So that’s where we were going today. “What are you talking about? I’m not bringing up what you do with your life, Jason. You said something rude, that’s what I’m talking about.”

“I’m talking about you not liking me and now he doesn’t like me either,” he tried to argue.

It was my turn to sneer at him. “If he doesn’t like you, it’s not because of anything I’ve said to him. Maybe it’s because you hung up on him that one time you called me, buddy, or you doing things you had no business doing. Have you thought about that?”

His mouth pinched, and he rushed out, “I didn’t hang up on him.”

I freaking knew he was going to lie about that. I hated to call people dumb, but he really was dumb. I didn’t feel like arguing with him over it. What I did instead was shrug at him. “I know you know why I don’t like you—and I’m sorry for saying that because I’ve never said that to anyone before, but you have never been nice to me. But I’ve never gone out of my way to be mean to you because of it. I don’t have to like you to work with you, but I wouldn’t whisper about things you did two years ago to make Rip not like you.”

“Look, you don’t even know what was happening between me and Kyra.”

I raised up both my hands between us and said, “I don’t care. You don’t have to explain anything to me.” Even if it made perfect sense, I still wouldn’t like him. “I wouldn’t like anyone who made my little sister cry, for whatever reason.”

“I’m not an asshole,” he tried to claim.

I stayed quiet.

“I’m not—”

My phone ringing from my desk had me shaking my head as I walked way around him and out onto the floor. “Start on the panel, Jason.”

He cursed, not loudly enough for me to hear clearly, but I ignored him and pulled my keys out to unlock my desk and pull out my still ringing phone, hitting the Answer button.

That was where I screwed up.

I was so riled up by Jason that I didn’t look at the screen first before I hit answer.

“Hello?”

I heard the “Don’t hang up” just as I was turning back around to make sure Jason’s annoying butt wasn’t flipping me off behind my back. “Luna, don’t you fucking hang up,” a semi-familiar male voice spat on the other end.

And maybe my brain didn’t automatically recognize it, but my instincts did.

It was my dad.

“I already told you not to call me,” I whispered into the receiver as I made sure Jason wasn’t close by.

“You heard from Thea?”

Had I heard from Thea?

I pulled the phone away from my face and ended the call.

Fisting my free hand, I didn’t hesitate dialing my sister’s number and trying to call her. Again. Like I hadn’t already called her every single day since the first time this man had contacted me.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when she didn’t answer, but I was.

Screw it.

I dialed Kyra’s number and fortunately at least she did.

“Luna-face, what’s up?” my middle sister answered.

“Your sister’s what’s up. Have you talk to Thea?” I asked her straight out, hearing the tremble in my voice. Because, this again? Dad calling again? I didn’t need this. I didn’t want it.

“Yesterday actually,” she replied a little uneasily. Maybe she heard the shakiness in my tone. “Why?”

Did I want to tell her about our dad? Hell. I had no choice, did I? “Dad just called me.”

There was a pause and then, “Why?”

“He was asking about Thea, Kyra. He told me to tell her to quit her job.”

There was another pause. “Ah…”

Something hard hit me in the chest.

“I know that she had talked to him…”

I held my breath.

“Luna?” she said a little too sweetly, her voice a little too high.

“Yeah?” I muttered, trying to tell myself to calm down. To not get riled up. To not get mad.

I was going to be patient. I was going to be calm. Whatever it was wouldn’t be the end of life.

“Don’t get mad,” was what she decided to start with, and of course my body decided to react the exact opposite way of what she was asking. My blood pressure was already starting to climb. “We both thought it was a bad idea if we told you about the calls.”

They had both been keeping it from me.

Both of them.

That’s what she was trying to hint.

Two of my sisters had been hiding this from me.

I must have sucked in a breath or something because Kyra made a sound that sounded strangely like a gulp. “Oh, Luna. I promised her I wouldn’t say anything about her job. But about Dad… Don’t be mad. It’s no big deal. He calls her sometimes and they talk. I’ve talked to him a couple of times—”

What?

And I stopped listening. I stopped listening because my ears were buzzing, and genuine freaking fury and hurt like I didn’t think I was capable of feeling filled my chest.

Kyra said something about how it had been going on for only a year or two.

She said something else about how they both loved me and how it had nothing to do with me.

Told me not to worry about whatever it was that Thea was doing for work that even our dad disapproved of.

It had nothing to do with me.

I wouldn’t say it was fury that stole the words from my soul. Wouldn’t say it was anger that made my heart break even further. But I lost something then. Something I wasn’t sure I could or would ever be able to put into words.

Somehow though, I managed to ask the one other question that had been eating away at me lately. “Kyra, what else is she hiding from me?”

The silence was a better response than any of the words she might have used could or would ever be.

Even though a part of me didn’t want to ask and was honestly scared to pry… I couldn’t help myself. I was tired of the secrets. Tired of so much stuff I wasn’t ready to think about everything. “Did she tell you her place got broken into? Because I didn’t even know she moved, and if she needs help, you all should know I will always help you. I just want to know what’s going on, okay?”

What I got was another dose of a pause.

Another response that said that the trust I thought was between us was just in my imagination, and her next words changed everything between us for the rest of our lives.

“I’ll tell her you called and that she needs to call you back,” Kyra went on, ignoring my question, but the only thing I was aware of was hanging up eventually. Of standing there, numb and pretty much shattered by the knowledge they had gone behind my back to talk to someone who had treated me worse than trash. Someone who would have let them starve if it hadn’t been for me. Someone who had never washed a single load of their clothes ever in their lives. Someone who had never, ever bought them a single birthday present or Christmas present. Who had never supported them in school or much less encouraged them to go to college.

And if I would have been the kind of person who smashed their phone, I would have done it.

What I did instead was take a deep breath that included that part of me that I had lost, then turn around and kick an empty five-gallon bucket across the room.

I made a decision right then, as I pulled at the bracelet of unicorns at my wrist. I wasn’t going to let my dad ruin this day for me. Not when he had already ruined my relationship with my sisters in the two shortest phone calls of my life.

* * *

I told myself that I wasn’t in a bad mood even as I slammed the door closed to my car.

I wasn’t mad.

I wasn’t.

Not even a little.

Nope, not me.

But I must have been the only person to believe that because even Hector asked me what was wrong.

Nothing was wrong, I had told him.

It was just that two of my sisters were talking to the one man in this world who I hated. That the two girls I helped as much as I could with their college expenses had gone behind my back to do something that they knew would wound me. That they had kept it to themselves so that I wouldn’t get mad.