The guy flipped through the paperwork like he was ordering lunch. “Yeah. A Luna Pierson? That name ring a bell?”
There was a moment of silence in my ears, except for that name.
Luna.
Does it ring a bell? Hell, it echoes like a fucking warning siren. It tears open something I’d sealed up so tight I forgot I still bled there.
Luna Pierson.
She wasn’t someone I remembered. She was everything. She was my reason for getting better. She was the only light in that rotten farmhouse, the only person who saw me, who knew the version of me I kept hidden from the rest of the damn world. And then she left. She dumped me when I was spiraling, drunkand angry and out of my goddamn mind. She buried our past like it never happened and pushed me into the shadows.
She was in the will?
“Luna Pierson is on the will?”
The lawyer looked up, a little wary. “Yeah. Why, you know her?”
I just stared straight ahead again, into that endless stretch of field. My hands curled into fists, but I said nothing.
Because yeah, I knew her.
Too fucking well.
“Yeah, I know her,” I grumbled, jaw tight.
“Great,” the lawyer said like it was good news. “Then you’ll need to get her here, clean up the house, and get it sold.” He stood, handed me the papers, and gave me one last glance. “You’ve got the keys, right?”
I nodded, slipping the envelope under my arm.
“Then best of luck.” He walked off toward his flashy car, and I waited until he pulled down the drive before exhaling a heavy breath.
Fuck.
This meant I’d have to go find her. Probably in London. Luna was never one to stay in one place too long, but I knew she was still there—hell, anyone would know. She’d gone viral somewhere between rehab and the sober living house I was in. She was doing yoga videos and women’s empowerment. Braless selfies in oat-colored living rooms that racked up views by the million. Luna fucking Pierson was not hard to find.
I wasn’t about to slide into her DMs like some pathetic ex. I knew better. She probably had an assistant checking that shit. I didn’t need my name showing up in some “Unresolved Trauma” folder in her inbox.
No. I’d go to Dirks. He’d know how to reach her without raising alarms. He always had a way of softening the sharpest corners between us.
Dirks was... different. He was the pretty one. Tall, lean with a cut jawline and heart like a damn poet. Quiet, steady, always too gentle for the kind of chaos Luna and I dragged him into, but he stayed. He stayed because he lovedher, like I did.
He was her anchor when I was her storm. Her calm when I couldn’t be. We were never lovers, but we shared something—her. And when it was good, it was fuckinggood. Tangled and messy, yeah, but real.
I hadn’t spoken to him since the screaming match that ended it all. After Luna left, I snapped, I quit the NHL, burned every bridge I had ever walked across, and spiraled so far down I couldn’t see daylight. Dirks reached out. I ignored him because facing him meant facing the part of myself that had lost everything.
I needed her because I didn’t have anything else left. I was behind on every damn thing. I’d blown my savings on Arthur’s cancer treatments, stupidly believing I could outrun death if I threw enough cash at it. Then rehab cleaned me out. Sober housing was the best thing that had ever happened to me, but I still had to pay for everything. I’d started teaching hockey to little kids at the park district, scraping pennies while my debt piled up.
The only shot I had at climbing out of it was this house. The land. The sale.
But to sell it, I needed her.
Luna fucking Pierson.
And now I needed him again, too.
9
luna
