Winning Brynn (Seattle Strikers)

85. Epilogue

Brynn

Six months later

“You’re being weird.” I side-eye my brother as we ride the elevator up to my floor. He has his hands shoved into his pockets, shifting relentlessly from foot to foot, while he whistles the theme song of a nineties TV show that I haven’t heard since I was a kid. “Will you cut that out?”

Immediately, the fidgeting stops. “I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re irritating me.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m always irritating you.”

True.

He might have stopped pissing me off so much in the last few months since we aired all our shit in the woods and he dropped the overbearing big brother act, but he’s still Alex, and, therefore, still irritates me daily.

The elevator bell dings, and Alex motions with his hand to let me out first. Yep. He’s being weird. The man wouldn’t know manners if they punched him in the jaw, yet here he is acting chivalrous.

It isn’t even the first instance today.

We’ve just returned from having lunch at my favorite restaurant, where he spent an hour and a half recounting memories of us as kids with an uncharacteristic tear in his eye, before insisting that he get the bill.

My eyes narrow. “Seriously, you’re freaking me out.”

He huffs a laugh, but the sound comes out choked and gargled. Scratching the back of his neck, he steps into the hallway beside me and wraps an arm around my shoulder.

Chivalrous and affectionate. What the fuck is going on?

“Are you dying?” I ask him, my heart twisting with genuine concern, because it’s the only explanation I have for his behaviour.

“No, I’m not dying.” He gives me a real laugh this time. “But will you please stop asking questions. You’ll ruin it for yourself.”

“Ruin what for myself?”

He closes his eyes and looks to the ceiling. “God, give me strength.”

The hallway lights flicker as we get closer to my apartment, and I grow more confused and paranoid with each step. “Why are you walking me to my door anyway? We live in the same building.”

“Brynn?”

I look up at him, his face flushed with exasperation. “Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

We stop in front of my door, and I wheel around to give him a piece of my fucking mind for talking to me like that, but the softness in his eyes makes me pause.

He drops his arm from my shoulder to face me head on. “Before you go in there, there’s a couple of things I want to say.”

“I hope an apology is one of them.” I scowl back at him.

His lips twitch with a smile. “Nope. You’ll understand why in a minute.”

Leaning back against the doorframe, I fold my arms across the front of my white sundress that he insisted I wear for lunch, and wait for him to continue.

“I just wanted to say,” he begins, sucking in a long breath that shivers when he releases it, “that it has been the honour of my life being your big brother.”

“Alex,” I breathe, “Why are you—oh, God. You really are dying, aren’t you?”

He ignores me. “I know that I missed out on a lot of my childhood after our parents died. We’d lost our only family, and we had no grandparents or distant relatives coming to save us, so I stepped up to the plate. I swore to protect you always, and to love you enough to fill the gap that losing Mom and Dad left. It fucked me up in a lot of ways, but my new therapist is helping me deal with that.”

Guilt swims in my stomach. “I’m so sor—”

“Let me speak, for Christ’s sake,” he snaps, but his face remains soft, his eyes still swirling with unfiltered affection. “What I’m trying to say is that no matter how difficult it was, or how fucked up I am now, or even that I didn’t get the chance to really be a kid, I have never once regretted it. I would do it again, and again, and again. Because you have always been the thing that kept me going. It would have been so easy to have given into the darkness, but you were always there, shining so fucking bright that it cut through all the bad shit. So, yeah, maybe I sacrificed a lot. But you saved my life, Brynn, just by being you.”

My eyes burn as I look up at my brother. The person who gave up everything to look after me after our parents’ death, the one who dedicated his life to preventing me from ever feeling pain like that again. I owe him more than he’ll ever know.

“Alex, I—”

“I’m not done.” He swallows around a lump in his throat, his own eyes watery with emotion. “I know I took the protective shit too far before, but I want you to know that I’ll never stop looking out for you. I will always be here. I’ll always be ready to fight any battle you need me to, or to send gifts to people on your behalf when you forget, or to let a strange woman stay in my apartment when your fiancé’s baby momma unexpectedly comes to town.”

I laugh at that, then freeze. “Wait. Fiancé?”

His eyes widen. “What? Who said that?”

“You did.”

“No.” He shakes his head rapidly with an expression of pure panic. “I definitely didn’t. Anyway, back to what I was saying… I know I was an asshole when I first found out about you and Leo, but the truth is, I wasn’t ready to let you go yet. It was always just me and you. But I’m so happy now, Brynn. I’m so so happy that you have someone who would go to the same lengths I would just to make you smile. Further, even. I mean, he adopted you a kid, for fuck’s sake.”

I giggle, my heart warming as I think about Ivy, about Salem, and Leo, and how he has made all my dreams come true.

Alex pulls me into his arms and wraps me in a hug. We might be twenty years older now, but his hugs feel just as safe and warm as they did when we lived in the children’s home.

“I’m so proud of you, Brynn Bear,” he whispers into the top of my head. “And I know that if Mom and Dad could see you now, they’d be so proud of you too.”

Tears fall freely down my cheeks now as I bury my head in his chest. “They’d be proud of you too,” I sniffle, stepping out of his hold to look at him again.

He dips his head and shrugs. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

“I do.”

He smiles, and it’s so genuine and bright, despite the tears pooling in his own eyes. “I think I’ve kept you long enough. It’s time for you to go inside now.”

I put my keys in the door, and unlock it, looking at him over my shoulder with a small frown of confusion. He’s already turned away to start heading back toward the elevator. “Are you not coming inside?”

The six-year-old girl inside of me is stretching out her arms to her big brother, knowing that something huge is about to happen and wanting him to be there with her when it does.

He shakes his head. “This is something you have to do without me.”

The weight of his words washes over me, the gravity of them feeling like I’m being pulled through the floor. He was right before. It has always been just us two, but it isn’t anymore. Maybe there’s a small part of me that isn’t ready to give that up either.

As if reading my thoughts, he steps back toward me and kisses the top of my head. “I’ll always be your big brother. I’m not going anywhere.”

It’s the reassurance I need to push open the front door. Looking at him over my shoulder, I whisper, “Thank you.”

“Always.”

“I love you, Alex.”

“I love you too, Brynn Bear.”

The hallway is empty when I step inside, save for a line of scattered rose petals leading from the front door to the archway that opens into the living space. I follow them with a thudding heart, emotion still clogging my throat.

Quietly, I can hear the twinkle of guitar strings, the sound growing louder with every step I take. There’s a soft high-pitched giggle, followed closely by a loud shushing that could only be coming from my strong-willed, stormy-eyed six-year-old.

Rounding the corner, I freeze.

My two daughters grin brilliantly from the center of the space. Ivy jumps up and down with excitement, her dark hair bouncing with the movement. Salem stands beside her, steady now on her little legs, as she claps her hands together.

“Mama!”

At once, they launch themselves toward me. Ivy reaches me first, having four more years of experience with running than her younger sister, throwing herself into my arms. “Missed you, Mommy.”

I close my eyes and bury my nose in her hair. “I missed you too, baby girl.”

I’ve only been gone a few hours, but I felt the distance between me and my family like a pulled thread in my heart.

Salem catches up a few moments later, holding out her arms for me to pick her up.

“Look at all this,” I say, mystified by the transformation the apartment has undergone while I’ve been at lunch. “Is this all for me?”

Candles sparkle on every surface, casting flickering golden light across the room. Heart-shaped balloons kiss the ceiling, their pink ribbons dangling down and brushing over our heads. Scattered across the floor are even more rose petals, drawing a pathway to the living room rug, where they split to form the shape of a giant love heart.

And in the center of them, wearing his finest black tuxedo and bent on one knee, is the man who owns my very soul.

“Daddy Leo wants to ask you a question,” Ivy squeals, pulling me by the hand toward him.

I guess it makes sense now why my brother took a sudden interest in my clothing choices earlier and insisted I wear a white dress.

Leo smiles softly, waiting patiently until I’m standing in front of him. “Okay, girls, Mama’s gonna need her hands for this.”

Ivy drops the hand she was holding, and dashes to Leo’s side. Giggling through falling tears, I set Salem down on the rug beside me, eyeing a candle on the table next to her with concern.

“Don’t worry about them,” Leo chuckles. “They’re electric.”

“Oh.” I breathe a sigh of relief and turn my attention back to him. Fisting the sides of my dress, my legs tremble as I wait for him to speak.

“Here,” he takes my left hand in his, stroking his thumb over my ring finger. “I would have done this months ago, but between losing the soccer season and going through the adoption process for two children, it had to be delayed a little.”

The Seattle Strikers had tried hard to claw their way back to the top of the league after their stint of losses. Unfortunately, they couldn’t take the top spot, but they did manage to fall in second. Leo blames himself for missing out on the win, but I’m proud of him regardless.

“You know you don’t have to ask, right?” I sniff as a tear splashes on my lip. “Alex has already made me all emotional, I’m not sure how much more I can take.”

“Damnit, Alex.” Leo shakes his head, but he’s smiling as he does so. “Well, you’re gonna have to suck it up. I have a whole speech planned, and everything.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Mommy,” Ivy says seriously. “It’s a good question. You don’t need to cry.”

“They’re happy tears, baby.” Having only lived with us for a few months, Ivy hasn’t fully acclimatized to my random bursts of tears yet, and the various reasons why they happen. Salem, bless her soul, is used to it by now.

“Oh, okay.” The look of concern disappears from her little face. “Carry on then.”

I snort, turning back to Leo.

“Brynn Wolfe, I can’t say that I knew I was going to marry you from the first time we met in the stadium parking lot after you blocked in my car. It was a dick move on your part, and I’ll die on that hill.”

I bark a laugh but let him continue.

“But it didn’t take long for me to figure it out. I could kneel here and wax poetic about all the things I love about you, but you know them all already, and frankly, my knees are starting to hurt. The point is, there is no one else on this earth who I would rather raise our daughters with. You are my favourite person over the age of six and, don’t tell your brother this, my best friend. Will you do me the honour of not only marrying me, but becoming Salem’s Mommy for real?”

He leans to the side, pulling a large brown envelope off the table that I hadn’t even noticed was there.

“Are you proposing to me with adoption papers?” I ask in awe, because it’s probably the most perfect thing he could have done. Adopting Salem is worth more than any diamond in the world.

“Yeah.” He grins. “But I got you this too.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a box. I don’t look when he opens it. I can’t bring myself to pull my gaze away from his. He slips the ring onto my finger anyway, pulling me down onto the rug to seal the promise with a kiss, even though I haven’t answered yet.

It doesn’t matter. He already knows the answer.

“Gross,” Ivy groans beside us.

Salem squeals, tugging on my dress until I wrap my arm around her. Leo tucks Ivy into his side with one arm, winding the other around my waist. I can’t stop myself from laughing as happy tears waterfall over my cheeks, the love I feel in my heart bursting from me with unstoppable force.

Because this moment is everything I’ve dreamed about for as long as I can remember.

I have a brother who would give me his life if I asked for it, a man who loves me more than I could have ever hoped for, and two daughters who look at me like I’m the best thing they’ve ever seen.

“What are you thinking about right now?” Leo whispers.

“That I have everything I could ever need right here.” I look around once more at the faces of the three people I love most in the world. “A family.”

THE END