Chapter 20 - Luna
Kara is lounging on my bed, flipping through a glossy fashion magazine and hums in approval when she finds a style she likes and then makes a note in her phone. It’s been a week since I came home from the hospital, and she still hasn’t gone back to school. As much as I love having her here, the guilt of what I did and how much damage it caused everyone adds to the suffocating weight of grief I carry. The new therapist I see every day now is helping with it, but it will be a long time before the guilt and the shame I feel goes away. The guys are walking on eggshells around me and I just want to scream that I’m fine, even though I’m far from it.
Gage and Torrin look at me with haunted eyes. Reid is almost afraid to talk to me at all, and he looks at me with so much sorrow that it practically chokes me. I can barely stay in the same room as him. It hurts so much. And Julian? I can almost taste the rage that boils off of him whenever he looks at me.
I let out a frustrated breath and toss the book I’ve been trying to read down. I’ve read the same damn paragraph five times and I still don’t remember what it’s about. Kara looks up from her magazine and arches one perfect blond brow at me in question.
“Speak,” she orders, but I don’t really know what to say so I just stick my tongue out at her. She hits me with her trademark icy look but I’m immune to them by now. “Luna, you will not sit there and stew on whatever you’re thinking. Your therapist has literally been drilling that into your head for the last week. You need to get all of it OUT so it doesn’t boil over and…”
“I know! Jeez! It’s not that easy. It’s going to take me time to get used to that.”
She sets her magazine down and reaches for my hand with an understanding look.
“Trust me, I know how hard it can be to open up.” She looks down for a minute and then meets my eyes again. “You can tell me anything. I’ll be your personal judgment-free vault.”
I breathe deep and then nod, swallowing past the knot in my throat.
“I’m… I’m embarrassed and angry and so fucking sad that I did what I did. That’s not who I am. It's not something I would have ever thought I would do. I was just in such a dark place in that moment, and all I could think of, all I wanted, was to go be withthem. I know my parents and Atlas would hate that I did that. I hate that I did that! I… I won’t ever do that again, I promise. How… how do I tell the others that and make them believe me?” I yank on the end of my braid and knock my head back against the headboard. “The way they look at me now? I can’t stand it. I just want to scream at them to stop looking at me like that and I know it’s not fair to them but… urgg! I just need them to stop.”
Her fingers squeeze mine.
“Have you told them that?” I wince and shake my head. “Well, that would be a good place to start. Giving them an idea of where your head was at, then and now, would probably help a lot.”
I scoff. “Maybe for Torrin and Gage but Reid…? God, Kara, I did some major damage there. And Jules? Pretty sure Julian hates me now. He's so damn mad, I can feel it coming off of him.”
“So let’s get him a cape, and then he can be super mad. Those are his issues he needs to deal with. It’s not fair for him to put them on you.”
“I appreciate that but I need to fix this with them so we can move ahead.”
Despite her words of support, her hand pulls away from mine and twists the other one in her lap, making my stomach sink.
“Kar? What is it?”
She shakes back her long blond waves and sniffs before finally looking at me with shadowed amber eyes that match her brother’s perfectly.
“I’m going to share some things with you that really aren’t mine to share, but I think if you knew it would help you to understand.” She shifts on the bed so she’s fully facing me. “When Reid was thirteen… he also tried to end his life. Julian found him and got the bleeding stopped in time. It was a very dark time for all of us. The hospital locked him in the psych ward for three days while they evaluated him. By the time they released him, he was a ghost of who he was. It was two years before he would talk about why he did it and what happened during those three days.”
My heart breaks even more as the guilt of putting him, them, through that and all the traumatizing memories it must have brought back overwhelms me. I drop my head into my hands asa sob rips from my throat. Never have I needed my mom more to wrap her arms around me and tell me it would be alright. Kara pulls me close and does exactly that. I’m so grateful that she can even stand to be in the same room as me.
My voice is a harsh whisper as I tell her, “I’m so sorry, Kara. I’m so sorry I put you through that.”
She pulls back and lifts her hands to wipe the tears from my face.
“No, let that guilt go, babe. You had no idea, and it wasn’t about us anyway. It was about you and what you’re going through. All that matters now is that you find a better way to process your grief and heal. That’s all any of us want for you. The reason the guys are acting like that is because they’re scared. They made a promise to take care of you, protect you, and they feel like they failed.” She laughs. “You know how guys are, they think everything is about them!”
I give a half sob, half laugh at her trying to lighten the moment and swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand.
“I guess I need to go talk to them, see if we can turn the corner on this somehow.”
She jumps up and reaches for my hand. “Just remember? You’re not alone. I’m… no, we… are all here for and with you.”
Chapter 21 - Torrin
“Fuck you, you pretentious asshole!”
I run into the living room to find Julian and Luna facing off. Julian has that dick smirk on his face and Luna looks like she’s ready to take a swing at him if he says one more word. So of course he does.
“Stop being such a fucking child. It was a joke.”
