Chapter 8
jeremy
My balls were sweating as I walked down the familiar, cornfield-lined, unpaved road that led to my dad’s farm—if you could still call him that.
After years of dragging his stubborn ass to appointments in Chicago—top-of-the-line oncologists, scans, second opinions, all the experimental shit we could afford—it only bought him a few more bitter, drawn-out years of pain.
He died anyway and not peacefully or surrounded by family.
He died while I sat in a sober living house in Missouri.
He died alone, and I wasn’t there, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for that.
I moved in with Arthur when I was in elementary school, after too many homes and too many caseworkers whose names I stopped bothering to learn.
He was some gruff older man the system kept sending kids to, probably because he lived out in the sticks and didn’t ask many questions.
People said he had a weird vibe because he looked too long or cracked jokes that made your skin crawl a little, but he never laid a hand on me.
Treated me decently, better than most. He was a little off, yeah, but for some reason, I got lucky.
I got treated fairly. Was maybe even liked.
He was known for churning through foster kids like cattle, one after another, loud and pissed off, all shoved into bunk beds that groaned under too much weight and too many broken dreams. Not me.
I stayed. All the way until I turned eighteen.
I was the only one he let stick around long enough to call it home.
Out of the dozen or more who passed through while I was there, I was one of only two who ever got their own room.
For whatever reason, he let me play hockey.
Wouldn’t let anyone else do sports—said it was a waste of time, money, energy.
I dragged home a broken stick from some yard sale and started slapping pebbles around the yard, and he didn’t stop me.
Just grunted, smoked his cigarette, and eventually drove me to tryouts in his rusted-out truck without saying a word.
Never told me “good job.” Never said he was proud, but he showed up for . . . me.
He was a dad in every way he knew how to be, and for some fucked-up reason, maybe because I never knew who my real parents were, he became mine. For better or worse, Arthur was the only father I ever had.
I walked up to the house, which looked like it was barely holding itself together—shingles missing, porch sagging, paint long forgotten.
The lawyer, a big guy in a suit that looked like it had never seen this much dust, stood from one of the creaking rocking chairs and gave me a wave.
I nodded back, not in the mood for small talk.
“Why’d you park way down there?” He pointed toward my truck parked near the start of the drive.
“Dunno. I wanted to walk the property.”
Truth was, I got itchy. Especially since I quit the booze and pills.
Couldn’t sit still for too long without feeling like my skin was trying to crawl off my bones.
Something about being in motion, about my shoes in dirt, cleared the static in my head.
Being stuck in a car too long made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. So yeah, I walked.
“Well,” the lawyer said proudly and held up a stack of papers. “Got the will here. Wanna go inside?”
I shook my head. There was no reason to go inside and relive the memories of whatever the hell childhood I had growing up.
“Great,” he said, a little too chipper for a man handling the remnants of another man’s life. He sat back down in the creaky rocker, the wood groaning under him, and I gave him a nod before sinking into the chair beside him.
Might as well get it over with.
I turned away from the lawyer in his pressed suit and shiny shoes, and looked out at the cornfields.
It was early fall, cool breeze, dry air, the kind of stillness that felt like waiting.
The agriculture company that leased the land would be out here soon to chop the stalks down, same as they did every year.
Cut it all down, strip it bare, leave nothing behind but dust.
The wind stirred the corn just right, and suddenly I was a kid again, knees scraped, dirt under my fingernails, the sun a blazing white orb overhead.
It was a Saturday—Arthur had passed out in his recliner, beer in hand with some old Western droning on the TV loud enough to cover any trouble. That was when she ran.
She’d only been there two days. Blonde. Small. Eyes that had seen too much for her young age. She didn’t talk much. Arthur liked that. I’d heard him tell one of the caseworkers that quiet girls lasted longer. She got the private room.
I noticed her bag was gone before anyone else. Heard the screen door creak. I didn’t say a word. Just waited until the house was quiet again, then slipped out after her.
I found her deep in the cornfield, crouched like a little animal, hands clenched into fists. She looked up, startled, when I parted the stalks.
“You followed me,” she said.
“You left.”
“He was asleep.”
We stood there for a long minute. Finally, she looked at me and said, “We can be friends if you want.”
I nodded.
“But we can’t ever talk about it,” she added flatly. “He can’t know. Nobody can. You have to swear.”
I didn’t ask why. The whole place was a house of secrets. Of rules no one wrote down but everyone followed.
“Okay,” I said, and we sat there until the sun started to dip, side by side, surrounded by silence and secrets and stalks taller than either of us.
That’s how it started—with an escape, a promise, and a girl named Luna who never liked to be found.
“So his assets are mostly the house, a bank account with a couple thousand bucks, which is all left to you,” the lawyer said, lifting a thick folder off his lap.
“As you probably know, he leased the land to that ag company a few years back. They’re offering to buy the whole property now, and it’s worth a good chunk. ”
I nodded. Of course he left me the house. There wasn’t anyone else. No one else had stuck around. I was the only one at the funeral. I buried him next to his parents, gave the guy who dug the grave a fifty and left. Couldn’t even get drunk at the bar after. It sucked all around.
“The entire house and land have to sell within the year,” the lawyer added, flipping a page like it wasn’t a big deal.
“Why?”
“Clause in the revised lease. Arthur added it last year, probably when he figured the clock was running out. If the property doesn’t transfer ownership within the year of his death, the deal with the ag company falls through.
They pull their bid, void the lease, and you’re stuck with the whole damn thing—taxes, upkeep, insurance, all of it. ”
I stared at the horizon, jaw tight. “Sounds like something he’d do. One last mess to clean up.”
The lawyer cleared his throat. “So, per the terms of the lease agreement and the will, the house and land have to be sold within the year by you and the co-beneficiary. The ag company’s offer is contingent on it being cleaned up and listed by then.
Otherwise, the whole deal expires. They want the land ready for full control by next year’s planting season, no hold-ups, no squatters, no loose ends. ”
I let out a dry breath. “Figures. Even in death, Arthur’s idea of motivation is a ticking clock.”
Then something registered, a word he slipped in too casually.
“Wait.” I turned to him, my brow furrowed. “Someone else is on the will?”
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, drunk and 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 loved her, 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 fucking good. 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.