Chapter 1
Kirra
The jet hummed like it belonged to a richer version of me, and maybe for a while, I let it. Let myself feel like the girl with a charmed life, wrapped in luxe leather seats and flutes of champagne and the kind of love you read about in paperback novels. But even in all its sleek grandeur, this plane had a way of shrinking the horizon. Of reminding me that no matter how high we climbed, there were still ceilings we couldn’t break through. The windows—small, oval-shaped dreams—cut the sky into digestible pieces, like beauty could only exist in fragments.
And outside, the Australian sunset—bold and honeyed and heartbreakingly final—poured itself across the sky like someone tipping a brush dipped in nostalgia. The clouds glowed like peach velvet. The sea below caught the colors and held them, cradled them, like even the ocean didn’t want to let the light go. It was the kind of farewell that made you ache in places you hadn’t felt in years.
I rested my head against the cool glass, fingers twitching to take a photo, but knowing no lens could do it justice. That twilight wasn’t meant to be captured—it was meant to be felt. And I did. I felt it in my chest, in my stomach, in the hollow just behind my ribs where longing had started to build. We were flying away from peace and into something... louder. Home, yes. But a home that came with headlines and whispers and expectations that could drown you if you weren’t careful.
Because Harland Bay didn’t just love Coast. They devoured him.
He was legend before twenty. A highlight reel in human form. The Eye of the Storm. Fastest legs on the field. That boy with fire in his swing and summer in his grin. The town’s pride. The league’s golden boy. And I—his forever girl. The one he said kept him grounded, tethered. But I sometimes wondered if I was really an anchor, or just another weight he was learning to carry.
And still, I loved him. God, I loved him. Not the way fans did, not the way magazines wrote about. I loved him in the spaces between his victories. I loved him at the crack of dawn when he whispered confessions against my shoulder. I loved him in the ordinary ways, the sacred ways—refilling his water bottle during workouts, memorizing his routines, falling asleep to the rhythm of his breath. I was with him long before the stadiums filled up. Before the merch. Before the roar. And maybe that’s why it hurt more sometimes—because I knew all the versions of him. And I wasn’t sure anymore which version the world was letting him keep.
Still, this off-season had been magic. A string of borrowed moments that felt like prayers answered late. Thanksgiving with our day-ones, where everything felt golden and chaotic and real. Brazil, with its music and sweat and tenderness, where I saw him become someone’s son again, and something in me softened at the sight. Then came January—our secret little world. Beaches like powdered gold, sweat-slicked kisses beneath moonlight, his hand trailing lazy circles on my thigh as he promised me nothing but this. We made love like it meant something deeper than the skin, like we were writing vows in the dark without ever saying them out loud. But he never asked. And I never pushed. And maybe we both thought that silence could hold us together longer than a ring could.
And Australia—my roots. The place that reminded me who I was before us. The people who knew Kirra Bennet before she became his. I’d watched my father lift Coast in a bear hug. I saw my sisters teasing him like he was one of their own. I clung to that feeling longer than I care to admit. But now, the month was over. The warmth was behind us. Ahead was a city that cheered for him louder than I ever could, and a season that would devour our peace whole.
I wasn’t sure if my face betrayed me—if all the things I was trying not to think about were flickering across my expression like subtitles I couldn’t turn off. Or maybe I’d just gone completely still, carved from some quiet ache and dipped in worry, because Coast—with those rough hands I’d memorized in the dark, those hands that had held me through storms and slow Sundays—crossed the cabin and rested one against my thigh.
The warmth of his touch broke through my daze, slow and grounding, and I looked up just as he offered me a flute of champagne, his mouth curved in that lazy, golden smile that still had the power to trip my pulse. “Champagne for your thoughts?” he murmured, voice velvet-soft, like he already knew I was spinning. I took it with a nod too small to mean anything and wrapped my fingers around the slender stem of crystal like it was the only thing that kept me secured.
Then, without ceremony, I tilted it back and swallowed it in one breath—like maybe I could drown the feeling before it drowned me. The bubbles tickled my throat, but it was the heat in my chest that bloomed first. I wasn’t sure why I suddenly felt flushed, why my heartbeat was beginning to write a love letter in Morse code beneath my ribs. Maybe it was the fear that this peace—the laughter, the lazy afternoons, the way we’d moved through these past three months like we had all the time in the world—was about to unravel the second we touched down. And how do you say that out loud to a man like Coast Cruz? A man who wore greatness like second skin, who belonged to stadium lights and front-page spreads and a future too big to hold still. How do you tell the person who has everything that all you want… is this? This quiet. This moment. This version of him. This love that felt too fragile to survive the roar waiting on the other side of home.
I mouthed a soft thank you and passed him the now-empty flute, my fingers brushing his just long enough to feel the spark that had never really gone out.
He laughed—low, easy, like I was a secret only he knew how to enjoy—and tilted his head. “C’mon, you look like you could use a distraction.” And then the world tilted. Literally. One second I was sitting, still flushed with champagne and thoughts I didn’t know how to voice, and the next, I was in his arms, weightless as a breath. Somehow—like a magician of lust and chaos—he made the glass vanish and replaced it with the heat of his mouth.
Those full, pink lips of his found the underside of my chin first, brushing soft kisses there, then trailing up the edge of my jaw, the scrape of his stubble delicious against my skin. By the time his mouth found my neck, I was gone. Just gone. Every press, every suck, every deliberate pull of his lips on my collarbone undid something in me.
I didn’t know where we were going—I didn’t care. I was already straddling him, arms around his neck, his hands slipping beneath the hem of my short dress like they belonged there, like I belonged to him. He squeezed my ass like it was his favorite part of the flight, and maybe it was. My breath hitched, body humming, heart racing—not with nerves, but with want. With worship. With the kind of need that made you forget time, place, or consequence. The jet could’ve crashed, the sky could’ve burned—and I would’ve still been wrapped around him, aching in all the right places.
My lips crashed into his, all breath and bite and heat—there was no prelude, just the thunder of us colliding. I felt the soft click of the bathroom door locking behind him, a muted sound swallowed by the sharp hiss of breath I couldn’t hold. The overhead light flickered on, bright and unflinching, painting every flushed inch of me in gold and shadow.
Coast moved like a force of nature, folding his tall frame into the cramped space and somehow making it feel infinite. He lifted me like it cost him nothing, his grip unforgiving and full of promise, and placed me on the cool porcelain counter. The kiss broke, but only so he could look at me—like I was something holy and burning all at once. The faucet pressed into my spine, grounding me in the now, while my legs draped over his shoulders like instinct.
My dress rode high, my breath hitched higher, and when his hands—those hands that had broken records and held championships—slid around my neck, it wasn’t to restrain. It was to bond. To remind. To worship. The rest unraveled like lightning through wet silk—fast, raw, unrelenting. There was no space for hesitation, only need. And in that tiny, trembling room, beneath the roar of altitude and adrenaline, we came apart in a way that felt like entirety.
Time swayed like silk in a breeze—glossy, slow, and too perfect to last. Then the turbulence came, not just in the air but in my chest, each jolt a reminder that gravity always finds you. I wanted to believe we could stay in that liminal space forever—where the sky looked too pretty to mean anything and love was the only thing with volume.
But the wheels hit the runway like a verdict.
No more dreaming. No more pretending.
Just the hum of the engines winding down and the ringtone that cut through the silence like a blade—his ringtone. That one, the one reserved for his agent. Like clockwork.
I didn’t even realize I’d sighed until the sound slipped out and hung between us like a thread fraying at both ends.
And just like that, I remembered what home meant. Long stretches of quiet that didn’t feel peaceful. Nights spent tracing the shape of his absence. Glossy events with his arm around my waist and his eyes scanning the room. Fans who knew his stats better than I knew his schedule. The ones who didn’t hide how much they wanted him. The ones who didn’t have to. And me—waiting in doorways, smiling on cue, clapping from the front row, always cheering, always proud.
Because he’s Coast Cruz—center field, number seven, Eye of the Storm—and he’s doing exactly what he was born to do. What he loves. And I love him for it. But sometimes love feels like sitting on the sidelines of your own life, and I wonder if that makes me selfish. Or worse—if that makes me an awful girlfriend.
Our life—my life—looked enviable from every filtered angle. I didn’t clock into a job, yet my bank account sat plush and passive, growing quietly while I figured out what to do with all this... abundance. I hadn’t planned to be an influencer, hadn’t schemed for followers or brand deals, but by proximity to Coast, I became a name. A face. A trend. PR packages piled at our door like gifts from gods I didn’t pray to. We lived in champagne glows and curated softness. On paper, it was the kind of life girls scribbled onto vision boards. But between the high-gloss blessings, I felt hollowed out—like something essential had been misplaced in the rush of it all.
And the worst part? I didn’t know what exactly I’d lost—only that it had once made me feel full.
I sighed, quietly, pushing the ache to the edge of myself—where it couldn’t color the moment. I gathered my small luxuries with the muscle memory of someone used to leaving paradise: my sherpa-lined blanket, the lavender-scented neck pillow, my stickered Stanley mug that held more emotional support than hydration. Each item was a comfort I carried because the person I needed comfort from was often on the other side of a press call. Like now. Coast’s voice was low and careful near the back of the plane, his shoulder leaned against the door of the very lavatory we’d melted into hours ago—his hands, my body, our breath made hot and reckless in a place too small to hold our hunger. Now, all that heat lived in echoes, replaced by business tones and clipped affirmations.
I didn’t interrupt. I just smiled with the kind of grace I’d learned to wear like lip gloss—convincing from a distance—and stepped into the gray morning.
Harland Bay greeted me like a ghost I never stopped loving. The sun barely bothered rising, tucked behind layers of melancholy clouds that wore the sky like mourning lace and the tarmac shimmered with a gentle drizzle, as if the earth itself was quietly sobbing.
“Bienvenue chez vous, Ms. Kirra.”
That voice. Toasted like morning bread, marinated in old-world elegance. It melted through the cool Harland Bay air and wrapped itself around me before I could even see him. I didn’t need to. The moment I heard it, my heart bloomed.
I skipped the final step like a child coming home from a too-long holiday and launched into Aubrey’s arms, inhaling that familiar blend of espresso beans, leather seats, and expensive cologne that never quite covered up the cinnamon-sugar scent of whatever pastry he’d smuggled in his coat pocket.
“Aubrey,” I grinned into his shoulder, “you still smell like a bakery and a bank vault.”
He laughed, a soft, rolling chuckle that sat in his chest like a hymn. Aubrey Anouilh—our driver, my confidant, my steady tether to normalcy in this hyperreal world of fame and flashbulbs. He’d been with us since Coast was just a rookie with stars in his eyes and too-big cleats. And somewhere between post-season galas and road games, Aubrey had become something more. Not quite blood, but closer than most. A grandfather I’d chosen. A Saint Nicholas from Marseille—sans the reindeer, but complete with rosy cheeks and a wisdom that could hush even my loudest insecurities.
His hug said more than any reunion could. It said, I missed you. It said, You’re still you, no matter how high you fly.
“G’day, Aubrey!” I chirped. “Did you have a good holid—”
“Hey, Kirra!” came a voice like sandpaper against silk.
Ugh. Perfect timing.
I inhaled sharply through my nose and closed my eyes just long enough to keep them from rolling to the back of my skull.
Afonso.
Coast’s agent. Always three steps ahead and five steps too involved. He was already leaning against his matte-black something—I didn’t care enough to name the brand—with a phone in one hand and a smug smile in the other.
Aubrey, as tactful as ever, gave my shoulder a fatherly pat and made his quiet retreat toward the Escalade’s driver seat, knowing full well what kind of air followed Afonso into a space. I gently tossed my things into the back—Stanley cup, neck pillow, blanket—all the comforts of a jet-set life that felt less comfortable by the second.
Coast slipped in beside me, warmth radiating off his skin, arms snaking around my waist like a second heartbeat. His head rested against mine as if the weight of the world hadn’t just shifted. Like this moment was still ours.
“You already called him?” I whispered.
He shook his head slightly. “Didn’t have to. Afonso already knew when we’d be back. He planned everything, minha querida.”
I felt it before I fully understood it—that pinprick of panic. Like all the air had gone out of the day. Like my pulse had tripped over itself and forgotten how to get back up.
You know that moment in a movie? When the girl’s eyes go wide, the sound dulls except for the thunder of her own heart, and you know everything’s about to shift?
Yeah. That was me.
“He what?” My voice cracked like a mirror.
I turned fully, eyes narrowing on Coast. “You didn’t plan it?”
He gave me that look—that infuriating, infuriatingly handsome look that said I didn’t think it mattered.
“Kirra, I was busy.”
Busy. The word hit like a door closing. And for the first time since we stepped off the plane, I wasn’t sure if I was home… or just back in the place where I’d learned how to smile through everything I never got to say.
“Right. Busy.” I mumbled, more to the ache blooming behind my ribcage than to him. My eyes dropped to the cracked seam in the pavement like it held an answer—maybe a warning I should’ve read weeks ago. The past three months unraveled inside my chest in one long, humiliating reel. Was it all just... fantasy? A soft season stitched from sunset swims and half-drunk kisses, only to be folded away like vacation linens when real life called?
“Afonso is just here to take me to training since I’ve already missed a lot of days,” Coast said, voice even, casual, like we hadn’t just made love in the sky hours ago, like he hadn’t traced the curves of my body with his mouth as if I were scripture. “He’s going to talk to me about this year’s schedule. All the events coming up.” His hand reached out, fingers gentle as they found my chin, coaxing my face to meet his. And for a split second, I wanted to believe. To fall into those dreamy brown eyes and pretend none of this hurt.
“I might be home late, okay? Don’t wait up for me.” A kiss. Soft. Quick. Forgettable. The kind of kiss you give a cousin. Or a ghost.
And just like that, he was gone. Not the man who’d danced barefoot with me under Brazilian moonlight. Not the boy who whispered promises into my neck in the dark. Just Coast Cruz, center field. Harland Bay’s golden myth. Back in uniform. Back on script.
The man I’d been with on holiday—the one who tucked strands of my hair behind my ear like I was delicate, like I mattered—he didn’t even look back.
I sighed, hoping to exhale all the sadness that had rooted itself deep in my marrow, the kind that clung to the soft parts of me like ivy, growing in silence. It made my body shudder—not with cold, but with something else, something wordless.
The ache of being forgotten in plain sight. I eased into the backseat of the car, careful with every motion, as if moving too quickly might wake the sorrow fully. The door clicked shut like a whisper, and I stared ahead, watching my reflection faintly shimmer in the tinted glass.
It’s wild, isn’t it—how you can have the man, the love, the life…and still feel like the afterthought to your own story. I didn’t know what it would look like yet, the version of me that didn’t revolve around him. But I’d start with breakfast.
I blinked the sting from my eyes and cleared my throat as casually as I could manage. “Aubrey,” I said, my voice barely more than breath, “do you want to join me for brekkie?”
He didn’t ask questions, just smiled that grandfatherly smile and started the engine—and suddenly, the day didn’t feel quite so heavy.
