Prologue:
Snow fell the day their father died. Not soft, storybook flakes, but an angry storm—slashing sideways against the glass windows of the old May house like it, too, was grieving. Luna could still remember the way Darion had gripped her hand that night, knuckles white, jaw clenched, not saying a word because if he opened his mouth, something inside him might break forever.
She was seventeen. He was nineteen. Ryan had been there too.
Back then, everything still made sense. Darion and Ryan were inseparable—blood brothers in all but name, captains of dreams and beer-fueled boyish plans. Luna had been the annoying little sister tagging along, her camera slung around her neck like armor, collecting snapshots of a life that felt like it would last forever.
But forever had an expiration date.
The night their father’s heart stopped, something else died too. Not just in the man buried in the town’s snow-laced cemetery, but between the boys who once called each other family. One funeral, a fistfight, and a secret no one would talk about—not even Luna.
They never said what happened. Not really.
All she knew was that Ryan Carter stopped coming around. One week, they were eating grilled cheese in Darion’s truck bed under the stars. Next, Ryan was the enemy. A ghost with too-pretty eyes and a slap-shot that made crowds scream. Captain of the Geckos. Rival. Stranger.
But no matter how cold things got between them, Luna could never quite erase Ryan from the photos of her mind. Not when every December wind still smelled like snow and sweat and secrets. Not when his name felt like unfinished poetry on her tongue.
Ten years later, things hadn’t thawed. Darion wouldn’t forgive. Ryan wouldn’t explain. And Luna—well, Luna was still caught in the middle, somewhere between childhood and whatever came next.
She didn’t know the night she left the bar early, heart pounding in her ribs like it had secrets of its own, that she was about to fall into his arms again.
She didn’t know the snow would trap her. That Ryan would find her. That one touch would turn the ice in her veins into wildfire.
But maybe part of her had always known.
Because some nights weren’t made to be warm.
They were made to burn.
—
