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Luna didn’t look wounded by his gruffness. “Okay.”
“I could use some help.” I felt bad pulling her away from Cole, with as excited as she looked, but this was best for all of us. “I need to sift through the stuff that’s under the pavilion.”
“Of course.” Luna had recovered from her earlier stress, and I assumed it had something to do with the well-muscled, grumbly man standing a few feet away.
“Find me when you’re done,” I said to Cole.
He nodded.
Luna waved at his back, as I gently tugged her toward the yard. When we got there, she nodded at my T-shirt. “Westminster?”
Last night rushed back to me in a poofy cloud of pleasant memories. It tugged along a reminder that my past with Ramsey and Luna was messy. I was torn between giving her all the naughty details, the way I normally would, or keeping them to myself because ofwhothey involved. “I didn’t make it home last night,” I confessed.
Luna let out an exaggerated gasp. “Was he cute? Well hung? All of the above, I’m sure. Probably smart.”
“All of the above.” I pointed her toward a box. “If it’s salvageable, set it on a table. If it’s unrecognizable, throw it out. If you’re not sure, ask me. We’ll decide. How’d your interview go yesterday afternoon?” Probably didn’t end in a job, since Luna hadn’t called me, but that didn’t mean it went badly. Few interviews resulted in on-the-spot offers.
Shit.I shouldn’t have mentioned her search for jobs. That would tie back to Ramsey, as well. But I did want to know, and between yesterday’s event and this morning’s crisis…
“It was all right.” Luna’s tone implied it wasn’t great. “I got through all the questions. They seemed really impressed with my credentials and my test results.”
“But…?”
“But then one of the interviewers asked me if I wasthatLuna. It’s not a common name or anything…” Her shoulders slumped, and she dove back into her work.
Luna was a brilliant programmer. Yeah, I was biased, but it went beyond that. When we were in college, Luna had worked with a professor to build acurefor one of the most malicious pieces of malware the internet had seen in about five years. Her code had saved hundreds of schools that had been held hostage billions of dollars.
The problem was, the last virus that was as bad, a few years earlier, was hers. She hadn’t done it maliciously. A lot of people might not believe that, but I knew Luna. She’d done it because someone said,Hey, I bet you can’t do this, and she said,That sounds like fun. I bet I can. She’d done it for the challenge, never stopping to think someone would do evil things with it.
When various international law enforcement agencies caught up with her for the earlier code, that was what she became known for. No one cared about the good she’d done since.
“I’m sorry, L.” I wished I could do something for her.
“I expect it. When it goes better, it’ll taste so much sweeter. And it will go better.” She shrugged again. “Don’t think you can dodge the question. Does your Westminster boy know you’re a U girl?”
“Lots of people wear Westminster shirts, not just alumni. And none of them care where I went to school.” The entire box I was looking through was clothing, caked in mud. Cheaper to replace through donations, than to get these back to wearable again. I carried it to thetosspile.
When I turned back to Luna, she was watching me with wide eyes, her mouth in anOshape. “You hooked up with Hunter.” Her voice echoed off concrete and aluminum.
“I di— What? Why would you say that?”
“Because you’re making a big deal out of a T-shirt, and he’s the only reason you would.”
“I’m not making a big deal out of anything. I didn’t even mention it.” I couldn’t deny her guess though. I couldn’t lie to Luna.
“Mhm.” Her serious expression melted to a grin when she opened a box of books and flipped through a few without any pages sticking together from water damage. She moved each clean book with reverence, giving the pile an isolated spot on the table. “Does Ramsey know?”
I sucked on my teeth, searching for the right way to saydefinitely yes. She knew I’d been with both of them before. My breakup with Ramsey had directly and specifically coincided with Luna’s legal issues.
“I see. That sounds fun. Was it fun?” Luna’s question was strained.
My heart sank. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t— I shouldn’t have— It’s not like it’s going to happen again.” I’d discovered early on in dating Ramsey that I struggled with his two halves—public and private. I was willing to overlook it most of the time, especially when we first hooked up. The sex was amazing, the conversation was amazing,Ramseywas amazing. So what if he’d been raised to be polite in mixed company?
“Why not?”
The question caught me off guard, and I struggled to wrap my brain around it. “We broke up.” It was the not-so-polite, upper-class company Ramsey kept that I started to have an issue with. The off-color jokes were nothing new. When we were in college, Luna and I spent a lot of time at parties, and I’d heard plenty of crude jokes and comments about my various body parts.
The more time I spent around friends of Ramsey’s family, the less tolerable they got. The worst part was Ramsey would laugh along with them.
