Chapter 32
dirks
The jets hummed low beneath the water, steam curling up into the cold night air, and honestly? I needed this. My body was wrecked after tonight’s game. My hips were tight, my shoulders were barking, and legs felt like they’d been dragged behind a Zamboni.
Jer sat across from me, sunk low in the water, his arms stretched wide along the ledge, black hair soaked and slicked back, eyes half shut. He looked relaxed, which was rare.
We were both stripped down to our boxers, lazily soaking while Luna was inside changing and grabbing drinks. Probably also raiding the pantry for snacks she’d insist she didn’t eat and then devour in exactly four bites.
I watched the sliding door for a second, then looked back at Jer.
“I got a question to ask.”
He cracked one eye open. “Yeah?”
“My mom invited Luna up north. After the holidays. During my bye week.”
His brows lifted, just a little. “In Minnesota?”
I smirked. “Ha. Yeah.”
Jer nodded, jaw ticking slightly. “You inviting her as your girlfriend or . . . what are we calling this?”
“Yeah . . . I think she’ll be my girl when she comes.”
“Cool. You don’t need my permission, man. We’re—”
“Friends,” I finished, already knowing where he was headed. “Yeah. I know. It’s not about that.” I glanced over at him, the water lapping gently between us. “I wanted to ask if you’d come with. I don’t know if you’re working or what, but I figured I’d throw it out there.”
Jer rubbed a hand over his face, flicking water off his chin. “I work at the front desk at the rehab center, man. Mostly check-ins and phone calls. It’s nothing I can’t get time off from.”
He could be doing so much more. Jer wasn’t built for desk jobs.
He used to be an NHL superstar before the booze, before everything fell apart.
He could be doing so much with that knowledge.
Working with Ledger. Coaching kids, teaching them to skate, to fall, to get back up again.
He had that in him. Whether he saw it yet or not.
But that was a subject for another time.
“I’m not bringing this up just to be polite. I want you to come.”
Jer blinked and shook his head.
“I’m serious. It’s not just me and her anymore. It hasn’t been. It’s us. And if we’re doing this—whatever this crazy, sideways, rule-breaking thing is—we don’t leave pieces of it behind.”
The sliding door creaked open, and out walked chaos herself.
“What are we talking about?” Luna balanced a plate stacked with snacks and a couple of water bottles like she was hosting a PTA meeting instead of walking into a hot tub full of sexual tension and emotional trauma.
A bright pink cheetah-print towel was wrapped tightly around her.
“That towel is a lot.”
“It’s giving 1987 sleepover with claw clips and grape soda,” Jer muttered.
“It’s giving you’re lucky I’m sharing my Doritos,” she shot back, setting the plate down on the little side table.
She straightened, hands on her hips, looking between us like she already knew we were up to something.
Jer said, “Nothing.”
“Nah, we were talking about how Jeremy doesn’t want to come to Minnesota.”
Her brows popped up. “Minnesota?”
“My mom invited us to come during my bye week,” I explained, sitting up straighter in the water. “I was gonna ask if you wanted to come.”
“Yeah,” she said immediately, no hesitation. “Of course. Obviously Jer’s coming, too.”
Jer started laughing, shaking his head. “Oh, sure. Let me just stroll into Dirks’s little Midwestern Hallmark family dinner and announce that I’m either your platonic friend with a lot of shared nudity or your ex-boyfriend-turned-current-situationship who occasionally sleeps over.
” He kept going. “Your mom, your dad, your sister, her husband, and their two angelic blonde children are going to take one look at me and assume I’m your parole officer or your biggest mistake. ”
I shrugged. “Then we don’t tell them anything.”
Jer snorted. “You think I’m gonna be the problem? She’s gonna walk in wearing that towel, and your mom’s gonna assume we brought our stripper friend.”
“I’m not mad about that,” Luna said, grabbing a chip. “That’s a solid first impression.”
“Yeah, no. Absolutely not. I’m out. Not doing that. This—” He gestured vaguely at the steam, the snacks, the situation. “This is where I draw the fucking line and say nope. Just friends. Pulling the friend card. Cashing it in. Laminating it.”
I raised an eyebrow.
She just looked at me with a calm, wicked little glint in her eye and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
She turned to Jer and padded over to the hot tub, dropping her towel and dipping one leg in, before sinking all the way down until the water bubbled around her shoulders. Her calves glided through the heat as she leaned back, eyes locked on his.
She looked Jer dead in the eye. “If I let you bend me over the deck railing tonight, would you still want to be just friends?”
Jer didn’t laugh. He stood up slowly and walked over to where she was sitting. “I don’t need permission to look at what’s already mine.”
Luna blinked.
I blinked.
Then I grabbed a chip and leaned back against the wall of the hot tub.
“Well,” I muttered. “Guess we’re all going to Minnesota.” I waved a hand between them like I was moderating a very unsexy divorce court. “No, like—actually—I need to know what we’re doing here.”
Jer sat back down, water sloshing around him. “I need my fucking dead ex-foster dad’s estate closed, and I need her”—he jabbed a finger at Luna so aggressively I thought he might sprain something—“to sign it.”
“And I said I don’t want to and can’t go there,” Luna fired back, mocking the hell out of him with her own exaggerated finger jab. “And he”— she pointed dramatically, nearly flicking water in his face—“said he’d give me a few months to freaking figure it out.”
My eyebrows inched higher. “But you’re not mad at her? For leaving?”
Jer leaned back and shook his head like that was the least complicated part in all this chaos. “Oh no. That I get. I know why she did it.”
“And you two have already fucked.”
“Yup,” Luna said, popping her p.
I reached for my drink, eyeing both of them. “And you’d fuck again?”
“Yup,” Jer echoed, same tone, same pop, same zero shame.
I blinked. “Great. Great.”
It was painfully obvious neither of them had any goddamn clue how deeply entangled this still was.
The way they snapped at each other, then agreed in perfect sync.
The matching “yups.” The fact that Luna was still pressed against the corner of the tub, tits floating, and Jer was watching her like he was one bad decision away from making it worse.
I was simply trying to drink my damn sparkling water and not get emotionally cockblocked by their unresolved trauma.
“Cool. So to clarify . . . she left, you get it, but you need her to sign something related to your dead ex-foster dad, she won’t, but you’re giving her time. And in the meantime, you’ve been fucking. And you would fuck again?”
“Correct,” Jer said, not even blinking.
Luna raised her hand like she was about to deliver a thesis. “Also, I’m feeling very emotionally fragile tonight and may require . . . cuddles.”
Jer scoffed. “Is that code for riding one of us until you cry?”
“I mean, if the cuddle fits.”
Luna smirked and slid across the tub like she knew she was being watched. Which, to be clear, she absolutely was.
Her body was glistening in the steam, that ridiculous baby-blue thong bikini barely hanging on by a few damp strings.
The top did nothing—nothing—to hold her in, tits practically spilling out the sides, the fabric suctioned to her skin and doing fuck all to hide how hard her nipples were.
Her thighs flexed as she stepped toward me, those hip dips spilling around the sides of her bottoms in a way that made my mouth dry.
The fabric was practically see-through with the water, barely covering the curve of her pussy.
She settled beside me, dragging one wet arm across my shoulders, half of her body pressed against mine, her tits bouncing once as she adjusted herself with a breathy little sigh that sounded entirely too close to a moan.
“Dirks,” she whispered, lips brushing my ear, warm breath making my dick twitch under the water. “Do you not want to cuddle me?”
Jer scoffed. “He’s trying not to get hard right now.”
“Too late,” I muttered, teeth clenched.
She turned her attention to Jer. “What about you? You gonna keep pretending you’re not undressing me with your eyes or finally admit you want me under you tonight?”
Jer leaned forward, slicked hair falling into his eyes, water dripping off his forearms as he locked in on her. “I don’t pretend. You already know.”
“Then fucking do something about it.”
Jer didn’t hesitate.
He stood in the water, towering, wet and hard as he grabbed her wrist. With one smooth pull, he sank back onto the submerged bench and dragged her down with him. She landed with a splash and a sharp gasp, thighs straddling him, hands on his shoulders for balance.