Chapter 4
luna
“Okay, everyone,” I murmured calmly, even though my thighs were burning. “Go ahead and move into your center position. Let your palms rest gently on your knees, sit tall, take a deep breath in, hold for five, and release.”
I smiled into the camera, watching as the live-viewer count started to drop off. One by one, the usernames blinked out, waves of virtual goodbyes in the comments. I gave a soft bow of thanks and whispered “Namaste” before ending the stream.
I stayed there for a second, legs crossed, body grounded, the hem of my bra top riding up just slightly against the curve of my ribs.
This used to be my studio. Well, not mine, but the one I used to manage when Nova and I first moved to London.
The owners still let me rent it out when I needed a quiet space to film.
It was a perfect backdrop with its high vaulted ceilings, warm oak floors, and tall windows that let in the softest early morning light.
It was tucked just off a side street in Marylebone.
Thankfully, it was only me in here. No crew.
No Will. Just my mat, the camera, and a rack of bright new sets from the athletic brand I’d partnered with—high-rise leggings, longline bras, bold prints that hugged all my curves.
The collab had blown up. A few viral clips, a “body-positive baddie” headline, and suddenly, I was everywhere.
I stood slowly, stretching out my spine, letting my arms rise overhead, then fall. My skin was warm, but the air was cool.
My phone buzzed, and I glanced toward the little shelf where I’d left it, still catching my breath and wiping sweat off my chest.
One ring.
Two.
No one called me anymore, unless it was scheduled. Usually it was a brand or my agent or Nova FaceTiming me because Scarlette had done something unhinged with a glue stick again.
I padded over slowly, bare feet slapping the polished wood floor, already running through a checklist of things that might’ve caused my phone to spontaneously betray me like this.
Dirks.
My stomach dropped so hard I almost checked the floor for it.
There was no fucking way.
No. Absolutely not. I must’ve overheated. Maybe I’d stayed in pigeon pose too long and starved my brain of oxygen. Maybe this was one of those heat stroke hallucinations they warned you about in CPR training. Should I call Nova? Tell her to take me to the hospital?
Nope.
It was still ringing.
“Shit,” I breathed.
I . . . stood there.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. We didn’t call each other out of nowhere.
What if something was wrong and something happened?
My hand hovered above the screen.
I needed to answer it before it went to voicemail, right?
Right?
Fuck.
Why the hell did this man still have the power to make me feel like I was standing on the edge of something with no clue if I was supposed to jump—or run?
With my pulse in my throat, I pressed Accept without thinking twice about Will.
“Dirks? Is this really—?”
“Hey, Luna girl.”
That voice. The ache in my chest bloomed so fast it knocked the air from my lungs. I slid down the studio wall, my sweaty back hitting the cool plaster as I crumpled to the floor, and everything else—years, mistakes, memories—crashed down like a wave.
“W-why are you calling me?” I whispered. “Is something wrong?”
Because it had been years. Four goddamn years of silence. Of pretending we didn’t exist. Of holding it all in.
“No,” he said, voice so soft I had to press the phone tighter to my ear just to catch it. “I’ve been watching you. Online, I mean. I got my new jersey and saw your logo—your face—on the promo card and I just . . . ”
I let out a breathy, slightly unhinged laugh. “Of course it was the same brand. Of course the universe thinks it’s hilarious to stitch me into your literal uniform.”
“Yeah,” he said with a small chuckle, but then his voice dipped again. “I miss you, Luna girl.”
My throat closed up. I hated that it still felt like a knife through my ribs when he said my name like that. Like it belonged to him.
“I have a boyfriend.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s not why I called. I just . . . ” He paused again. “It’s my last year. On the ice. One more season and I’m done.”
I blinked hard, staring at the floor like it might offer me some kind of answer.
“Oh yeah?” I managed, my voice thready.
“Yeah,” he said. “And before it’s over, I needed to hear your voice again.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Because like that, the years collapsed between us, and I wasn’t in a yoga studio in London anymore. I was 21 again, tangled up with him and Jeremy and all the reckless love we thought would last forever.
“It’s weird . . . knowing it’s ending. Everything’s been hockey for so long, I don’t know what it looks like on the other side.”
“I don’t know,” I said softly, “maybe you’ll get into pickleball.”
Dirks laughed, warm and deep, and it hit me in the chest like a memory I didn’t know I’d been missing. “Please. If I ever pick up a pickleball paddle, just take me out back and finish the job.”
A smile tugged at my mouth despite the heat building in my eyes. “You always said you were gonna die a hockey boy.”
“Still might,” he murmured. “But maybe now I just want to be a hockey boy with a decent back and a functioning knee.”
“You always were more dad energy than jock.”
He scoffed. “I’m literally an athlete.”
“You’re literally the guy who always keeps a wicker basket in his trunk.”
“Okay, that’s fair.”
We both laughed. It was light and easy, like we hadn’t lost four years to silence.
Yet, in the quiet between our words, I couldn’t stop wondering, had Jeremy ever told him?
About the fact that we were in the same fucking foster home and that, technically, for a while, we’d been labeled siblings on some government form.
That we were just two lost kids with the same bad luck, stamped siblings by the state, but nothing in our veins made it true.
Still, I wondered if Dirks had ever heard about it . . . if Jeremy had spilled out of spite.
“So what about you?” he asked. “I mean, I’ve seen what you’ve been up to, can’t go online without your face popping up, but how’s it feel?”
I shifted, tucking my legs beneath me and twisting a stray piece of hair around my finger.
“Weird,” I admitted. “Like I blinked and suddenly had a platform. I was just doing yoga to keep from crawling out of my skin. The rest kind of . . . happened. Now I’m the body-positive face of leggings with pockets.”
Dirks chuckled. “You were always gonna take over the world. You just didn’t know it yet.”
“You used to always say that.”
“Because it was true.”
There was a long pause, not heavy, just full of something . . . real.
“I’m glad you’re doing okay,” he said quietly. “You look happy.”
I swallowed, fingers tightening around my phone. “I am.” I lied. “Mostly.”
He didn’t press. He never had. That was the thing I missed most about him. He didn’t need all the pieces to still hold space for what he didn’t know.
We kept talking. About nothing. About everything.
About the studio and how the owners still let me rent it out. How it smelled the same way it did when Nova and I first moved to London, lemongrass oil and sweat.
He told me he still lived in the same place in Chicago. The same downtown apartment with the concrete walls and floor-to-ceiling windows.
“It’s great,” he said. “Still get catering dropped off at the door. Laundry pickup. Perks of staying close to the team.”
“And you love perks.” I teased him. “You’re nothing if not a diva in compression socks.”
“Hey,” he said with a soft laugh. “You knew that about me from the start.”
I smiled into the quiet. “I did.”
He asked about the brand collab, the classes, the press. I told him the studio kept me sane, and that being content with filming in a place I loved made it feel a little less fake—even when everything online felt curated to hell and back.
Then he asked about friends. People. Life outside the brand.
I hesitated.
There were things I couldn’t say. Wouldn’t. I couldn’t tell him about Nova’s daughter. Couldn’t touch that part of my life, the one tied to the people we’d both lost, the people we couldn’t talk about, but I told him about Ollie.
“Nova fell in love,” I said quietly, tracing my fingers along the seam of my yoga leggings. “It’s been a few years now. She met him after we moved to London . . . after everything fell apart.”
Dirks didn’t say anything at first. I heard the faint rustle of him shifting, maybe lying back on his couch, maybe closing his eyes the way he always used to when he was trying to listen with more than just his ears.
“He’s . . . he’s solid.” I continued. “The kind of love that brews tea when she’s anxious and holds space when she spirals.” I smiled a little. “They live upstairs. When she moved in with him, he turned the garden apartment below into a space just for me.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “That you’re still with her and that she moved on. She deserves that. You both do.”
My throat tightened.
God, how could someone say something so simple and make it feel like being seen for the first time in years?
“Thanks,” I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. “I wasn’t sure if telling you would . . . I don’t know, hurt.”
“It doesn’t,” he said. “She’s your best friend. She was always your anchor. I’m glad she found someone. I’m glad you have that, even if it’s not . . . ” He sighed.
Even if it’s not us.
He didn’t have to say it. The unspoken part of the sentence curled around my ribs.
Dirks changed the subject and told me he’d tried cooking a few times lately.
“Nearly set off the sprinklers,” he said. “Apparently you can’t use a blowtorch on garlic bread.”
“Jesus Christ, Dirks.”
“It was on social media, okay?”
I laughed—really laughed. For the first time in what felt like months.