Luna and the Lie

We pulled into the cemetery and parked after a moment. I held my breath as we got out of the truck and walked in the direction of where two heart-shaped sprays of flowers were located. Rip walked beside me the whole time, the tension still just pouring directly off him. It said something about how much I distrusted the people I was related to that I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure none of them were following us.

I was pretty sure if I looked up the Miller family history, the word “backstabbing” had to have been stemmed from an ancestor somewhere down the line.

Luckily, I didn’t see any of them, at least not directly behind us. As we stopped at the gravesite, a hole that seemed too small for a casket, I kept my head aimed down, but I didn’t close my eyes.

Rip’s arm brushed my elbow as he settled in so close beside me I could feel the heat of his body. It wasn’t unwelcome. The size of him, the knowledge that he more than likely wouldn’t let anyone physically hurt me, even if he was unhappy about all of this—including finding out I was related to a felon—made me feel better. It was too warm for my long-sleeved shirt, and I could only imagine how hot he had to be in his jacket and dress shirt, but he didn’t complain or act in any way like it bothered him.

I had a feeling it was him there that kept me from walking off as I watched the three people I hadn’t seen in years approach slowly.

My sisters’ mom didn’t look at me.

But my cousin was staring. Beside him, the man who was half responsible for my existence acted like I was invisible.

I stood there and watched them both.

I wished that later on I could have looked back on that moment and been the bigger person. That I could and would have looked away from them while the chaplain or whatever he was said some more generic words about a woman he had more than likely never met. I wished I could have let myself focus on Grandma Genie and the few memories I had of her.

But I didn’t do anything like that.

As the man went on, I stood there and took turns staring at my cousin and the man that my birth certificate said was my father.

My cousin basically snarled.

My dad looked right through me with those green eyes I saw every time I looked in the mirror.

Rip’s arm brushed mine a few times, but I was too caught up in my own moment to worry about how bored he must be. Or how disappointed he might be in me for being related to these people. There were a million other things that he might have been thinking, and none of them were good.

It was only when the chaplain stopped speaking and the thirty other people around us approached the casket with mementos that I snapped out of it and took a step forward to drop the small picture of my sisters and me that I’d put in my purse the day before in the hole.

I was ready to leave, and it had nothing to do with the people on the other side of the casket.

I just wanted to go back home to the place that made me feel safe, to the people who made me feel loved, to the life that made me happy—that I swore from now on would only make me happier.

Turning to face Rip, who it seemed had his entire attention focused on me, I met his eyes and nodded.

He nodded back, his gaze flicking behind me for a beat, and we headed back toward his truck, avoiding old headstones and flowers.

Fortunately, I hadn’t been able to relax or let my guard down, because I heard the hurried steps coming and was partially expecting the hand that wrapped around my wrist, the hold tight and hurtful and mean, a second before it yanked at me.

Or tried to.

Because I didn’t let that happen. I’d spent years with Lenny at the gym so I’d know how to defend myself. That was how we’d met. She had taught a self-defense course I’d taken. Then kept on teaching me things after it ended. So I didn’t hold back when I threw my elbow as hard as I could backward, and in a move that would have made her proud, I kicked my right leg out, feeling it connect with a left leg. The second the person behind me stumbled forward, I grabbed their right arm and extended it across my body into a straight armbar position—a submission move that hyperextended their elbow—his elbow, if you wanted to be specific, because I knew who it was.

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.