It’s like I blink and sophomore year is over.
It’s been a chaotic semester, to say the least. With everything that happened with Amelia and Cass and Dylan and the accident… Yeah, it’s safe to say that we’re all glad that summer has finally rolled around.
I’ve got grand plans to spend the entire thing at Serenity Ranch. I was a little hesitant at first when the opportunity was first presented—I usually spend half of summer break working and the rest of it in New York—but Ma and Jackson joined forces and insisted.
And because Ma’s paintings have been selling pretty steadily lately so money isn’t as much of an issue, and because I’m physically incapable of saying no to my boyfriend, I relented. I’m glad I did because God, am I excited. Jackson is too, as is at least one of his sisters; I’ve been getting ecstatic messages from Eliza for weeks.
I’ve been back to the ranch a few times with Jackson over the last few months. My visits are frequent enough that the kitchen cupboards now have a designated tea section and everyone has started referring to Clyde as my horse. I even managed to earn myself a pair of cowboy boots. It makes me all fuzzy and tingly just thinking about it. It feels like I’ve been accepted into a club, indoctrinated into the tight-knit Jackson family and I fucking love it.
A knock on the door distracts me from my daydreams about summer. An excited squeal escapes me as I rip the front door open and reveal my mom on the other side. She squeals back, embracing me in a solid hug, squealing again when I slap her on the arm. “I was supposed to get you from the airport!”
“My flight landed early and I knew you wouldn’t be ready.” Ma eyes my robe and slippers combo pointedly. In my defense, her flight wasn’t supposed to land for another half an hour. And I was only going to leave another fifteen minutes after that because God knows she likes to dawdle.
Regardless of her spending a needless, extortionate amount of money on a taxi, I’m happy to see her. By some grace of God, our schedules finally aligned and a free weekend opened up for both of us so, at long last, Ma used the tickets Jackson got her for Christmas. The sneaky bastard bumped her up to first-class too without either of our knowledge, which probably explains why Ma looks all refreshed and glowy and not at all like she’s just spent half her day traveling.
“Where’s the boy?” Ma asks as she sets her bag down, peering around the tiny apartment like Jackson might be hiding in some nook or cranny.
“At the stadium. He’s got a game tonight.” The game might be hours away but Jackson’s pre-game ritual starts early. Like Cass does that weird hand signal thing with Amelia, Jackson has his own routine. I’m not exactly a fan of spending practically an entire day apart, but who am I to mess with his mojo?
Eager blue eyes dart to me. “Are we going?”
“Obviously.” I’ve yet to miss one; if Jackson’s at that stadium, chances are I am too. The games are long and boring and the weather is inexplicably always either freezing cold or boiling hot, no in between, but I still go.
The incentive lies somewhere in those tight pants and flexed muscles, and in the afterparty—win or lose, I always get well and truly fucked. In the locker room, under the bleachers, in the parking lot. You name it, I’ve probably been railed there. Something about the game just gets the boy pumped, and I am more than willing to be the thing on which he takes his energy out on.
Banishing any and all thoughts of those particular extracurricular activities, I rush to exchange my robe for jeans and one of Jackson’s Sun Valley Rays hoodies. Shoving my feet into shoes, I grab my keys and purse off the kitchen counter. “So I was thinking lunch and then a walk around campus before the game?”
“Sounds good.” Ma links her arm through mine. “Can we go to that Green place?”
I internally roll my eyes. Greenies. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” She whines. “I wanna see where you work.”
I take a moment to imagine my poor mother being subjected to the greasy cesspool of disease and drunk college students that is Greenies. Tugging her out the door, I pat her arm pacifyingly. “No, Ma. You really don’t.”
For once, I won an argument against my mother.
I managed to convince her that Greenies wasn’t the way to go. Instead, we had a nice lunch not surrounded by drunk, leering idiots. In the relative peace of a local cafe, we caught up on each other’s lives.
Aka I got battered with questions about Jackson and college.
Mostly the former.
The campus tour commenced after lunch and quickly became a lot more detailed than I intended it to be. Ma forced me to show her pretty much every room I’ve ever had a class in, and she insisted we have a sneaky look around the art department too.
We’re almost home free, so close to being out of the building without incident, when we turn a corner and smash face-first into someone. Two someones, actually. I break out in a smile as I recognise the blonde who collided with me.
“Hey stranger.” I pull Pen into a hug that she returns eagerly. I offer Professor Jacobs a polite smile that he doesn’t return because he’s too busy staring at something beside me. I ignore his weird expression and focus on my friend. “It’s been a while.”
“Sorry.” Pen grimaces. “I’ve been busy.” It sounds like a lie, a loaded one. Code for ‘remember when I told you Christmas was a shitshow? Well, the effects are still lingering.’
I never did get the details on what happened, and I don’t think now is the time to push, so I settle for making introductions. “Pen, Professor Jacobs, this is my mom.” I expect my mom to jump in, insisting she be called Isla like she usually does, but she stays eerily silent. When I glance her way, her appearance coaxes a frown out of me. She’s white as a sheet and rigid, looking like she’s seen a damn ghost or something. “Ma, you okay?”
It takes a hard nudge until she snaps out of her daze. Shaking her head once, she adopts a fake bright smile. “Yeah, hun. You ready to go?”
“Uh, yeah.” I give her a weird look before turning to Pen. “We’re going to Jackson’s game, you wanna come?”
“I-”
“No.” Jacobs butts in before his daughter can answer. “She can’t.”
Steam pours from Pen’s ears as she scowls at her father. “Dad.”
“Penelope, no.”
“Why not?” Her dad simply answers with a shake of his head, but neither Pen nor I miss the way his eyes frantically dart to my mom. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear there was fear lurking in his gaze. And something else.
Something that looks an awful lot like recognition.
As she glances between me, my mom, and her dad, it’s like something clicks in Pen’s head. All of a sudden her face drops and she turns as white as Ma. “Oh my God.” She breathes out shakily. “It was her?”
“Penelope.” Jacobs clasps his daughter’s shoulder tightly only to be knocked away, abrupt distance put between them. “Not now.”
“Oh my God, it was.” Tears blur her eyes, wide with shock, tinged with disgust. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“What’s happening right now?” No one answers despite the fact it feels like everyone knows what’s going on but me. Ma says nothing but her gaze says everything. Apology. Guilt. “Ma, what the fuck is going on?”
Pen’s entire body shakes as she turns to me, as does her voice. “My dad cheated on my mom when she was pregnant with me.”
“Penelope, don’t,” Jacobs rasps at the same time Ma chokes out a plea.
Pen doesn’t listen to either of them. “He had an affair with a student.”
Remember that moment I was talking about?
The one I was waiting for?
Where the perfect, happy little life I’ve been living suddenly gets ruined?
A twisted feeling deep in my gut is telling me that moment has arrived.
I choke on my next words. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I think twenty years ago my dad fucked your mom.” A bitter laugh escapes Pen as my world attempts to crash down around me. “Or should I say our dad?”
I laugh. I actually laugh. Because my brain can’t comprehend what she’s saying, can’t label it as true, convinced Pen’s just been drinking the conspiracy theorist Kool Aid or something.
But then I look at my mom.
I look at Professor Jacobs.
I catch the look they share, one that definitely does not scream strangers.
And suddenly I think that I’m going to be sick too.
I’m drunk.
I have been for a while.
A month, give or take.
A month since the bombshell of the century was dropped on me. A month since my life imploded. A month since I stumbled into a bar with Pen, with my sister. A month since I started going there almost nightly.
It’s the only thing that helps drown out that gut-wrenching conversation playing on a reel in my head. The only thing that overwhelms the image of my mom’s face as the awful truth came to light.
And her face. Jacobs’ wife. My stepmother, technically. The woman whose life, marriage, heart, I had a role in destroying.
I had to meet her. I had to sit there and listen to my mother apologize, listen to Jacobs’ bullshit explanation, listen to her fucking weep. She was heartbroken. Destroyed by the knowledge that her husband had, has, a child with someone that isn’t her, by my existence.
And Pen.
Really? You look alike.
It’s laughable now, remembering the interaction that seemed hilarious to me at the time but now feels like the universe was mocking our ignorance. Toying with us. Dangling the truth in front of our faces but never quite letting us see.
My sister.
The daughter he wanted.
I was never supposed to exist. He paid my mom to get rid of me, for her silence. Gave her a fat wad of cash and said ‘take care of it.’ He just assumed she did, never took the time to check. He didn’t care enough to check if he had another daughter wandering around. I don’t even blame him.
Get rid of the secret love child made during an illicit affair with a student or ruin the family you actually want and your reputation?
Not a hard choice.
Isla Evans didn’t agree.
She kept me, obviously. Fled the state with me growing in her belly. Florida, that’s where I was conceived. Where I would’ve grown up. Where Pen would’ve grown up if I hadn’t turned her life upside down too. I wonder if Ma would’ve settled in New York if she’d known the man she was running from ended up only a state over, hiding in Boston from the secret life he led.
I have grandparents in Fort Lauderdale. Two sets. Neither of them knew I existed. Or know. I’m not sure. I doubt my mom or Jacobs wanted to call and drop a twenty-year-old dirty little secret on their elderly parents.
I always thought my father was the bad guy. And he is. He’s a cheating, lying dick.
But now my mom, the woman who raised me, my fucking hero, is the bad guy too. The other woman. A liar.
And me. The other child. Made of lies and deceit.
A mistake.
The apartment is quiet as I stumble inside, the key sounding way too loud as it scrapes in the lock. The girls are probably out. I think they’re avoiding me lately and I don’t really blame them. I’m like a ticking time bomb always on the verge of going off. I snap and I push and I make sure it’s impossible to be near me because it hurts to be around them.
And it works for everyone except him.
I smell him before I see him, as weird as that sounds. Fresh and clean and like home. Guilt curdles in my stomach because I don’t deserve for him to be here, waiting for me, perched on the edge of my bed with that damn look on his face. Knowing and sympathetic and sad.
Looking at him hurts.
I’ve been treating him like shit and I know it. I haven’t told him what’s wrong. I don’t want to. I don’t want to tell anyone. I don’t want to be any more of a burden. There are four people in the world that know what I am, that look at me through a different lens, and I can’t take anyone else.
“Where were you?” His voice is so soft, so gentle, so fucking careful.
Mine is the opposite. Harsh and cutting and so uncaring despite the fact my heart feels like it’s cracked in half. “Out.”
“Where?”
There’s nothing judgemental in his voice, nothing accusatory, only concern, and yet I snap anyway. “You’re my boyfriend, not my warden.”
“Luna, please.” He sounds tired. So tired. So sad, too. And I’m the source of it.
Luna Evans; the endless source of pain and sadness. Great.
Huffing out a sigh, I kick off my heels and toss my purse on the bed. “I was out with Pen, okay? Is that a crime?”
“I was worried.”
He’s always worried and I hate it. I can’t breathe knowing the dark circles under his eyes are because of me or that he didn’t go home for the summer because I couldn’t bear the idea of dragging down the atmosphere of Serenity Ranch and he didn’t want to leave me alone.
“I called you.”
“I saw.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“I was busy.” Busy drinking in silence with Pen because she’s the only person I can bear to be around.
Jackson huffs in frustration. “Jesus fucking Christ, Lu.”
There it is. The breaking point. I push him on purpose, waiting for the moment he stops being sad and starts getting mad. It’s easier to deal with him being mad. Because I’m mad, so fucking mad, and someone else being mad too just makes me feel that little bit better.
“I barely see you, Luna. You ignore my calls, you ignore me. I don’t know what the fuck I did wrong.”
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He is perfect and I am awful. The only thing wrong is me.
When I make no effort to reply, his jaw tenses, irritation flaring in his eyes. “I can’t keep doing this.”
“I get it, Jackson. I’m a terrible girlfriend.”
“Yeah,” he snaps, brown eyes aflame, “right now, you are.”
It’s the truth, we both know it, but hearing him say it still sends me reeling, my head snapping back as the ugly truth slaps me in the face and riles my anger. “Okay, then. Maybe I shouldn’t be a girlfriend anymore.”
Silence settles, my words hanging heavy in the air between us.
“Is that what you want?”
No.
I say nothing.
I don’t mean it.
He says nothing either.
I take it back, I take it back, I take it back.
Slowly, Jackson gets to his feet and crosses the room towards me. Rough hands cup my face, forcing my gaze from his chest to his face. “If you want me to stay, I need you to tell me.”
Not a single word leaves my lips.
It’ll be easier this way, I tell myself. If he walks away because I pushed him. If he walks away before I hurt him. If he walks away because I told him to and not because he wants to.
Utter defeat twists his face and crushes my chest. “Okay,” he breathes shakily, dropping his hands. “I’m done fighting with you, Lu.” My eyes drift shut as his lips brush my cheek for what I can’t help but think is the last time. “Please take care of yourself.”
I keep my eyes screwed shut as he walks away, leaving my heart on the floor behind him.
