Ten Thousand Reasons I Refuse To Be Your Luna

CHAPTER 2: Reason #2

“I will buy you a new one.”

The words left my mouth before I could think them through.

The rain kept pouring around us while the stranger just stared at me. His expression did not shift at all. Not impressed, not grateful, not even surprised.

He sighed instead. ”That is always the first thing rich people say,” he said. I frowned. “And what exactly is wrong with that?”

“You think money replaces everything,” he said, frustrated about that statement. That irritated me more than it should have. I crossed my arms and held his eyes. “If I damaged your motorcycle, then replacing it is the responsible thing to do,” I said.

“It is not about replacing it,” he replied back. “Then what is it about?” I asked him. “I built that bike with my own hands,” he said.

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Rain soaked his dark hair, water running off his mechanic’s jacket mixed with the grease still clinging to his fingers. He looked nothing like the polished businessmen I dealt with every day.

He looked ordinary. And yet there was something strangely calm about him, something that made it hard to look away, harder than it should have been given the circumstances.

“I am Melissa Star,” I said finally. “I know,” he said, not bothered about that. “You know who I am?” I possibly asks him. “The whole country knows who you are,” he said, flat, almost bored by the fact.

No excitement. No request for a photo. No comment on how I looked. Nothing at all. It was the first time in years someone had looked directly at me without seeing the woman from the magazine covers first.

“You do not seem impressed,” I said surprised and astonished. “I am not,” he said. That simple answer annoyed me more than any insult could have, and some small, unwelcome part of me liked it anyway.

He walked past me toward the wrecked motorcycle. I followed, my heels sinking into the mud, and watched him crouch beside the twisted machine, inspecting it with a growing look of disappointment.

I reached for my phone. “I will call a towing company,” I said. “No need,” he quickly answered. “I will also transfer enough money to cover everything,” I said, trying ymake sure I am not in his debt at least. He stood back up. “You really do not listen, do you,” he said.

“I am trying to fix the problem,” I shouted at him in frustration. “No,” he said, looking straight at me. “You are trying to end the conversation.”

That landed harder than I expected. Was that what I always did? Whenever something got uncomfortable, I threw money at it. Whenever people got emotional, I changed the subject before it could reach me. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was not.

“I am Morrette,” he said. The name caught me slightly off guard. “Morrette?”

“Morrette Mitchell,” he said. I nodded, polite. “Well, Mr. Mitchell, regardless of what you think, I still owe you compensation.” He shrugged. "We will figure it out later,” he said.

“You trust a complete stranger?” I shook with a smile first. “I do not,” he replied with a cold face. “Then why say that?” I asked.

“Because I can already tell you are not going to leave this alone,” he said, and something about the certainty in his voice made me laugh, just for a second, before I caught myself and stopped.

Blue and red lights flashed across the road as police cars pulled up. Two officers approached, one recognizing me instantly. “Miss Star?” I quickly nodded. “There was an accident,” I said.

They questioned us separately. I expected Morrette to exaggerate things, maybe angle for something out of me given who I was. Instead he calmly explained exactly what happened — no lies, no blame thrown my way, no mention of compensation at all.

“So you are not pressing charges?” one officer asked him. “It was raining,” Morrette said. “That is all?” I ask because he is truly not demanding anything from me. “Accidents happen,” he simply replied.

I stared at him, genuinely thrown. Most people would have taken full advantage of a situation like this, especially with someone as recognizable as me standing right there. He just picked up his Ruined helmet and said nothing more.

The officers left after filing their report. The road went quiet again, just the rain and the two of us standing in it.

“You should get home,” Morrette said, breaking the silence. “What about you?” I asked him. “I will manage,” he replied. “Your motorcycle is destroyed,” I exclaimed, trying to bring him to remember.

“I have walked before,” he said, and something about how unbothered he sounded almost made me smile. I looked down the empty road. His garage could not possibly be close by. “Where do you even live?” I asked.

He pointed somewhere past the sleeping city skyline. “Far enough,” he said. The rain had not let up at all. I hesitated. “You can let me drive you,” I said.

“No,” he quickly replied, trying to show that manly attitude. “Why not?” I asked. “I do not get into strangers’ cars,” he said. I could not help staring at him. “You realize you are refusing a ride from Melissa Star,” I said.

A faint smile crossed his face. “I am refusing a ride from the woman who just destroyed my motorcycle,” he said. I opened my mouth to argue and could not find a single thing to say back to that.

By the time I got home it was nearly two in the morning. My penthouse looked out over the whole city, a view that usually helped me settle. Tonight it did nothing at all.

I kicked off my heels near the entrance. The apartment sat silent, too silent, the kind of quiet that used to feel like relief and now just felt hollow. I opened the medicine case again — another pill, another glass of water, another day spent pretending everything underneath the surface was fine.

After changing, I sat by the floor-to-ceiling windows, rain still falling outside, and found my thoughts circling back to one person over and over.

Morrette Mitchell. A mechanic covered in grease, completely unimpressed by everything I usually relied on to make people like me, or fear me, or want something from me. And somehow that total lack of reaction was the most interesting thing that had happened to me in longer than I wanted to admit.

Who even was he? I reached for the notebook on the coffee table, the same one I had kept for years, its cover simply labeled *Reasons.* I turned to a blank page and wrote slowly.

*Reason #2. He thinks money cannot solve problems.*

I stared at the sentence. Something about it felt incomplete, like there was a second half to it I was not ready to write down yet. I closed the notebook anyway.

Morning came too fast. My schedule picked back up like the accident had never happened — photoshoots, meetings, contracts, smiles, everything perfectly organized around me the way it always was.

By noon I sat down to lunch with Chairman Lucien Blackwood at Blackwood Holdings, and he greeted me with his usual warm smile.

“I heard about the accident,” he said. I sighed. “News travels fast,” I said. “It was not the accident that interested me,” he said, pouring tea into my cup. “It was the name.”

I looked at him. “What name?” He leaned back. “The mechanic,” he said. My heartbeat slowed. “You know Morrette Mitchell?”

Lucien smiled, but this time something about it felt impossible to read, like there was a whole conversation happening underneath the pleasant surface of it that I was not being let into.

“Let us just say our paths crossed a long time ago,” he said. Before I could ask anything else, his phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, and for the first time since I had known him, his expression turned genuinely serious. He stood abruptly.

“The meeting is over,” he said. I blinked. “What happened?” He looked toward the rain outside the window. “It seems,” he said quietly, “someone has started looking for something that should have stayed forgotten.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?” He did not answer. He just looked at me with an expression that felt less like concern and more like someone watching a clock they had just realized was already counting down, and had been for longer than either of us knew.