Going up to my tiptoes to stretch my calves, I took in the grave, withdrawn expression on Ripley’s face as he sat in his chair a few feet away from the one I had been in, and asked, “Rip? Do you want anything? I can get you a soda too if you don’t want coffee.”
He still didn’t take his attention away from the television as he said in a gravelly, tight voice, “No.”
I wasn’t sure if he’d even eaten his lunch. I hadn’t felt like eating mine after everything that had happened with my cousin. “Something to eat?” I asked, battling that helpless feeling for the man in the operation room.
“No.”
I saw his fingers spread where they were on his thighs, watched the way he flicked his gaze up to me as his lips parted a little, this… annoyed expression coming over his face. I knew that expression. I’d seen my parents make the same one enough times over my life.
Specifically when I would try to talk to them and just ended up bothering them instead. It was their stupid idiot kid face. Like they pitied me for caring. For wanting something that they knew I wouldn’t get, something I should have known they wouldn’t give me, but had been too young to understand.
It was the face they made right before I had a reason to feel regret.
“I don’t fucking want anything, Luna, okay?” he said so calmly it was eerie.
I swallowed. I reminded myself that he might be feeling guilty and angry because someone he had a history with was in the hospital, and he felt bad. Someone who might be his father. Maybe.
So I tried to shrug it off. I tried to forgive him for that face that made my stomach clench harder. I tried to tell myself that sometimes people didn’t know what they needed or wanted when they were suffering. Nobody was rational when they were upset. Not even me. I had asked this man to break someone’s hand for me in retaliation hours ago. Hello, hypocrite.
“Are you sure?” I didn’t drop it, because I knew he needed to eat or at least drink something. “I don’t think you’ve eaten anything and—”
That ugly, ugly expression didn’t go anywhere, that calm, weird, soft voice sticking around his vocal cords. “I already fucking said I don’t want anything, okay?” he growled.
His dad had a heart attack and you need to be patient with him, I told myself, told my heart as it hurt and my stomach as it got impossibly tighter.
I kept my gaze on his face, and told him patiently, “I’m just asking, Rip. You don’t have to bite my head off. I’m only trying to help. I won’t ask again, okay?”
This man who had slept in my bed rolled his eyes. His hands opened and closed on his thighs, and I tried to prepare myself. Tried to tell myself, kill him with kindness. Choose patience. And that all fell apart and away as this man I knew but didn’t know snarled, “Go back to the shop, Luna. I’m not in the mood to deal with your shit.”
Deal with my shit?
Okay. All right. He was dealing with stuff. I had to remember that. I had to. He didn’t mean what he said. So I kept my voice as friendly and patient as I could muster. “I’m here for Mr. Cooper.” Then I tried to give him a little smile. A patient one, so he would know I was just trying to help. If I didn’t care about him, I wouldn’t give a crap about his calorie or liquid intake. Didn’t he know that? “I’m here for you too, Rip. You shouldn’t be here alone.”
It was his head cocking to the side that put me even more on edge. The tone of his voice didn’t help. Not at all.
“I’m not in the mood, do you get me? I don’t need you to worry about me right now. What I need is for you to give me some space without worrying about hurting your feelings.”
I wanted to flinch, but I didn’t. “You don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings.”
“I always worry about hurting your fucking feelings, Luna. Give me a break,” he snapped.
It didn’t surprise me that I didn’t reel back at his words. Not even if his statement stung me like a burn under hot water. “Since when?” I asked him, hearing the tension in my voice and not liking how he was making me feel.
This man shook his head. “I’m not in the fucking mood.”
He wasn’t in the mood?
“I’m not in the mood to have you be mean to me when I’m only trying to be your friend,” I replied, feeling my face go hot and indignation fill my soul at how he was just trying to get rid of me like we were strangers.
He had slept in my bed the night before. He had made me lunch and dinner. Bought me breakfast.
Friends were there for each other, and that’s what I was doing. Trying to watch out for him. Be there for him.
And he was pushing me away, and not in a nice way.
The next few words out of his mouth proved it. “You’re trying to be my friend? Be my friend by giving me some space before I say or do something I’ll end up regretting later. Give me some space so that later on I don’t have to feel bad for making you feel bad.”
Maybe I should have let it go, should have walked away and given him the space he wanted, but it had been a long day and I felt riled. Prickled. Hurt already physically and emotionally. I didn’t feel like letting him steamroll me.
Especially after everything that had happened lately with the funeral and my sisters and my dad. Maybe if my sister hadn’t kicked me out of her place, or these wounds from my dad hadn’t been reopened, or if my cousin hadn’t just shown up to my work to try and hurt me… Maybe I could have let it go if all those things hadn’t existed so recently. If they hadn’t rubbed me raw as much as they already had.
Now this? From him of all people?
I didn’t like being threatened, especially not today.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked him cautiously, fear pooling in my stomach as I tried to think about him having things to say that would intentionally hurt me.
“Drop it.”
Drop it? There was something to drop? My heart started beating faster, and that survival instinct told me to let it go. Told me this wasn’t worth it. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I repeated myself. “What would you say to me that would hurt my feelings?”
The face he made… the face he made warned me. It was the only preface I was going to get before he aimed blue-green eyes at me like they had fire in them.
“Tell me,” I kept going even though some part of me knew I didn’t want to know.
“Stop.”
I couldn’t though. I couldn’t. Not today. Not after this life I’d been living for so long where it seemed like half my loved ones didn’t trust me or didn’t value me enough. I didn’t want to take it from one other person I was so invested in. I didn’t want Rip to be on that list. Was that so wrong? “I want to know. I don’t want you to tiptoe around me because you think I’m weak or pathetic. I’m not. I’m not either. I want you to tell me.”
His expression alone might have killed me. “Yeah? That’s what you want?” he asked, something about his tone almost cruel. “I’ve known what you fucking did to your family from the day we went to the funeral, Luna. It’s not some fucking secret. I knew. Everyone fucking knew, Jesus Christ.”
Don’t you let him see you flinch.
But he wasn’t stopping. He wasn’t freaking done. “You wanna know how I knew? You wanna know the truth? I didn’t read about the bust in the paper. I knew about it because that gang you asked me if I was in wasn’t a gang. I was in an MC. A motorcycle club. The Reapers. And we didn’t fuck with your family’s drugs, but I’d met your uncle. I’d met your dad. I heard all about the girl that got half the family arrested. I knew about you before I met you.”
Some rational part of my brain tried to tell the rest of it that what he was saying wasn’t a big deal. That it didn’t change anything. That it didn’t mean anything.
I wasn’t embarrassed by it. I didn’t feel bad about it.
But…
“Cooper’s known the entire time too, so you know. He told me years ago that he’d hired a PI to look into you, and he’s always known where you came from and who your family was.”
He’d known too. For who knows how long, maybe from the beginning, he had known.