Page 1

One

Aiden

I wake up to a heavy knock on my condo’s front door and glare blearily at my phone in the charger.

“Two in the fucking morning,” I mutter, grabbing a pillow and clamping it over my ears. “It’s two o’clock in the morning on my fucking birthday, and I have to deal with this shit.”

This shit being my neighbors.

It’s not the first time they’ve pounded drunk on my door, desperate for their roommate to let them in to what they think is their condo.

This was sort of funny the first time.

I remember those days, drinking too much, being dumb.

But after the second and the third—where I gained status into the inner circle and a code to the keypad to their apartment door—it was no longer cute.

Now, six months and countless times of bailing them out later, I’m so not in the mood.

Especially when it’s my fucking birthday.

The knocking cuts off and I think—pray—that they’ve gotten the hint.

But it’s approximately two seconds later when it starts up again.

I glance at my phone again, see that really five minutes have passed, making it two-seventeen and officially my twenty-fifth birthday.

Some present.

Twenty-five years old and…still living next to a bevy of drunk morons.

Yup. Pro hockey player. Single. Relatively good-looking. And still dealing with annoying drunk frat boys.

I’m living the life.

Fucking hell. I need to buy a house, get away from neighbors above and below and on all sides of me.

But that’s a tomorrow Aiden problem.

Tonight it’s weighing answering the door, shuttling the dumbasses to their apartment across the hall, or clamping another pillow over my head and hoping for the best.

The first is annoying. And necessary.

Mostly because the second is just annoying. Ignoring the knocking only means extending the torture. They won’t give up, not now that they’ve begun, not now that I’ve been the person seeing them home when they’re drunk and disoriented (and disorderly, really) over the last half year.

So really, it’s less choice and more…an annoying necessity.

Sighing, I toss back the blankets and stomp to my apartment door, whipping it open to reveal…

Not Benny, the messiest of the frat boy quad from across the hall.

But rather…a slender brunette.

She’s standing on my doorstep and her gaze drops from mine, sliding down my body in a slow perusal. “Ho, mama,” she whispers.

Jesus Christ, it only gets worse.

And even more worse because the dragging of her gray eyes—gray eyes that seem semi-familiar—has my cock twitching.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

I shake myself, tighten my hold on the edge of the door, preparing to slam it closed and ask, “Who the fuck are you?”

Her smile doesn’t falter as she says, “It’s me.” But as I stare at her, not recognizing who me is, the edges of her mouth wilt just the slightest bit. “It’s Luna,” she whispers.

I continue to watch her uncomprehendingly.

“From Rockfield?” she adds.

Recognition begins to dawn, and I know why her eyes seemed so familiar. “Luna Maybelle?”

“Yes!” Relief dancing across her face. “That’s me.

” She nods, grinning again, and I see it then, the smile that belonged to my best friend and first love.

God, how could I not instantly recognize it?

We spent hours and hours together inside our childhood rink, hanging out in between my practices and her figure skating training.

And we spent time outside it too—mostly at my place, the chaos of my big family something she seemed to crave almost to obsession.

Probably because, aside from her grandmother, she only had her brother and father in her life, and her father was an asshole—and her brother an asshole in training.

But that’s not the point.

Luna is here now.

Luna Maybelle. The first girl I ever lusted after, ever kissed.

Ever loved.

I see that Luna now in her smile—the mischief and brightness, the joy for life and wicked sense of humor.

But she’s not little Luna anymore.

Christ, she’s anything but—tall, beautiful, curves for days—and she’s staring at me.

Because I’m staring at her.

Fucking hell.

I spur myself into motion.

“Luna! Oh my God!” I pull her into a hug. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s your birthday!” She holds up a piece of paper that looks faintly familiar. “And, well, it’s mine too, remember?”

That’s right.

We have the same birthday.

“We’re both twenty-five, single, and?—”

My eyes narrow in on the paper. It’s crumpled and stained, as though it’s years old.

A purple and pink swirl decorates the edges and suddenly I remember her painstakingly drawing it as we sat side-by-side at one of the high top tables of the ice rink, waiting for the Zamboni to finish cutting the ice.

Her brow had been furrowed. Her movements carefully controlled.

And I had been obsessing over how pink her lips were and what her butt looked like in her skating dress, so much so that I barely remember what we’d been drawing.

No, I think hard, grabbing on to those memories, not what we’d been drawing.

The contract we’d put together.

The contract my hormonal thirteen-year-old self had signed.

With a sparkly pink colored pencil.

A giant boulder settles in my stomach, but before I can snap myself out of the horror of those memories, she shoves the paper in my hands then throws her arms around my neck.

“We’re getting married!”