Chapter 29

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ZACH

I 've got thirty minutes to make a twenty-minute journey, gear up, and be on the ice for practice.

I'm going to be late, and Coach Burrows is going to ream my ass for it. But there wasn't any reality where not dropping Luna at the airport was a possibility.

I need to soak up every minute with her.

I pull into the drop-off zone and kill the engine on my truck. I grip the steering wheel hard and look across at the girl I'm already missing, even though she's sitting two feet away from me. "When will I see you again?"

She keeps her head down, picking at her purple nail polish.

I take her hand in mine to stop her nervous fidgeting. "Luna?"

On a long exhale she responds. "I don't know, and this is part of the problem, isn't it? We just don't know. If we go back to the way we were before this summer, like we said we would, then in around three years?"

My heart sinks through the floor. "We both know things have changed between us, Luna."

On a whisper, her eyes are gentle and soft as she looks up at me. "I know."

Pushing my head back into the seat, frustration at our situation overwhelms me. "Am I going to lose you?"

She holds my hand tighter. "What do you mean?"

I squeeze my eyes shut and summon the courage to answer truthfully. "I know we don't have a label right now, but while we work through everything and where we go from here, I'm saying I won't be with anyone else. The thought nauseates me. I won't touch anyone else. So I guess I'm asking if you're still on the same page?"

"I won't touch anyone else. I don't want to."

Relief floods my veins. "Okay, that's good."

"You need to get to practice."

"Yeah, but I want you to have this." Reaching into the pocket of my jeans, I fetch out the small ring of keys and open her palm to place them inside.

She looks down at them in wonderment and then brings her eyes back up to mine, a glossy sheen covering them. "A—Are these for the beach house?"

Closing her fingers around them, I nod slowly. "Take them. Use the place like it's yours. It'll make it a whole lot easier to go swimming in the mornings. You can do your schoolwork on the veranda. You put so much into it too." I pause and blow out a breath, trying to find some humor in this dead-ass depressing situation. "Just don't paint the walls yellow, yeah?"

"Zach I can't take th?—"

"You can, and you will, Luna. Please. This is fucking hard enough. Take the beach house, move in if you want. The stars and launches are much clearer from there."

A lone tear slowly trickles down her cheek, and I quickly reach up and swipe it away, just as I did the first time I took her to bed. I can still feel her pressed against me as I slid inside her for the first time. With my heart still on the floor, it bleeds out at the sight of her upset. "Baby, don't cry."

A sob racks through her as she shakes her head. "Even if we put a label on us. This. It wouldn't make any difference, would it? We'd still be thousands of miles apart."

The temptation to get out of my truck and board the plane with her right now has me reaching to undo my seatbelt. "I have three more years on my contract. I could request a trade, and I will, if that's what you want. I'll fucking request it right now."

"I just need time. You can't leave everything you have here. You have a family in your teammates and friends."

I don't want to push her, but I need to know. "How long do you need?"

"Honestly, I don't know. I'm not sixteen anymore, Zach. I never expected any of this." She motions between us. "My head is spinning out, and being brutally honest, I need to make sure I can handle living in your world. It would be going from zero to a hundred miles an hour. I'd need to find a place. I'd need to find a job. I'd need to leave my mom. I'd need to leave everything I've ever known and be thrust into the limelight. Last night was just a taste of what it can be like."

She leans across and kisses me on the lips tenderly. My hands fly to cup her cheeks as I rest my forehead against hers.

Just one more minute, Luna.

Breaking our kiss, she reaches for the door handle and slowly pulls it open, and I fly out of my side and toward the back to grab her suitcase and help her into departures.

"You're going to miss practice completely if you don't get going."

I don't answer but instead pull her into me, holding her small frame against mine. When will I get to do this again? The possibility of never makes me want to hurl.

"Bye, Zach."

I watch as she turns to leave, panic creeping up my spine. "Luna!"

She stops and turns. "Yeah?"

"Whatever happens. Even if we're not in the same state. I just want you to know that you'll always be mine. What we have from three thousand miles apart is so much more than I've ever felt for anyone else."

LUNA

It's late by the time I pull up into my driveway and kill the engine.

My home has always been my sanctuary, the place I've retreated to when things have gotten tough. But right now, staring at the darkened windows, it couldn't feel any less inviting. It feels lonely and bleak.

Come on, Luna; don't cry again. You knew this was going to happen. You knew you'd have to come home. You need to be at home to work through everything.

Wiping under my eyes furiously, I pick up my phone to text Zach and tell him I made it back safely. It's then I realize I left it in airplane mode. Shit. My mind has been all over the place, and it's been like this for hours.

As soon as I switch off airplane mode, text after text starts coming through, but mainly from Zach, Kate, and Felicity—all of them asking me to call them ASAP.

Clicking on the latest message from Zach, I open it up fully.

Zach

Okay, now I'm going out of my mind. Please call me, Luna.

I begin typing out a response when a call from Felicity comes through.

"Hey. Sorry I forgot to take my phone off airplane mode."

"Babe, I just wanted to check in and make sure you're doing okay."

Okay, now I'm confused. She sounds frantic. "Yeah, I'm okay. Well, sort of, I guess. Everything really sucks."

"You are? I figured you'd be freaking out."

"I knew it was coming. I'd have to come home. School starts back tomorrow."

She sighs on the other end. "You haven't seen them, have you?"

I physically feel the blood drain from my face. "Seen what?"

"Babe, there are photos from last night all over social media."

"From the gala?"

"Yeah."

"Not ideal, but I guessed there would be at some point." There was a photography ban inside, but out on the red carpet, the media were free to release what they wanted.

"Yeah, um, it's not so much the photos, but what they said. I mean, it's not bad, it's just. I wanted to check and make sure you were doing alright. The media can be such assholes sometimes."

My hands shake as I put her on loudspeaker and bring up the internet. It doesn't take long to find the first photo of Zach and me. He's leaning down to kiss my neck as we get out of the limo. But it's not the photo that makes me want to hurl—it's the caption above.

"Zach Evans's new girlfriend: cute, but not his usual type."

I keep scrolling to another that reads: "Who wore it best?" Underneath, there's a side-by-side shot of me and Amie taken at different points in the evening but stitched together. The comments underneath all discuss who's hotter, who's prettier. Some say Amie is a "whore," and my stomach wretches once more when I read some comments talking about me being the exact opposite of what Zach would go for. Some also claim I'm a "rebound."

The tears start up again as they spill over my eyes and down my cheeks.

I knew this would happen. I knew I'd be compared to her. I knew I'd be thrust into the limelight and picked apart like some fucking object.

"Babe? Are you still there?" Felicity's voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts.

"Hmm? Yeah, yeah, I—I'm still here."

"You're scrolling through them right now, aren't you?"

"No." I lie.

"You are, and I know you are because I'd be doing the same. The thing is though, that's what they want. That's what they do. They say hurtful or contentious things to grab the headlines, to get people talking and commenting. It's all just clickbait, and it has no truth to it."

"It kind of does though."

"Does what?"

"Has some truth. I'm not his type." I turn the screen on my phone so I can get a better look at one of the pictures. "Amie is everything Zach goes for—tall, blonde, slim, even after a baby, long hair, blue eyes."

"You missed the part where she's a crazy bitch."

I huff out a pathetic laugh. "That doesn't matter to the media though. It's all skin de?—"

I throw a hand over my mouth as a realization hits me. Throwing the door open on my car, the bile rising in my throat, I wonder if I am going to puke.

"Luna, are you still there?" Felicity shouts down the phone.

"School." One word is all I can manage.

"Babe, you're worrying me. What about it?"

"I never thought this through. The pictures, they're all over the internet. My kids live on the internet; every day, they're on social media. They will have seen the whole thing." Humiliation rips through me.

"Luna, you've done nothing wrong."

My phone starts beeping with an incoming call from Zach. I'm in no state to answer it, but I know he'll just keep panicking and calling until I do.

"Zach's calling me again."

"Take it but call me straight back—I need to know you're okay."

I disconnect one and answer the other. "Hello."

"Oh, thank fuck. I've been going crazy. Why didn't you call me back."

"Because I had my head up my ass and my phone in airplane mode for hours," I snap, immediately regretting my tone. He doesn't deserve that.

"You've seen the posts?"

"Yes." My voice cracks.

"Oh, baby, I really wanted to speak to you before you saw them."

I don't know how it's possible, but more tears emerge. I thought they'd have all dried up by now. "They're comparing me to your ex. They're saying I'm not your usual type. Some of the comments are so mean, and I knew this would happen."

"Luna, it's going to be okay. They'll wash over in no time."

"And what about the next time? And the time after that? I don't belong in front of a camera, Zach. I can't take being scrutinized and compared like this."

A long stretch of silence descends upon us.

He breaks it first. "I promise it's going to be okay. It's going to be fine. Right now, you're new to them. Something for them to fawn over. I know it sounds bad, and it is. That's the way they are, and honestly, it's made ten times worse because Amie is in the media more than me these days with her business."

"Exactly," I choke out. "She'll never let this go. She'll never let me, you, or us have peace. She thrives on attention, positive or negative."

"I know."

I drop my head and almost bash it on the partially open door, my body still twisted to the side, one foot in the car and the other on my driveway. I look up at my home, and the sanctuary and safety it brings come rushing back to me. I need to lock myself away for as long as it will take these pictures and posts to pass.

"I need some space." I hate the way the words taste on my tongue. "I need space away from everything and everyone."