tosses her arms up and around my neck and sags against me.
“Wanna dance with me, Tor? I used to love to dance. The last time I danced… I thought it was going to be the start of something amazing. Turns out… nope.” Her voice is sad and wistful.
I slide my arm around her waist to anchor her against me and drop a kiss on top of her head. My heart aches for her.
“I’ll always dance with you, love, but why don’t we go somewhere else to do it? Somewhere less crowded?”
Her head drops against my chest and she rubs it against me in a nod, so I lift a hand to a nearby waitress and hand her enough money to cover Luna’s tab. She stays pressed against me as I guide her through the crowd and out into the parking lot to my car. When I reach to open the car door, she spins away from me and dances to the front of the car, humming a familiar tune that I can't quite place. She sways to the song and tilts her head back to stare up at the dark sky. Her boots scuff the pavement, causing her to stumble against the hood of the car, and she huffs out a small laugh before hopping up onto it.
I move to stand in front of her with a frown. “We should get you home, love.”
Her broken gaze meets mine and one side of her mouth quirks up.
“Love. It’s nice that you call me that. Even if it doesn’t mean anything. All the people who loved me are dead. They took all the love with them when they left me here all alone.”
I step between her legs and pull her against me, fighting off the tears that want to form at her broken words. I know this feeling so well. After my mom died, I felt the same way. Add to that the rage of my father’s hand in her death, and I could barely function. Losing her parents hit me almost as hard. I miss them every day, but right now my own grief needs to take a backseat to hers.
“You’re not alone, Luna. You have us. Gigi. You have me. We all love you.”
Her eyes are empty as she shakes her head. “I can’t feel that. I can’t feel anything, Tor.” She slides her arms around my neck,her lips an inch from mine as she whispers, “I just want to feel something. Please, Tor, make me feel something?”
Her lips slide against mine before I have a chance to process what she’s asking for but my hands know what to do as they slide up her thighs and around her hips to pull her body tighter against mine. Her fingers sink into my hair and pull as she runs her sweet tongue over my lips, begging for me to open for her. My heart takes over any thought of pulling away, even as my head knows this isn’t right. She’s drunk and in so much pain, but I know this pain too - and for a brief moment I want to forget as well. I run my hand up her back and cup her head tightly. My lips part and slant over hers again and again, deepening the kiss as our tongues slide against each other. I lose myself in her sweetness and groan when her hips lift to grind against my dick, searching for…
“Get a room!” Rings out into the night as a group spills out of the bar behind us, laughing and cat-calling. I pull my mouth from hers as guilt floods into me and stare down into her hazy green eyes. Her little pink tongue licks against her bottom lip and my cock throbs, but I try to step back from her. Her hands in my hair tighten and her eyes fill with even more shadows.
“No, please, I need more,” she begs.
I suck in a breath of cool night air and pull her against my chest in a tight hug.
“I… I can’t, love. It wouldn’t be right. I’m sorry, Luna. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I’m sorry for not being able to give her what she needs. Sorry for this cruel world that has taken so much from her, from all of us. I hold her like that until her fingers loosen from my hair and she goes limp against me. I lift her from the hood and gently get her buckled into the passenger seat. I can’t give her what she wants tonight, and she is so drunk I don't know if she'll remember this, but I will. That sweet, pain-filled kiss will hauntme with all the dreams of what could have been if we weren’t all so broken.
I carry her into the house and lay her on her bed. Reid comes in and helps me untie and remove her boots and then crawls up beside her to gather her sleeping body into his arms. I pull a blanket over both of them and settle into a chair beside the bed. I can’t give her what she needs but I can stay here so that maybe we can both feel a little less alone.
Chapter 16 -Gage
The four of us are watching a baseball game on TV. Normally, we would be cheering, shit-talking, groaning over bad plays - but it doesn’t feel right to make such noise in this grief-soaked house. It’s been just over a month since the accident and we've moved in to stay with Luna. My grandfather encouraged me to leave the farm to live here with them all. Things have been more peaceful there for the last few years since I cut my dad off completely and Gramps banned him from coming out to the farm. Last I heard, he’s living with some woman near Lethbridge.
All of us are haunted by grief but day by day, it gets a little easier to take a breath. For all of us except Luna, that is. She seems to disappear into her pain a little bit more every day. At first, I thought she might be getting better, adjusting, but now I’m more worried about her than ever. Last week she screamed at Julian when he tried to comfort her and just a few days ago, Torrin brought her home, passed out drunk, after she went out to a bar without telling any of us.
I look over at my friends and see how each one of them is suffering. Julian’s jaw is clenched so hard I worry for his perfect, rich-boy teeth. Reid keeps scrubbing at his arms and twitching as he writes in his journal. Torrin keeps rubbing between his eyes as he tracks the play on the screen. There’s a suffocating tension in the air. It feels like we’re in a holding pattern right now, just waiting for the next shoe to drop, and there’s nothing any of us can do to make this better. Time is the only thing that will help and I’m not sure even that will help Luna at this point.
Reid’s head jerks up and swings to look behind me just before I feel cold fingers brush across my neck from behind. I force a smile when I see Luna looking down at me from behind the couch, even though I want to frown at the state she’s in. Dark purple bruises line her eyes from lack of sleep and stand out even more from how pale her skin has become. Her lips quiver into a soft smile, but her eyes are empty and glazed as they lift from mine and look to each of the others. She moves slowly behind each of us and runs her hand over each of our shoulders as she passes. When she gets to the end of the couch, she looks over her shoulder at us with a faint smile.
“Thank you for being here for me.”
And then she floats from the room like a ghost.
My hands form fists at how helpless I feel to help her through this. I know the others feel exactly the same way but we all turn our gazes back to the game to try and blunt the anger, pain, and helplessness we all feel. I fight the urge to go to Luna, lift her in my arms, and hold her until she heals. Tell her how I’ll give her all the love she will ever need to fill the hole inside her right now. I know that won’t help but I wish it would. I wish I could.
Reid drops his journal and pen and scrubs up and down his arms and then shoots to his feet.
“What? What’s wrong?” Jules asks him.
Reid shakes his head. “I don’t know. This day feels wrong. My skin, it feels too tight. It just feels wrong.”
His eyes are darting from place to place like he’s searching for something he’s lost, and then his head jerks to the left toward the hallway that leads to some of the bedrooms. A low whine escapes from his throat.
