Author: LJ Shen
Genre: Romance
Year: 2019
Series: Book 2 of the All Saints High Series
SUMMARY
Not all love stories are written the same way. Ours had torn chapters, missing paragraphs, and a bittersweet ending.
Luna Rexroth is everyone’s favorite wallflower. Sweet. Caring. Charitable. Quiet. Fake. Underneath the meek, tomboy exterior everyone loves (yet pities) is a girl who knows exactly what, and who, she wants—namely, the boy from the treehouse who taught her how to curse in sign language. Who taught her how to laugh. To live. To love.
Knight Cole is everyone’s favorite football hero. Gorgeous. Athletic. Rugged. Popular. Liar. This daredevil hell-raiser could knock you up with his gaze alone, but he only has eyes for the girl across the street: Luna.
But Luna is not who she used to be. She doesn’t need his protection anymore. When life throws a curveball at All Saints’ golden boy, he’s forced to realize not all knights are heroes. Sometimes, the greatest love stories flourish in tragedy.
CHAPTER 1
KNIGHT
KNIGHT 9, LUNA 10
Idrove a fist into the oak tree, feeling the familiar sting of a fresh wound as my knuckles split open.
Bleeding helped me breathe better. I didn’t know what it meant, but it made Mom cry in her bathroom when she thought no one could hear. Whenever she glanced at my permanently busted knuckles, the waterworks started. It had also earned me a trip to talk to this guy in a suit every week, who asked about my feelings.
My earbuds blocked out the sounds of birds, crickets, and crispy leaves under my feet. The world sucked. I was done listening to it. “Break Stuff” by Limp Bizkit was my designated ruin-shit anthem. Fred Durst might look like a ballsack in a cap, but he had a point.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Most kids liked fighting each other. Not me. I only wanted to hurt myself. When my body ached, my heart didn’t. Simple math, and a pretty good deal.
A pinecone dropped on my head. I squinted up. My stupid neighbor, Luna, sat perched outside our treehouse, bouncing another pinecone in her hand and dangling her toothpick legs from a thick branch.
“What was that for?” I tore the earbuds from my ears.
She motioned to me with her head to climb up. I made no move. She waved me up.
“Nah.” I tried to gather phlegm, spitting sideways.
She arched an eyebrow, her way of asking what my problem was. Luna was nosy, but just with me. It sucked.
“Vaughn stole my bike,” I announced.
I’d have beaten the crap out of my so-called best friend, Vaughn, if I wasn’t so sure I’d kill him by accident. He’d said he wanted me to lose my shit. “Get it out of your system.” Whatever that meant. What’s a system? What did he know about mine? About anger? His life was perfect. His parents were healthy. He didn’t even have an annoying baby brother, like Lev.
Luna threw the second pinecone. This time I caught it, swung my arm like a baseball player, and threw it back at her, missing on purpose.
“I said no.”
She produced a third pinecone (She kept a stash in the treehouse in case intruders came upon us, which was honestly never.) and made a show of throwing it at me.
I finally snapped. “You’re so dumb!”
She blinked at me.
“Stop looking at me that way!”
Another blink.
“Goddarn it, Luna!”
I didn’t care what Vaughn said. I was never going to want to kiss this girl. God help me if she ever asked me to.
I climbed on the tire swing and up to our tiny treehouse. Vaughn thought he was too cool for treehouses. Good. It was one more thing that was Luna’s and mine that he wasn’t a part of.
Luna jumped from the branch. She rolled on the ground, straightening up like a ninja and patting herself clean with a satisfied smile. Then she started running toward our neighborhood. Fast.
“Where are you going?” I yelled as if she was going to answer.
I watched her back disappear into a dot. I was always sad to see her go.
This was all so stupid, anyway. I didn’t know anyone who could talk Vaughn into doing anything. Luna couldn’t even talk, period. Plus, I didn’t need her help. I’d walked away from him because if not, I knew he’d get what he wanted from me—a dirty fight. I wasn’t like him. Pissing off my parents wasn’t a lifetime goal.
Sometime later, Luna came back riding my bike. I stood up, shielding my eyes from the sinking sun. It always burned brighter when the ocean was about to swallow it.
She waved at me to come down.
I threw a pinecone at her shoulder in response. “Rexroth.”
What? her quirked eyebrow said. She could tell me a thousand things with her eyebrows alone, this girl. Sometimes I wanted to shave them off just to spite her.
“I always get even. Remember that, cool?”
Cool, her eye roll huffed.
“Now, come up.”
She motioned toward my bike, stomping her foot.
“Leave the stupid bike.”
We huddled inside the treehouse. Instead of thanking her, which I knew I should, I pulled out the pages I had printed earlier and arranged them on the wooden floor between us. Our foreheads stuck together with warm sweat as we both looked down. I was teaching her profanityin sign language—the stuff her father and therapist never would.
“Says here dick is a ‘d’ handshape tapping the nose,” I mimicked the picture on one of the pages, then flipped it on its back. “Oh, look. If you want to say fuck you, you can just give the person your middle finger and pout. Convenient.”
I didn’t look at her, but I felt her forehead resting against mine. Luna was a girl, but she was still really cool. Only downside was sometimes she asked too many questions with her eyes. Mom said it was because Luna cared about me. Not that I was going to admit it, but I cared about her, too.
She tapped my shoulder. I flicked another page.
“Waving an open hand on the side of the chin, forward and back, means slut. Dude, your dad will kill me if he ever finds out I taught you this.”
She tapped my shoulder harder, digging her fingernail into my skin.
I looked up, mid-read. “’Sup?”
“Are you okay?” she signed.
She didn’t use sign language often. Luna didn’t want to talk. Not in sign, and not at all. She could talk. Technically, I mean. Not that I’d ever heard her say anything. But that’s what our parents said—that it wasn’t about her voice. It was about the world.
I got it. I hated the world, too.
We just hated it differently.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Friends don’t let friends get upset over small stuff,” she signed.
Whoa. An entire sentence. That was new.
I didn’t understand the point of speaking sign language if she was planning not to speak at all, but I didn’t want to make her feel bad and stuff.
“I don’t care about the bike.” I put the page down and scooted toward our branch, leaving. She followed, sitting beside me. I didn’t even like riding my bike. It was cruel on my nuts and boring to the rest of my body. I only rode it so I could hang out with Luna. Same reason I colored. I loathed coloring.
She cocked her head to the side. A question.
“Mom’s in the hospital again.” I picked out a pinecone and threw it at the sinking sun, over the edge of the mountain our tree was rooted upon. I wondered if the pinecone made it to the ocean, if it was wet and cold now. If it hated me.
Luna put her hand over mine, staring down at our palms. Our hands were the same size, hers brown, mine white as fresh-fallen snow.
“I’m fine.” I sniffed, choosing another pinecone. “It’s fine.”
“I hate that word. Fine,” Luna signed. “It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s nothing.”
She dropped her head down and took my hand, gave it a squeeze. Her touch was warm and sticky. Kind of gross. A few weeks ago, Vaughn told me he wanted to kiss Cara Hunting. I couldn’t even imagine touching a girl like that.
Luna put my hand on her heart.
I rolled my eyes, embarrassed. “I know. You’re here for me.”
She shook her head and squeezed my hand harder. The intensity of her gaze freaked me out. “Always. Whenever. Forever,” she signed.
I breathed in her words. I wanted to smash my stupid bike on Vaughn’s stupid face, then run away. Then die. I wanted to die in desolate sands, evaporate into dust, let the wind carry me nowhere and everywhere.
I wanted to die instead of Mom. I was pretty useless. But so many people were dependent on Ma.
Dad.
Lev.
Me.
Me.
Luna pointed at the sun in front of us.
“Sunset?” I sighed.
She frowned.
“Beach?”
She shook her head, rolling her eyes.
“The sun will rise again tomorrow,”she signed.
She leaned forward. For a moment, I thought she was going to jump. She took a safety pin from her checkered Vans and pierced the tip of her index finger. Wordlessly, she took my hand and pricked my finger, too. She joined them together, and I stared as the blood meshed.
Her lips broke into a smile. Her teeth were uneven. A little pointy. A lot imperfect.
With our blood, she wrote the words Ride or Die on the back of my hand, ignoring the state of my knuckles.
I thought about the bike she’d retrieved for me and smirked.
She drew me into a hug. I sank into her arms.
I didn’t want to kiss her.
I wanted to zip open my skin and tuck her into me.
Hide her from the world and keep her mine.