It was the same move that Lenny and I had worked on time and time and time again, so many times, I had gotten sick and tired of doing it. She had done it to me lightly before and it had hurt for days. It had been totally worth it, I guessed, because instinct had just… kicked in, like she had said it would.

“What the fuck!” the voice I didn’t recognize anymore hissed.

“Don’t touch me,” I snapped at my cousin as I took in his face, tightening my grip even harder, knowing I was hurting him and not giving a single crap.

I had seen Rip out of my peripheral vision jerk to a stop and turn around, but I had this.

I had always had this. Even when I was younger. Because maybe I was an Allen now, but I had been a Miller, and being a girl, being younger, didn’t mean anything. I had gotten into fights with every single Miller kid around my age growing up, even some that weren’t my age. They were all bullies and jerks. Every single one of them.

This one specifically had been the first one who had knocked me around. I still had a tiny scar on my forehead from one of those times. As I looked at his own cheek, I could see the one I had given him when I’d been fourteen and had punched him right in the cheekbone as hard as I possibly could.

“Put your hands on me again, and I will break your hand,” I told him, dead serious.

His face, thin and oval, was pinched and in pain as he tried jerking his arm away, but there was no way he could. “Let me go, you fucking bitch.”

I wasn’t him, I reminded myself as I did finally let go, shoving him away at the same time so that the man who was only a few inches taller than me, stumbled back.

He looked terrible too. I could see the staining at his teeth, the gauntness at his cheeks, and the discoloration in his eyes.

This was what I’d avoided. This was what my sisters had missed.

Thank God. Thank God.

I took a step back and stopped only when I bumped into the hard mass of a body that belonged to Ripley. His hands didn’t touch me. He didn’t do anything but stand there.

Hopefully he was at least shooting my cousin that face that I knew damn well made the guys at the shop turn around and walk away.

“I only came here for Grandma Genie,” I told my cousin as calmly as I could, even though I didn’t feel all that calm. “Just leave me alone.”

“Leave you alone?” my cousin snarled as he clutched his arm. “You came here. You knew what the fuck you were doing. We told you not to come back.”

He was right.

It had been a mutual decision in a way.

But it didn’t change the fact that he could have let me walk away.

“I came for the funeral. I don’t want any trouble,” I tried to tell him, but he was already shaking his head before I’d even finished the first sentence. “I’m never going to come back after this.” I almost added “believe me” to the end, but I knew it would be pointless.

Honestly, I had an idea what he was going to say before he said it, and my cousin had never been the brightest or most creative crayon in the box. “You fucking bitch—”

My hand formed into a fist, ready.

But I felt it then. The hands on my shoulders.

I heard it then. The deep grumble from the man behind me.

Then I caught onto everything that came out of Rip’s mouth, the rumbling rattle of each word etching themselves into me for the rest of my life.

“You can shut your fucking mouth.”

Then I held my breath again as I took in the calm within Ripley’s voice.

What I witnessed though was the way my cousin opened his mouth to say something, then he closed it. He made a face that said he didn’t want to do that, but he had, and he took a step back. And another step back, the snarl on his face growing as he backed further and further away.

Keeping his mouth shut the whole time.

It wasn’t until he was at least twenty feet away that the hands on my shoulders fell off them.

Only then did Rip take a step back.

By the time I turned around to look at the bodyguard I’d had to use my one and only favor on, his hands were at the scarf around his neck.

He was tightening it for some reason.

His cheeks were more flushed than any other time I had seen, and the tendons in his hands popped with restraint.

And his gaze… it had been on the ground, his lips thin.

I had made it. I was fine. I was loved. I had a home. I had everything I wanted and needed and more.

Yet knowing all that didn’t stop my body from breaking into a shiver.

Maybe the adrenaline had disappeared and left me feeling shocked at the sight of what had happened to the people who I shared genes with me. Maybe it was at the reminder of what I had left. Of how desperate they had made me feel that I’d left their house at seventeen years old, not knowing what I was going to do, not knowing where I would live. Of how scared I had been after. Of how mad.

But mostly, maybe I just felt overwhelmed at how empty I had felt for so long. Of how much I had wanted things to be different. Of how much I had suffered from yearning for things that I had never been given.

It could have been any of those things and all of those things.

I’d felt lonely on and off for so long, the reminder that my little sister was finally leaving me soon hit me like a wrecking ball straight in the chest.

I wanted love, and even after all these years, I had found it, but I hadn’t.

I was almost twenty-seven years old and I was still looking. I hadn’t stopped wanting it after all this time. Here I was, not able to hug my sister because I was worried I wouldn’t recover if she didn’t let me. Because I had two other sisters who had pushed me away out of anger years ago, and I had never been able to get over it. This was who I’d become because of them.

I hated them.

I stood there, and all I could do was suck in a breath that sounded almost like a gasp.

I had never in my life done anything malicious just for the sake of being an asshole. I had sacrificed for my sisters. I had busted my ass for us, day after day. I had tried to be a good, decent person because that was who I wanted to be.

And here were these people who had treated me like total shit my entire childhood, trying to do the same thing after so long.

I hated them. I hated them so much I couldn’t catch my damn breath. I couldn’t catch my own freaking breath because of them.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I hated myself too for letting my stupid cousin get to me now.

I didn’t see Rip’s eyes as they sliced over me, and I didn’t watch as that hardened, rough expression turned into one that was still hard but surprised. I would never see the way his head reared back, his chin tipped down, and his nostrils flared.

“Luna…”

I grit my teeth as tears bubbled up into my eyes all of a sudden, but I made myself look up at him. I wasn’t ashamed. I wasn’t ashamed about any of this. All it did was piss me off.

I was choosing to be happy. I was choosing to be happy every day for the rest of my life, and nothing and nobody was going to take that away from me. No freaking way.

But why couldn’t things have been different?

“You all right?” he asked, still taking his time with his words, his expression seeming like this mix of horrified and shocked as he watched me.

“Yes.” I bit my cheek and then shook my head immediately afterward. “No.”

Those eyes sliced to somewhere behind me for a split second before returning to my face. That foreign expression disappearing into that mean-muggin’ Rip face that was my favorite. His chest expanded with a big breath, and he was totally serious as he asked, “Want me to go whoop his ass?”

“Yeah.”

One of his big feet moved.

“But don’t.” I reached up to wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand, thankful I’d worn waterproof mascara and put a setting spray on my face that morning just in case. I knew better than to let this get to me. I knew better. I was better.

“Luna….”

I wiped under my eyes with my index finger and felt a shudder go right through me, violent and uncomfortable, starting at my shoulders and making its way down, and just… sucking. Just sucking, sucking, sucking. Had it really been that much to ask for, for things to be just a little bit different? To just come to a funeral and get through it without a reminder of what I had grown up around and tried my best to move on from?