He’d never once said anything about us. Maybe us didn’t exist anymore. Maybe he’d finally given up on the idea of us, and I had no one to blame but myself. I’d done this. I’d pushed him away.

What killed me the most was that deep down, I knew he’d been right. I hadn’t done my own thing my entire duration on this planet. I was frightened, dependent, and completely out of sorts whenever he or my parents weren’t around. I’d managed to sail through life with no friends—no human connections outside of him and our families, and minimum communication with the world. I was, for lack of better description, a glorified bubble girl. Knight was a friend, but he might as well have been my babysitter. So even though I was angry at him—for the one-night stands, for taking me for granted, for being right about my insecurities—I also couldn’t resent his dismissal.

I wanted to prove him wrong. To go to Boon, just to make a point.

We were growing apart anyway, going in completely different directions.

He was growing upward, in full bloom, while I was developing deeper roots, chaining myself in place.

Besides, what was the point of staying? We were never going to be together.

He was always surrounded by girls. Girls who were nicer than me. Who spoke with real words. Some of them even had great voices. Girls who wore makeup and trendy clothes and curled and flat-ironed their shiny hair. Girls who had sex with boys and knew how to use their bodies to seduce him.

Girls like Arabella.

Those girls were always going to be there, swarming around him, competing for his attention. I couldn’t imagine myself being with him without being eaten alive by the notion that my competition had more to offer. Problem was, not being with him hardly made any difference. Jealousy still wrapped its green claws around my neck and squeezed every time I had a front-row seat to just how enchanting he was to others.

Case in point, I’d slapped him after seeing him with Arabella. Shame and embarrassment flooded my cheeks with heat. I rushed through the Spencers’ front yard, skipping over people making out on the lush lawn. Twisting my head back to see if Knight was chasing me, I bumped into a hard chest. I stumbled backward, then looked up, and of course, it was Vaughn, propping a fresh keg on his ripped shoulder, his dirty black shirt riding up to expose his lower abs and glorious V-lines, peppered with red-lipsticked kisses.

Just your luck, Luna.

Vaughn shifted the keg to his other shoulder and gave me a light nudge back toward his door. His mouth, forever pressed in a disapproving scowl, twitched with a taunting smile.

“What’s the hurry, Rexroth?” He waited expectantly for my response.

Vaughn knew sign language and could read my lips and hands easily. All my parents’ friends’ kids had learned so they could communicate with me. Seeing as he made it a point to stress how little he cared for people in general, I was surprised Vaughn had made the effort. Then again, it was hardly an effort to him. One day his mother gave him an ASL book. The following weekend, he was fluent.

He looked behind my shoulder. I instinctively followed his gaze. Through the glass door to the kitchen, Knight stared at both of us, a beer in his hand, an arm draped over Arabella’s shoulder. She kissed his neck, dragging her hand past his belt and into his…I snapped my gaze back to Vaughn, squeezing my eyes shut.

“Oh, that’s the hurry,” Vaughn finished in his signature arsenic voice.

I wanted to throw up. I took a step sideways, trying to get around him, but he clasped my shoulder on a dark tsk.

“Now that the knight is not here to save his princess, let’s have a little talk.”

He led me like a captured animal, his hand on the back of my neck—caught prey dragged through the savannah—until we were in his cobblestoned courtyard. He spat me out on a curved stone bench tucked into a darkened corner between the tall walls of his mansion, nestled between carefully clipped pink rosebushes.

The Spencers didn’t have a pool at their manor. Instead, they nurtured elaborate gardens that would leave Versailles’ landscape pale in comparison. But the absolute best thing about the Spencers’ estate was the heavenly slice of lush green grass with a white gazebo, surrounded by cherry trees their landscaper treated with hysterical delicacy.

Vaughn crouched before me, like a father figure would, not a friend. But he had never been either of those things to me. He was Knight’s cousin and best friend. His fondness of me—or lack of blazing hatred, more like—stemmed from familiarity and solidarity with Knight. We weren’t as close as people thought we were. I knew where his loyalties lay. He cared for me, but he’d tear me limb from limb if I hurt Knight, and would dump the rest of me like roadkill.

“You haven’t picked a college yet,” he pointed out.

I stared at him, waiting for the punchline. I felt like a punished kid under his scrutiny. Usually we only hung out when Knight was with us, and then Vaughn took his Vaughnness down a notch or two. Now we were alone, leaving him free to unleash the demons lurking behind his aqua eyes.

“Are you waiting for a special invitation from the Queen of England?” he asked in his usual aristocratic, flat-lined manner.

Privately, and only to myself, I could admit that Vaughn scared me. He seemed incapable of so many basic feelings. I’d never seen him cry, even though I’d known him since he was born. I’d never seen him laugh—fully, wholly, without abandon. He’d never had a crush, and he never spoke about, or to, girls. He was, in a lot of ways, like Lot’s wife. A hard statue, made of salt and stone, standing on a cliff, emotionless and proud after watching with glee as Sodom—or Todos Santos—was set aflame by its sinners.

I couldn’t answer Vaughn’s question without looking like a complete, pathetic lunatic.

I was waiting for Knight to tell me to stay.

I was waiting for him to realize I could do it.

I could move.

I could leave him.

I could, I could, I should.

Signing nothing, I fingered invisible lint from my crop top. Vaughn shifted his weight to his toes, leaning forward. He pinched my chin with his free hand, tilting my head so our eyes met. His pupils pierced through mine, rummaging inside the dark forest of my mind, turning every stone and tearing every tree in search of my secrets and truths. I wanted to blink, but didn’t want to cower in front of him like everyone else. So I set my jaw, staring at him, unblinking.

“What’s your game, Luna Rexroth?” he whispered.

Swallowing, I arched an eyebrow.

“Is it the power? Control? What’s your kick?” A cold, dead smile spread across his pink lips. “You’re never going to be with him. You don’t have the balls.”

Something deep inside me screamed at Vaughn to shut up. But I couldn’t deny the truth in his words. I had no plans to be with Knight. Not when he was with everyone else. Now Vaughn was clutching my jaw, no longer gentle, but far from the realm of hurting me, either. He touched me clinically. Like a doctor would.

“Move to North Carolina and get far away from here. Go to Boon, Luna,” he clipped. “End the fucking, never-ending shitshow of Luna Rexroth and Knight Cole. The cat is tired, and the mouse is diseased. It’s a fairy-tale love story that took many fucked-up turns and ended as a parody. I know the general assumption is I don’t have a heart. Perhaps it’s true. My brain, however, is fully functional, and I can see exactly where this is going. Save whatever’s left of Knight’s high school experience. He’s a senior now. Go to a place where you won’t shit on his parade every time he shows signs of getting over you. Let him move on with his life. As for you? Find out who you are. Live. Unchain yourself from your parents and him. It’s high time, Rexroth.”