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I’m a puddle. A wet, hot mess. “Don’t leave marks.” I gasp. “I have school on Monday, and I can hardly show up wearing a scarf in August.”

He kisses me again. “Sometimes honesty’s the best policy, Rocket.”

“Yeah? What should I say.”

A rumble comes from his chest. “Tell them you were about to leave the guy who’s fucking crazy about you, and since he doesn’t know when he’ll see you again, he had no choice but to leave his mark. Just so there’s no doubting that you’re his.”

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.”