The door opened, and Dirks stepped in, his hair damp from a shower, two coffee mugs in hand. He set one on the bedside table and offered me the other.
“What happened?” My voice was hoarse, like I hadn’t spoken in days.
“You had a panic attack.” He pulled the chair closer to the bed. “Then you passed out. I brought you here since it was closest... let you rest.”
I nodded, wrapping my hands around the warmth of the mug he’d passed me. “Thank you.”
He dipped his chin, watching me carefully. “Luna girl. We need to talk about this. About why you get this reaction to helping him out.”
The tears came before I could stop them, spilling hot and relentless down my cheeks. I nodded again, but the words wouldn’t come.
“I hate crying,” I muttered, swiping at my face uselessly.
My hands trembled around the coffee mug, and I set it down before I spilled it all over his sheets. “You don’t get it. You think it’s just about the house. About money. But it’s not. It’s not the walls or the land or the stupid crops.” My throat tightened, and I dragged a hand across my wet face. “It’s him.” Tears blurred my vision until I couldn’t see his face. “I’ve never told anyone. Not you. Not Nova. Not Jer. I didn’t want to say it out loud. Because if I said it out loud, it would be real. And once it was real, I couldn’t shove it back into the dark and pretend it didn’t happen.”
He rose from the chair, and in two strides, he was kneeling in front of me. His hands hovered, like he didn’t know if I wanted to be touched. “Luna girl... ”
“I can’t go back there. I can’t walk into that house, not when every wall, every floorboard remembers. That’s where he took everything from me. That’s where Arthur took my innocence. My childhood.” My throat closed, but I forced it open again. “I was just a kid. And he—” My chest convulsed, another sob breaking through. “He stole my virginity. He stole me.”
Dirks shut his eyes on a heavy exhale.
“I never told Jer,” I whispered, almost choking on his name. “He has no idea. Arthur took care of him in his own way—fed him, gave him a roof, the start of his hockey career. How do I tell him that the same man who gave him some version of family destroyed me?” My face crumpled as I pressed both hands over my mouth, sobbing into my palms. “I don’t want him to know. I can’t stand the thought of him knowing.”
He leaned forward, his hands closing gently but firmly over mine, tugging them away from my face.
“I’m dirty now. Don’t you get it? That’s why I’ve always explored everything sexually, why I push the limits, why I crave control. It’s the only way I can rewrite my story—if I’m the oneholding the reins. That’s why I like controlling men, bending them. It’s the only way I don’t feel powerless.”
The tears streamed unchecked as the words spilled out of me. “Jer is the only person I ever let be my Dom. The only one I ever gave that last piece of myself to. Because he was the one person back then who helped me. He was my safety when nothing else was. I trusted him implicitly, so I gave it up to him, but the truth is, I’m a dirty whore. Exactly what Arthur made me.”
Dirks’s eyes burned into mine. His jaw flexed, and his voice came out low, trembling with anger that wasn’t aimed at me. “Don’t you ever call yourself that. Not in front of me. Not ever. What he did to you didn’t make you dirty—it made him a monster. You hear me?Him.You exploring your body, your desires, your control, that’s you taking yourself back. That’s not shame, Luna. That’s survival. That’s you refusing to let him be the final word on who you are.”
“What he did—it lives in me. That house is where it happened, and I can’t—” My voice cracked. “I can’t set foot there, Dirks. Not when that’s where I lost everything.”
He reached for me then, wrapping his arms tight around me as I finally collapsed, my sobs muffled against his shoulder.
“That’s why he gave me the private room. Where he... ” My chest collapsed. “That’s where he was.”
Dirks froze, the rage in his body barely contained, his knuckles flexing like he wanted to punch through the wall just to bleed off what he was holding.
“You need to tell him. Jer deserves to know the truth. We can figure this out together, but he has to hear it.”
“I-I think I lost him already. He walked away, Dirks. He left me last night, and I felt it—like it was final. Like he’s never coming back.”
Dirks gripped my hands tight in his. “No, Luna girl. You haven’t lost him. Not yet. Not if you let him in. We’ll figure thisout.” He pressed his forehead against mine, grounding me even as I sobbed. “Together.”
`We broke at the same time. His tears fell hot and unguarded, sliding down his cheeks as mine dripped onto the blanket pooled around my waist.
For years, I’d thought I was the only one carrying this pain, but watching Dirks cry for me, for the little girl I used to be, it shattered something and glued me back together all at once.
“I can’t breathe when I think about going back there,” I whispered, choking. “I can’t even say it out loud without feeling like I’m going to shatter into pieces.”
“Please... let me figure this out.” He dragged the back of his hand across his wet face and forced his voice to stay steady. “Let me make some calls. We’ll get this settled. We’ll find a way to close that chapter without you stepping foot in that fucking house again.”
I blinked at him, hardly believing the fierceness in his eyes.
“You can still help him,” he said firmly as he brushed his thumb across my knuckles. “But I’m not letting you burn yourself alive to do it. Not when I can stand here and take some of the heat for you.”
My breath trembled out, and I clung to him like he was the only solid thing in my world.
