Texas area code?
I let the call go to voicemail, shifting in my chair in the endless, depressing hospital corridor. In front of me, Lev had curled into his father’s arms, long-limbed and lanky-framed, moans tearing through his body like a demon trying to claw its way out of him. Bailey was by their side, rocking back and forth as reality hit them in the face with full force. Much too young. Much too soon.
Edie, Dad, and Racer sat next to me, and we touched each other absentmindedly, grateful we still could. Dad’s arm was thrown over Edie’s shoulders. Edie held Racer close to her chest, and he clutched my hand in a death grip.
The entire cul-de-sac was in attendance. The Spencers. The Followhills. The Rexroths. Everyone had crammed into the waiting room of the hospital, supporting the Coles.
Everyone but Knight.
My guess as to his whereabouts was as good as anyone else’s here. When I confessed to him that I’d known about Rosie’s situation, I’d expected him to raise hell. Rightly so. I’d kept something fundamental from him. It was true that Rosie had sworn me to secrecy, but I could still understand his sense of betrayal.
I twisted in my seat as I remembered how his eyes had glossed over at my admission, his irises becoming two dark rivers of blood. Yet, instead of confronting me, yelling at me, breaking stuff, busting knuckles—the things Knight did to cope—he’d mustered a smile. An eerily disturbing smile that had made my heart beat like a wild beast’s for all the wrong reasons. And while I wanted to respect his wishes to be alone, I also feared I’d completely blown it by letting him be by himself when he was hurting so much.
My phone buzzed in my hand. Another call from Texas. What in the hell?
I was waiting for Knight to show a sign of life. I’d left him dozens of messages. But answering phone calls was never on my agenda, let alone unidentified ones. People knew not to call me because I don’t—didn’t—speak. In my mind, my talking was still enabled by random spurts of confidence, rather than being a regular occurrence. Many people in this room still hadn’t heard my voice.
It seemed surreal to consider casually taking a call and starting to talk as if the last eighteen years hadn’t happened.
When the third call from Texas lit up my screen, I excused myself and walked over to the outside area, sliding the door shut behind me.
I pressed the phone to my ear, but didn’t say anything.
“Hello?” I heard a desperate, female voice.
It sounded like she was running. Her panting blasted in my ear, and there was background noise of wheels squeaking, an elevator pinging, and cell phones ringing.
“Hello? Is there anybody there? Moonshine?”
Moonshine? Why would she call me…?
Knight.
“Who is this?” I retorted.
My whole body broke out in hives at the thought he was in trouble. A bad feeling settled in my stomach like a brick. I paced from side to side in the little garden.
“His mother.”
I stopped pacing. Stared at the glass door. My fingers were going numb.
“His birth mother, I mean.” She sounded far away now. Her running came to a stop.
“Where is he?” I demanded.
I didn’t have time to be shocked. Knight’s mother knew him? Was in touch with him? Everything about this screamed surreal and bizarre. My head spun. I stumbled down, forcing myself to sit on a wooden bench behind me. I was shaking like a leaf, unsure if it was from the cold, the adrenaline, or both.
“He’s in the ICU.”
“Visiting his real mom?” I struggled to breathe.
I heard her gasp on the other end and realized how insensitive that had come out.
“Sorry—I mean…”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t have time to get offended.” She sniffed. “He is hospitalized. He overdosed.”
“On what?” I screamed into the phone, shooting to my feet, slapping the door open and galloping back in, even though I had no idea where he was or how to find him.
“On everything. Alcohol. Cocaine. Xanax. They’re pumping his stomach right now.” I could hear in her voice that she was trying hard not to break.
“Is he okay?”
“He threw up most of what he’d taken, I think. But there’s no way of knowing how much of it got into his bloodstream.”
“Where are you?” I ran past our families to the other side of the floor, zipping by without acknowledging their existence. Luckily, everyone was too cocooned in their own misery to notice.
“I’m outside his room. They wouldn’t let me in because I’m not…” She paused for a second, taking a ragged, shaky breath, before finishing. “Because I’m not family.”
“Tell me where he is!”
She gave me the directions, and I practically flew there.
Dean couldn’t know this. Neither could Lev. I knew it was a horrible thought when my boyfriend was possibly fighting for his life in the same hospital as his ailing mother, but I loved the entire Cole clan, not just him.
When I got to the room number she had given me, I found her in the hallway. Petite. Blonde. Velvet blue eyes and an ankle-length, unstylish dress I knew she’d get slaughtered for at the haughty Todos Santos Country Club. She was pretty, but looked nothing like Knight. Maybe he looked like his biological father. To be perfectly honest, he very much looked like Dean, even though they weren’t blood-related.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” Her posture was bowed, defeated. Like a wilted flower.
“I’m the girlfriend,” I said breathlessly, sticking my hand in her direction.
“I’m…” she started, biting down on her full lip.
Lips. That’s what Knight had inherited from her. Her luscious, round Cupid lips.
“I don’t know what I am to him.” She put her fist to her mouth, trying to swallow back a sob.
Without meaning to—and perhaps without wanting to, either—I wrapped my arms around her. Having the person who’d brought Knight into this world at my fingertips overwhelmed me with gratitude. As far as I was concerned, she was an ally, even if Knight didn’t see her as one. She’d brought him here, hadn’t she? That was enough for me to give her a chance.
“Dixie.” She sniffed, trying to gather herself together. “I’m Dixie.”
“Where did you find him? Did he call you?”
It made sense. He wouldn’t have wanted to call anyone else with what they were going through with his mom, but Dixie wasn’t wrapped up in that sorrow.
I put my hand on her shoulder and ushered her to the folding chairs lined up against the wall. We both took a seat. Silent tears slid over her cheeks.
“No.”
“No?” I slid my hand from her shoulder to her back, rubbing it. By the way she collapsed against my hand—sobbing harder, yet somehow more silently—I gathered she hadn’t been touched by another human in a long time. A very long time.
“You can tell me,” I whispered.
“This is going to sound crazy to you, probably, but I followed him.”
She pressed a tattered piece of tissue to her nose. Parts of it snowed down to her lap.
“I’ve been following him around for a while—only when he’s alone. Never when he’s with you or with his family and friends. I’m so sorry. I know it’s wrong. But I’m worried. So worried. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I left my job—I’m a secretary in my father’s company—and I’ve been living in a hotel off the promenade for months now. Knight’s been drinking and popping pills every day. He is not okay. He needs help.”
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. I knew Knight had been drinking heavily, but judging by what it had come to, I’d mistaken the severity of the issue. I’d chalked it up to stress from Rosie’s situation escalating. He’d always been eccentric and moody. He was a goddamn teenager, for fuck’s sake. Knight was also good at hiding his vulnerability behind his nonchalant smirk and herculean frame.
“So after you dropped him off at his house—God, I sound pathetic,” Dixie said.
“Please continue.”
To me, it didn’t sound crazy at all. He’d rejected her, but she couldn’t let go. I knew what that felt like, because the same thing had happened to me with Val, but in reverse. If I could’ve followed Val around the world like a lovesick puppy, I would have. If I could have prevented her death, her addiction, nothing would have stopped me.
“Well, after you left, a Mercedes pulled up at the Coles’. Two big guys with gold chains came out. Knight met them at the door. They talked for a minute; then they handed him a small paper bag. When the guys left, I waited for Knight to come out, but he never did. I started calling him. He didn’t answer, which wasn’t out of character for my so…for Knight,” she amended, shaking her head. “But I had a really bad feeling. Call it a mother’s intuition, although if he ever heard me say that, he’d laugh in my face.”
She threw her head back, staring at the ceiling. “The door was unlocked,” she explained. “And I…and I…”
She’d walked in.
This was El Dorado, on a cul-de-sac where everybody knew everybody. Of course the door wasn’t locked. Our parents only locked the doors at nighttime.
“It’s a gated community. How’d you get in?” I scrunched my nose.
“Someone put me on the list.”
“Who?” I pressed.
She looked away, shaking her head.
“I found him lying in a pool of his own vomit in the living room, unconscious. I called nine-one-one, flipped him over, and followed the ambulance with my car. It’s been forty minutes since he got to this room, and they’re not telling me anything. I’m scared for my baby.”
She clutched the tissue in her fist, pressing it to her heart. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if something happens to him.”
“You did the right thing.” I squeezed her thigh, trying to swallow and push the ball of emotion down my throat.
“Thank you, Moonshine. You’ve got such a pretty name. Very unique.”
Blinking at her for a beat, I proceeded to burst out laughing. In the hospital. In the middle of a double-Cole tragedy. Guess it’s true that human nature is programmed to fight. And laughter is the best medicine for almost every problem.
“Luna,” I corrected. “My name is Luna. Knight’s the only one who calls me Moonshine.”
She gave me a tired smile. “Despite everything, it’s nice to meet you, Luna.”
Two hours later, I sat in front of Knight, who lay in a hospital bed just a few hundred feet away from his dying mother.
I had spent those two hours making plans—plans I should have made a long time ago. Plans that ripped me open. Plans that had meant unplanning big portions of my life. For him.
Plans, I knew, that might leave me bitter with him in five, or ten, or twenty years.
Plans to cancel myself so I could help him.
When Knight opened his eyes, he closed them again as soon as I came into view. He put his big paws on his face, half-laughing and half-wincing.
“Shit.”
“Indeed.”
“I’ve really screwed it up this time, haven’t I?”
“Seems that way.”
“How’s Mom?”
I loved that he cared more about Rosie than himself. At his core, Knight was inherently unselfish.
“Same,” I said softly. “I just came back from checking on her. Everyone’s there.”
“Do they know about this?” He opened his eyes again, motioning with his finger to his hospital bed.
I shook my head, running my hand over his high cheekbone.
He took a deep, relieved breath and nodded. “What time is it?”
To grow up, Knight. To collect the pieces of your broken spirit and patch them up for your family. For yourself. For me.
“Ten at night. How are you feeling?”
“Never been better.”
I chucked his nose, leaning back.
He gave me a lazy, dark smirk, reaching for the collar of my shirt and yanking me so we were face to face. Half-dead and hospitalized or not, Knight Jameson Cole looked like every girl’s wet dream and her daddy’s nightmare.
“I’m hard.”
“Stop it.” I pulled away, standing up. “Stop pretending everything is okay when it is so unbelievably not.”
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t touch him. Hug him. Break down because he was alive, and lucky. So very lucky.
I needed to make a point, and it was high time I did, before he joined his mother in an early grave. It was going to be the hardest, most selfless thing I’d ever had to do, but it was far more important than entertaining my romantic dreams.
Every day of my life, since the moment I’d laid eyes on this broken, beautiful boy, I had dreamed of him being mine. And now that he was, I had to let him go.
“I’m leaving you.”
He rolled his head on the pillow to catch my gaze. He answered by ignoring me, yanking the IV from his vein and tossing it on the floor indifferently. I winced.
Dixie was outside, making calls to her family in Dallas, giving them updates about her son they didn’t know but apparently deeply cared for—the same son who wanted nothing to do with her.
Knight next ripped his hospital gown from his broad pecs, getting ready to stand up.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Chasing you,” he said tiredly, swinging his legs to the side of the bed, his feet hitting the floor. He looked like death—exhausted and pale, a far cry from his usual self. “That’s what you want, isn’t it, Luna? I always have to fight for you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want that now. You don’t understand, Knight. It’s over.”
Now he looked at me with different eyes. Darker. The air shifted, moved differently in the room. It bunched around my neck. I couldn’t breathe.
“For real?” His voice leaked pain and apathy.
That’s when I knew this was the right decision. He was close to giving up. I couldn’t let him.
“For real.”
“You can’t do this to me,” he said emotionlessly, stating a fact. “My mother is dying.”
“I’m not bailing on our friendship; I’m breaking up with you. I will still be here for you every day. I dropped out of my semester to stay here as long as you need me.”
I looked away so he couldn’t see how sad that made me. Because it did. Boon had changed me, and I was walking away from my growth, from my own accomplishments.
But wasn’t that exactly what he’d done for me all these years?
Missing football practices when I needed someone to hold my hand.
Sitting with me in the cafeteria, snubbing the rest of his friends, even though he knew he’d get shit for it.
Staying a virgin, and inexperienced, waiting for me to open my eyes, my heart, and—finally—my legs for him.
He’d given so much to me over the years. The least I could do was repay him with the same token. But not at the cost of watching him waste away. Not that.
“I told you I will not tolerate this behavior, Knight, and I won’t. I made a promise to your mother to take care of you. This is my way of taking care of you. This is your wake-up call.”
“You’re the only thing I have left.”
“You have your family.”
He looked away, his silence speaking for him.
“You have us, your friends. Vaughn. Hunter. You have Dixie,” I pressed.
His head snapped up, his thick eyebrows furrowing over his thunderous eyes. “I don’t need—”
“Yes, you do,” I cut him off sharply. “You do need her. She saved you. Twice.”
Dixie had told me about his meltdown at the beach the other day. Knight was obviously spiraling, and it was hard to watch. He needed some tough love, even amidst all the pain and anguish. He had to understand he couldn’t get away with self-destructing.
“So, you’re team Dixie.” He smiled acidly.
“I’m team Knight, and Dixie is on the same team, so I play nice.” I slapped the wall, losing patience.
If someone had told me last year that I’d be the one to save Knight Cole and not the other way around, I’d have laughed in their face. He was so formidable. Untouchable. Powerful. Yet, here he was, small and lost and in real danger.
“I don’t want her on my team,” he seethed.
“You’re not the coach. You don’t get to make that decision.” I shook my head.
“Who is? Who is the coach?”
I knew the answer to that question, but it wasn’t my answer to give.
I took a step forward and scooped his hand in mine. It was heavy and big. I couldn’t believe these hands weren’t going to touch and caress and pleasure me any time soon. Maybe not ever. I hoped to hell the plan was going to work, because there was a lot at stake.
Two hearts, two lives, and too many missed opportunities.
“I can’t live without you,” he croaked, flipping my palm so it faced him and putting it to his lips, tracing every line inside it with his hot mouth.
“So don’t.”
“But I also can’t contain all this pain, Moonshine.” He let out a desperate breath.
I stared at him boldly, perhaps more courageously than I ever had before. I could feel the strength oozing from me.
“Then let me carry some of it, too.”
