“Yeah. Your daughter is a germ farm. And she likes to pick her nose, so I asked her not to shake my hand.”

Luna’s eyes widened in horror. You could tell that no one ever tried to be silly with her. People were always serious when it came to her, and why wouldn’t they be? They wanted her to get better. But what they didn’t realize was that for someone to get better, they needed to feel better. My mom, case in point.

People need something to fight for.

I was going to give Luna a reason to laugh until it all ended—knowing it would end, badly.

“I’m not going to explore this subject any further because I see Luna is finding it amusing.” Trent picked up his keys and wallet from the black island in his open space kitchen, and I remembered why I’d come. So he could go on a date. My skin prickled. “Luna’s bedtime is eight o’clock. She didn’t have supper yet. I’m letting her splurge because I won’t be here tonight. There’s spaghetti and FroYo in the fridge.”

“Wait.” I dumped my backpack on his floor and kicked off my Docs. “Spaghetti and FroYo are supposed to be treats?”

He stared at me, dead in the eye, not flinching. “Yes. Don’t give her too much of it.”

“Wow, are you, like, on C-R-A-C-K,” I spelled, walking over to the island to stand next to him, “or are you simply a product of the Soviet regime? This is not splurging. I wanna order pizza.”

He shrugged into his blazer. “You’re not. And by the way, she knows how to spell.”

I stood there, wondering why I’d humored and indulged him in the first place. He was terrible to me. Rude, arrogant, and cold beyond words. And I was awful to him, too. Stealing, spying, and constantly snooping around him. But the answers were there, plain and simple. I needed the money, and I enjoyed hanging out with Luna.

“It’s five past seven.” He glanced at his Rolex. “My number is on the fridge if you need me. Underneath it, you’ll find Camila’s number, my mom’s number, and Sonya’s—her therapist. Luna needs to brush her teeth before she goes to bed, there’s a small lamp that always stays on at night in her room, and she gets a bedtime story which she chooses from the library next to her room. Any other questions?”

Sonya? I had one question, but it wasn’t related to Luna. It was, holy-shit-are-you-actually-screwing-your-kid’s-therapist?

“Are you sure you’re going?” The underlining question was—do you really not want me? Stupid. Pathetic. Thoughtless. Why would Trent Rexroth want me, and why would it make any difference? I was a high school graduate with a hole in my heart and problems bigger than my existence, and he was… the opposite of what I needed right now.

“Give me one good reason not to,” he deadpanned, tucking his wallet and cell phone into his back pocket, his eyes still on his watch.

“Because you don’t want to.”

“You don’t know what I want.”

“Do you?”

He looked up, assessing me, before smirking. “By the way, I have more nanny cams in this place than your porking buddy Bane has tats, piercings, and STDs combined, so stay out of my shit,” he hissed it low so his daughter couldn’t possibly hear it. He walked over to Luna, kissed her crown, told her he loved her, and waltzed out the door.

Leaving me to stand there, my jaw on the floor, drowning in the delicious, dark energy he’d left behind.

I ordered pizza.

Small, meaningless protests were my stock and trade. I often felt like a citizen of occupied Europe in WWII. Someone who wasn’t brave enough to join the resistance, but couldn’t completely bow their heads to evil. I paid for the pizza myself, even though Trent had left a few bills on the counter, just in case. And I let Luna have soda.

Because it made her smile.

And when we blew bubbles into the soda, she even snorted.

And when I told her I was so full I could throw up but the pizza was so good I would probably eat whatever I’d puke out, her eyes lit up along with her smile.

After dinner, I poured half a cup of sugar into the organic, sugar-free FroYo and took it to the living room, where we watched Girl Meets World. I was ninety-nine percent sure that it was out of her age bracket, but it kept both of us entertained. Eight o’clock came and went. Rules were bent, because Trent had been the first to break them. He broke them the day he broke my mother’s expensive Louboutins. The day he’d agreed to hire me. He’d broken them when he bossed me around to get into his car when I was with friends, and forbade me to have sex with Bane, and way more other times than I cared to count.