Page 38 of Lavender Moon

“It’s not a shack,” she gently argues. “It’s a beautiful, charming little house. You just need to bring out all its character,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Oh? And how do I do that, Martha Stewart?” I chide before a potato chip bats me in between the eyes.

“Well, you’ve got a good start leaving the tire swing up,” she begins as if she didn’t just wing a crispy, fried potato product in my face. “And then you could brighten up the bedroom, maybe add a pop of color to all the grey and white so it’s not so dismal looking.”

“Oh I don’t know, it looked like you were having a pretty good time in there to me.” I raise my eyebrows and get biffed with another chip in the face. I try to beam one back at her smug face, but she ducks before it can hit her.

After some more idle chat and the finishing of our lunch, I take our plates inside, and when I come back out, I find her striding purposefully towards the tire swing, her long cardigan flapping in the gentle breeze.

I walk over to catch up, and when she reaches the swing, she takes hold of the rope before turning to me as I venture closer to her. “Will this hold me?” she asks, looking up like she’s wondering how old the branch is that it’s wrapped around.

“Are you kidding?” I chuckle at her as she pulls off her sandals, and gripping the rope, steps up onto the opening of the tire, her light purple-painted toes curling around the black rubber.

Pulling the swing to an angle, I take hold of the rope and jump onto the other side, letting it swing us both beneath the branches. Luna grins like the kid she once was as her hair breezes into her face. “Can it hold you?” I revisit her question before stepping off the tire and giving her a light push. She pulls her butt onto the top of the tire, wrapping her legs around the rope and crossing them at the calves.

“Told you I’d get you on it,” she jeers, sticking her tongue out.

“Yeah, whatever, goof,” I tell her, reaching my hand out to push lightly again. She seems relaxed as she sways back and forth, and I wonder if this is really the best time to bring up her ex, but I want to get it out of the way, and she seems to have gotten any heavy feelings out of the way. “Luna…” I say her name in a semi-serious voice and gauge her reaction. Her eyebrows go up in interest, waiting for me to continue. “I want you to please tell me what that Carter guy did to you.”

“Come on, Kaleb,” she sighs and leans back to swing a little higher. “I told you; he was just really controlling.”

“But what was the catalyst?” I persist. “What made you decide you’d had enough and leave him?”

“K, I just really don’t want to deal with it anymore…”

“I’m dealing with it,” I interject, placing a hand on my chest. “And if I’m going to handle it, I need to know.”

“There’s nothing to handle.” She shrugs as she floats past me again.

“But there could be.” I reach forward and grab onto the lip of the tire, slowly bringing her to a jerky stop. “If he continues, which he probably will, I’m handling it, you hear me?”

She stares back at me, her brown eyes searching mine, and I can see the sadness and the struggle. She doesn’t want to burden me with this. “Truth or dare?” I pull out my ace in the hole and present it more as a statement, and she sets her jaw, annoyed.

“If I tell you, will you drop it?” She tilts her head, pleading in her eyes.

“You bet your ass I will,” I assure her with a firm nod, resting my hands on her thighs as I gaze up at her solemnly. “I just want you to tell me so that I know if anything ever happens again, and then I’ll let it go so we can enjoy our time together. Cross my heart.” I make an X over my chest with my finger tip.

Luna nibbles at her lip a moment before sucking in a breath and expelling the words like a bad taste. “He hid my acceptance letter to NICA,” she reveals, and I feel my jaw drop and my heart stop. “It took a year off my career. No, my life,” she corrects herself, her eyes looking up at the oak branches.

He took a year away from her.

I can feel the fire sparking and flickering to life deep in my gut, though I try to keep it in check. I’m going to slam my fist through this fucker’s face if I ever meet him.

“If I dared to go out or do anything without him, he’d make my time away from him a living hell by calling and texting and getting upset with me for not answering, or telling me how selfish I was. He’d go days without talking to me after I came back, and then when I’d make plans to move out or something like that, he’d grovel and tell me he was sorry while at the same time making me feel like it was my fault. It was mind games…” she shakes her head as if trying to get the very thought out of her head.

“Did he ever put his hands on you?” I ask, pinning her with my stare and trying not to grind my jaw.

“No,” she shakes her head. “He’d hit things and throw things, you know, to emphasize his temper and scare me.”

“Son of a bitch,” I grind out as I look away. My fury crackles with heat as I picture her standing in a room while he tears her down, scaring her and making her feel like shit.

“I didn’t want to believe it until I found my acceptance letter. Oh, after he’d forged a rejection letter and opened my real letter carefully with a knife and replaced it with the one he wrote.” She pulls in a deep breath that raises her shoulders and drops them when she exhales. “Can we be done talking about this now?”

“Yeah.” I lean in and kiss her and push the swing again. I’m far from done stewing over this, but I promised her I’d drop it. And the look of happy peace on her face as the swing gracefully arcs in the breeze, it’s worth keeping that promise.

* * *

Luna

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