Ten Thousand Reasons I Refuse To Be Your Luna

CHAPTER 12. Reason #12

I did not sleep well.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the steel door bending inward, like it was some kind of horror movie stuck on repeat just for me. Then I remembered the message that had appeared on my laptop.

STOP LOOKING FOR THE TRUTH, MELISSA.

By morning, I had convinced myself it was a prank. Someone had probably hacked my computer. Someone wanted to scare me, plain and simple. That explanation sounded far more comfortable than believing anything impossible, and honestly, I was willing to cling to comfortable with both hands. Still, I could not stop thinking about Morrette Mitchell.

Who was he, really? Why did he always appear whenever trouble came looking for me? And why did it seem like everyone else in this city knew more about him than I did?

Work kept me busy until noon. Design approvals, advertising meetings, phone calls with overseas partners. Normally, burying myself in work helped clear my head completely. Today, it did nothing of the sort.

I caught myself staring out the window instead of reading through reports, which was, frankly, embarrassing for a woman who prided herself on focus.

“Miss Star?” Clara said, pulling me back into the room. “Yes?” I asked. “You have read the same page three times,” she said, tilting her head. “Have I?” I asked, feigning surprise rather badly.

She smiled. “That is unlike you,” she said. I closed the folder in front of me. “Clara,” I said. “Yes?” she asked again.

“If someone wanted to know about a person without making it obvious,” I said carefully, “how would they go about that?”

She looked at me with open curiosity, the kind that made me instantly regret asking. A teasing smile spread across her face.

“You are investigating someone,” she said. “I am asking a simple question,” I said. “You are interested in someone,” she said. “I am curious,” I said.

“What is the difference?” she asked, clearly enjoying herself far too much. I sighed. “Forget I asked,” I said. She laughed softly. “I have never seen you this distracted,” she said. Neither had I, if I was being completely honest with myself, which was rare.

Later that afternoon, I decided to leave the office without security. Just once. I told myself I needed fresh air, though some part of me suspected I simply wanted to be alone with my own thoughts for a change.

As my car stopped at a traffic light, I noticed a familiar motorcycle parked across the street. Morrette.

He was sitting outside a small roadside noodle shop. No expensive restaurants, no luxury cafés, just a modest place with plastic chairs and old wooden tables that had clearly seen better decades.

He was eating with three children. One little girl proudly held up a drawing for him to see, and he laughed and ruffled her hair like it was the most natural thing in the world. The children laughed right along with him.

I stayed in my car, watching, and I will admit I probably looked like a woman conducting surveillance rather than a woman simply curious about a man.

This was not the man who argued with me every single time we met. This was not the calm, unreadable fighter from the hotel. He looked relaxed. Happy. Real, in a way I had not expected.

The light turned green. Cars behind me honked impatiently. I drove away, but his smile stayed lodged somewhere in my mind for the rest of the afternoon, uninvited and stubborn.

That evening, I could not stop thinking about the noodle shop. Without really planning to, I asked my driver to take me back.

The place was quieter now. The children were gone, and only the elderly owner remained, wiping down the tables with the kind of patience only decades of practice could build.

I stepped inside. “Welcome,” he said warmly. I ordered a bowl of noodles, which turned out to be surprisingly good, the sort of good that makes you wonder why you ever bothered with expensive restaurants in the first place.

“You know the young mechanic?” I asked casually, trying to sound like a woman simply making conversation and not one conducting a full background check.

The old man looked up. “Morrette?” he asked. I nodded. “He is a good boy,” he said, smiling to himself.

“Does he come here often?” I asked. “Almost every week,” the owner said. “He pays for meals he does not even eat.” I frowned. “What do you mean?” I asked.

The owner chuckled. “Those children you saw,” he said. “They lost their parents a few years ago. Morrette never misses a visit. He says growing children should not have to worry about empty stomachs.”

I looked down quietly into my bowl. That did not fit the image I had carefully built of him. Not at all. I had spent so long deciding exactly what kind of man he was, and here he was, ruining my perfectly organized theory with actual kindness.

As I prepared to leave, I noticed a faded photograph hanging near the cash register. It showed dozens of people standing together during what looked like a community festival. Near the back, I recognized him.

Morrette, though younger, standing beside elderly neighbors, mechanics, delivery riders, and shop owners. No expensive clothes, no cameras, no attention on him at all. Just people who seemed genuinely glad to have him there.

The restaurant owner noticed me looking. “That festival would not have happened without him,” he said. “He organized everything.”

I smiled faintly. “He does not seem like the organizing type,” I said. “Oh, he complains every single year,” the owner said, chuckling. “But somehow, he always does the work anyway.”

I thanked him and left, and the evening breeze felt cooler than usual against my face. Maybe, I thought, I had judged Morrette far too quickly, and far too confidently, for a woman who was supposed to be good at reading people.

Back at my apartment, I opened my notebook. For a long while, I simply stared at the blank page, pen hovering like it was waiting for permission. Then I wrote carefully. *Reason number twelve. You do not fit into the person I decided you were.*

I read it twice. Slowly, I closed the notebook. The list was supposed to remind me why I could never accept someone like Morrette into my life. Instead, every new reason seemed to make him harder to understand, and even harder to dismiss, which was becoming a genuine problem for a woman who liked her problems solved quickly.

Just as I set the notebook aside, my phone vibrated. A message from an unknown number. There was no text. Only a photograph.

It had been taken years ago. A much younger Morrette stood beside my father, both of them smiling at the camera during what looked like a neighborhood charity event.

On the back of the photo, someone had written a single sentence. *Some debts are paid with money. Others are paid with a lifetime.*

I stared at the image until my hands began to tremble. What kind of debt, I wondered, could possibly connect my father to Morrette for so many years, and why did it feel like the answer was going to change everything I thought I knew about both of them?