“I do. I love her.” I paused. “I love her, but I’m not sure I know her anymore.”

“You love her, but maybe despite growing up together, you also grew apart?”

I shook my head. No. That wasn’t it. “I can’t outgrow Luna. It’s like outgrowing your heart. Impossible. It grows with you. What do I do?” I ran my hand across my close-shaved jaw. “What the fuck do I do, Mom?”

“Well, that’s an easy one.” She smiled. “You go after her. You grovel. You win your girl back. Life’s too short not to be with the person you love.”

Going to Boon in the middle of the school year, with my mother sick, was insane. I knew that. But leaving things unfinished with Luna was, somehow, even crazier. How many hits could our friendship take before exploding like a piñata?

I was done hitting the piñata. I didn’t want the candy inside it. I just wanted the fucking piñata. Was that too much to ask?

“I can’t leave you.” I took Mom’s hand.

I was playing a dangerous game, cajoling her into giving me permission to do it. Truth was, I was demented enough to up and leave, taking my chances. I tried to reason with myself. Mom had just gotten discharged from the hospital. She could handle being without me for a long weekend. Or for a day. Jesus. It might just be one day. Maybe Luna didn’t want to patch shit up. Maybe she had finally given up on my sorry ass.

“You must.” Mom squeezed my hand.

“Why?”

I humored her. Rosie Leblanc wasn’t big on having me away from school. As it was, I wasn’t the most accurate dick in the urinal. I wasn’t a bad student per se, but I’d be lying if I said Ivy League colleges were lining up at my doorstep.

“Do you want me to be honest?” She scrunched her nose.

“No. Please lie through your teeth.” Another eye roll nearly commenced.

Mom looked down, flattening her palm over my linen and brushing it absentmindedly.

Bad idea. This shit is ninety-nine percent spunk, one percent fabric.

“I need you to do this for my peace of mind.” Her gaze cut to mine, her blue eyes shining with emotion. “From a selfish point of view, I want you to win Luna back, because knowing you two are together would make me so happy.”

I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. I wanted to tell her to stop talking nonsense, but I couldn’t do that, either. Finally, I got up, tucked my chin, and regarded her with the same cool, lazy expression I’d learned from my father. From his friends.

Nothing gets in. Nothing comes out. If bottling feelings was a sport, I’d be representing my country in the Olympics.

She stood up and took my face in her hands, pressing her nose to my pecs. I froze before wrapping tentative arms around her. I kissed the crown of her head.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered into my shirt, sending warm breath to my chest through the fabric.

I didn’t say anything. Of course she could.

“I love your brother and your father more than I love myself. I would die for them. Fight for them until the bitter end. Go against the whole world for them. But you…” She dragged her face up to look at me. Her eyes were full of tears. “I’ve always loved you just a tiny bit more. My regal, rebel boy. My legendary hellraiser, my sad prince, my unlikely savior, my beautiful, broken Knight.”

I gulped, looking down at her.

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

But I couldn’t not say it. The moment seemed too real and raw.

She brushed my cheek and gave me a smile so genuine and powerful, I thought it could outshine the sun.

“What if tomorrow never comes?” I whispered.

“Then, my darling boy, we’ll make the best of today.”

I spent the cab drive from Charlotte to Boon drinking mini bottles of whatever the fuck alcohol I could find at the airport and popping a couple Xanax pills. The fake ID, paired with the fact I was running on zero sleep, made me look way older than eighteen. Unfortunately, I was past the stage where a few shots of Johnny made a difference. I was on edge. Agitated. Rubbing my knuckles back and forth against my jaw. I’d busted them open last night punching the treehouse tree trunk. Just for old times’ sake.

“You good?” The driver shifted in his seat, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

“Fine,” I clipped, tapping an unlit joint on my muscular thigh.

You know you have a problem when, before you meet the driver waiting for you at the airport, you meet a local drug dealer to get a fresh stash.

There was a brief silence as we zipped past green rolling hills, the backdrop of a cloudless blue sky and Charlotte’s towers twinkling in the distance. So this was the place that stole Moonshine from me. Already I hated it.

When the driver pulled up at Boon, I slapped a few bills in his hand and wheeled my suitcase down the cobblestone path. A red-bricked, Colonial building the size of a hotel stood before me, framed with lush, trimmed lawns from both sides. A herd of church-mice-looking girls in matching pastel cardigans and ironed hair poured from the double doors of the college. They stopped and eyed me curiously, exchanging looks and hugging their textbooks to their chests.

“Can I help you?” One of them cleared her throat, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

Was it that obvious I wasn’t cut out for higher education? Maybe because I smelled like a liquor store and a dodgy one-night stand.

“Can you?” I flashed my lazy, lopsided smirk that put women in a spell even I couldn’t fully understand.

Their frowns liquefied in an instant.

“I’m looking for the dorms.”

“Men’s or women’s?”

I stared at her blandly. “They’re not coed?”

“It’s a Catholic college.” The revelation was followed by a headshake.

“Women’s,” I clipped.

Shit just got a whole lot more complicated, as shit tended to where my life was concerned.

The girl pointed at a sign with white wooden arrows directing visitors to different sections of the campus. Her fingernails were colorless, thoroughly chewed. “You take a right and walk until you see the building with the pink flag.”

“How misogynist.” I bit down a smile, wondering how Luna had felt about that.

She hated wearing anything pink or girly, the exact opposite of Daria.

The girl flushed, drawing circles on the ground with her toes. “Thank you for saying that.”

“Huh?”

“Thanks for knowing it’s kind of offensive. Beautiful men…I mean, handsome men like yourself are…” she started, but her friends jerked her away, giggling and heading toward the cafeteria.

Are what?

Say, it sweetheart. I could use a little ego boost before I come face to face with Luna.

When I got to the lobby of the girls’ dorm, there was a man about two thousand years old behind the front desk, with a Ron Weasley-orange toupee, flipping a local newspaper that lay flat in front of him. His brows were high as he read a fascinating article about the fish prices in Asheville.

“Wrong dorm,” he said without looking up from his paper.

Instead of gracing him with a response, I dropped my designer backpack on his desk with a thud, fishing my wallet from my back pocket, plucking a few bills, and throwing them his way like confetti.