Chapter 17
jeremy
It took me a moment to refocus on the game. I hadn’t told anyone on the team I was coming, so I kept to myself, tucked a little higher up in the back of the first section. Still center ice with a good view, but far enough back to disappear into the thousands of fans packed in around me.
Dirks looked fucking good out there. Even for the old man he was in his last season, he wasn’t taking the easy way out.
He was all control and instinct, reading the play before it unfolded, gliding across the ice like he still had years ahead of him.
The man didn’t half-ass anything . . . not the game, not his loyalty, not the people he let in.
I remembered the first time I skated with him, years ago, when I was trying to carve out space in the league.
We were teammates once. In the beginning, we weren’t particularly close, but there was respect between us. We both focused on the game and, afterward, liked to party. Over time, that respect turned into trust.
Luna entered the picture after that.
They connected quickly, and I watched it unfold without saying a word. He deserved something good, and he brought out a side of her I hadn’t seen, nor was I capable of giving her. He was dependable, caring, and steady.
What started separately became something shared.
The three of us began spending time together outside the rink—late nights after games, slow mornings none of us wanted to end, those quiet in-between moments where everything felt right.
It wasn’t something we planned, and it didn’t need a name.
It worked because we trusted each other.
The connection was real. She had a different bond with each of us, and somehow, it all fit.
It was after a Friday night game. A solid win. Most of the team had already filtered out, but Dirks and I were still in the locker room, moving slowly, dragging our feet through postgame rituals. He was sitting across from me, unlacing his skates, when he spoke.
“Hey,” he said, eyes still on his laces, “you been seeing anyone?”
I grabbed my water bottle, took a sip, and shrugged. “Kinda.”
Dirks glanced up. “Yeah? Who?”
I smirked and leaned forward a little. “A girl named Luna.”
It had been a couple months since I’d seen her for the first time, and truthfully, we were fucking inseparable.
He froze. Blinked once. “Luna who?”
I raised my brows. “Luna Pierson.”
He stared at me, dead quiet for two beats, then dropped his skate with a thud. “No fucking shit.”
“What?” I said, my heart starting to pound.
He let out a low whistle. “I’ve been hooking up with her, too.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not.” He looked straight at me now. “I was at the bar, and she came with Nova. It’s only been a week or so, but . . . wow, that’s wild.”
I leaned back slowly. “Holy shit.”
He started laughing. “No wonder she kept dodging questions about what she was doing the night before.”
“Dude,” I said, “wild is one fucking word for it.”
We sat in silence for a minute, processing, the shock starting to settle into something weirder. Not anger. Not jealousy. Just . . . realization.
“You mad?” he finally asked.
I shook my head. “Nah. Are you?”
“Nah.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s Luna. Of course she knew.”
“Oh, yeah. She’s been playing chess, and we’ve been playing fucking checkers.”
He grinned. “You get why though, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, she’s different with me. It’s . . . intense.”
“She talks to me,” he said, quieter. “After.”
I tilted my head. “You’re the aftercare guy.”
He looked at me. “And you’re the guy who fucks her up in the best way.”
That made me laugh. “Sounds about right.”
Dirks shrugged. “She needs both, maybe.”
“We give her different things,” I said. And then after a second I asked, “You cuddle her, don’t you?”
“Every time,” he said, no shame.
I nodded. “I’m the opposite. I fuck her until she cries, and then I leave her alone.”
He blinked. “And she lets you?”
“She likes it,” I said. “She needs the edge. But she needs the softness, too. That’s you.”
“So what the hell does that make us?”
I shrugged. “The lucky ones.”
The silence that followed was easy. There was no tension or weirdness. It was two guys sitting in a locker room, realizing they were part of something bigger than they thought.
Dirks leaned back against the wall. “You think she’d go for it?”
“Dating both of us?” I asked.
He looked at me. “Why not?”
I sat there for a long second, chewing on my cheek, trying to make sense of everything that had just come out of our mouths. The idea was insane. On paper, it was completely fucked, but in my chest, it didn’t feel wrong.
She had just come back into my life. After all those years, after all that damage, she’d shown up again, and I’d tasted her mouth and touched her skin and knew, without a doubt, I wasn’t letting go.
The way I loved her wasn’t easy. It was too fucking intense. I gave her fire, heat, and control. She took it and gave it back with teeth.
But . . . .I never stayed afterward. I never knew how.
Dirks somehow said it like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“She talks to me. After.”
That stuck in my ribs, but not in jealousy. It was the realization that maybe Luna gave him something I’d never had, and maybe he gave her something I couldn’t. I didn’t know what that looked like. I’d never stayed long enough to hear her talk after. Not once.
I wanted her happy. That was all. If that meant sharing her and letting her be everything with someone else too, then what the fuck else could I do?
I finally spoke. “We could date her separately.”
Dirks glanced at me, something flickering in his eyes. Then he nodded. “And together.”
My throat tightened, but I nodded back. “Yeah.”
It sounded crazy. It probably was. But it was honest.
I looked over at him, my heart still thudding, and said quietly, “Then let’s find out.”
The memory faded, slipping back into the noise of the stadium around me.
Watching Dirks, I couldn’t stop thinking about that night in the locker room. About how we said Let’s find out. About how the three of us became something that didn’t have a name.
The jumbotron lit up, and the crowd roared as it cut to a wide shot of the stands. Camera zooming in. Flashing images of celebrities in attendance. A few local anchors. Some ex-players. And then—
There she was.
My stomach dropped.
Luna fucking Pierson.
Her blonde hair was pulled up in a loose ponytail now, curls still escaping to frame her face. The collar of her jersey was stretched a little wide. Her skin glowed in the bright stadium lights, her cheeks flushed, red lips parted in a grin that stole the breath from my lungs.
She was waving and laughing while looking directly at the camera. The jersey was Dirks’s number, but it wasn’t the name that got me.
It was the way she looked.
Truly, undeniably happy.
She was right. I did regret what I said.
I regretted every single word I threw at her the day she left. I regretted the drinking, the blow, the nights I chose the high instead of her. I regretted not chasing her when she walked out.
I regretted it all. Every ounce of it sat in my gut like lead while I stared at her face on the screen. I sat there, invisible in the crowd, high up in the stands, while Dirks owned the ice and Luna lit up the screen beside him.
I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.
I had lost her.
Not to the booze. Not even to the past.
But to the version of herself she finally felt safe being.
I sat there for the rest of the game with my heart pounding and my throat dry, barely tracking the puck or noticing the score. My eyes kept drifting back to where I’d seen her sitting, even though the camera had moved on.
I told myself a hundred different reasons to stay in my seat.
She didn’t need me.
It wasn’t my place.
They looked happy.
None of it stuck.
I needed to see her.
I needed her to sign the paperwork for Arthur.
That was the reason I gave myself, over and over, sitting there in the stands while the game dragged on in front of me. That was the only reason I was even here. Not for the way she smiled.
I needed her signature. Her presence. Her damn consent to move anything forward with the estate.
She was sitting right fucking there. In the same damn building.
It was fate. Some cosmic shove. It wasn’t personal. It was about Arthur.
That’s what I kept repeating. Not love. Not grief. Not unfinished history.
I needed her for one thing. And this was my chance.
I stayed tucked up high, letting the crowd move around me, letting the noise wash over the parts of me that still ached when I thought about her. I watched Dirks skate, watched the clock tick down, and tried to ignore how badly my hands were shaking.
When the buzzer sounded and the crowd erupted, I finally stood. I pulled my hood up. And put my head down.
I moved with the rest of the fans, letting the wave carry me toward the lower levels where the tunnel was.
Security didn’t stop me. I still had enough pull to lie and say I was coming to see old teammates. My boots echoed down the corridor as I slipped into the quieter part of the arena, where the fluorescent lights buzzed and the concrete felt colder.
This was for closure.
This was necessary.
By the time I reached the hallway near the locker rooms, everything in me was tense and burning. My hands were clenched into fists in my pockets. My jaw locked tight.
The hallway was empty. I scanned the corners. Pushed open the side door. There was nothing.
They were gone.
“Fuck,” I hissed under my breath, the word cutting out of me like a blade. “I missed them.”
I was about to give up. The hallway was empty. The arena had quieted to nothing but—
A strangled moan.
I stopped dead and turned my head only to hear it again.
My pulse spiked. That wasn’t nothing. That was her. That was a sound I knew down to my marrow.
I moved slowly, tracking my prey, following the muffled rhythm echoing down the tunnel. The closer I got, the clearer it became. Flesh meeting flesh. A low voice—Dirks. A soft cry—hers.
My stomach twisted, heat slamming through my body.
I reached the top landing, back pressed to the wall, barely daring to breathe. I edged forward, enough to see.
There she was.
Dirks was holding Luna up, her tits out and flushed, bouncing softly with each thrust of Dirks’s hips. Her head was tipped back, hair loose, lips parted.
It wasn’t fucking. They were connected.
I was . . . nothing. They didn’t know I existed, yet I couldn’t look away.
It wasn’t jealousy. Not of them.
It was jealousy of what they got to be.
Anger curled under my skin. I stood in the hallway like an idiot, pacing and hesitating and convincing myself this was about paperwork and Arthur and closure and nothing else, while they were up here, in some dark corner of my old goddamn stadium.
Fuck, I didn’t know what to do with any of it. The rage. The arousal. The grief.
I was hard as stone, my cock pressing painfully against my jeans like it couldn’t tell the difference between heartbreak and desire. My hand shook as I unzipped, pulling myself free, already leaking at the tip, already lost in the sight of her.
Because it wasn’t just that he was fucking her.
It was that I wasn’t. And I didn’t deserve to be.
I wanted to be part of something again. I wanted to belong to her again, or to whatever the hell the three of us used to be, or could have been, or still might be if I hadn’t broken everything we ever tried to hold.
“I d-don’t want her,” I whispered. “I don’t want back in.”
Lies.
“I simply need her to sign the goddamn papers.”
Bullshit.
I gripped tighter, stroking slow and rough as I watched her hips roll into his, watched her fingers dig into his shoulders, watched her lips move in some quiet whisper I’d never hear.
And I hated it.
Yet I wanted it.
“Just the fucking papers,” I growled and came hard in my hand.
Alone and lying to myself . . . yet again.
I tucked myself in, smearing my fucking hands along the walls of the stadium that had built me. I didn’t need to see them like this. I didn’t need to see what they had and what I had thrown away.
I had to focus on the papers. Let them be happy. I was the fuckup in this situation, and I always would be. I knew where to find them, so I turned away. I turned away the moment Luna came. I’d come back with a bigger plan—a better one. I wasn’t going to let them win.
I needed money. I needed this whole situation cleaned up, and the least I could do was get my shit in order and not get pulled into the wreckage that was the three of us.
But fuck . . .
I was a contradiction with no home.