Epilogue
Three Years Later
Dante
Overtime.
A shift of his hips. One micro-adjustment of his blade. The defender bites on the fake, and the lane opens off Cole's left shoulder. He drops his shoulder, and the pass is already leaving my stick, a hard, flat feed across the slot that reaches him at the same instant his blade hits the spot.
Cole redirects it.
The goalie reads the shot half a second too late. Net ripples, light goes red, and the horn rips through the arena. The United Center detonates around us.
Cole's arms are around me before I fully process that the puck went in. His gloves fist the back of my jersey, his helmet knocks against mine, and his breath comes rough through the cage.
Then the team piles on.
Bodies, sticks, elbows, skates, and the pile takes us down. I'm at the bottom, Cole is half on top of me, someone's elbow is in my ribs, and the ice is cold against my back while the arena shakes itself apart. A laugh breaks out of me under the weight of them.
We untangle. The team skates the victory lap with gloves raised and sticks tapping the ice, but I peel off from the group and head for the glass.
She's there.
Section 103, third row, press credential hanging around her neck and her laptop open on the seat beside her.
Working. Always working. Maya Maddox covers the NHL the way she covered Briarcliff, with notes in the margins, quotes cross-checked, and every question aimed at the place the truth tries to hide.
When she sees me coming, she stands. Arms crossed. Mouth curved at the left corner, the way it does when she already knows exactly what I'm going to do. That curve gets under my ribs every damn time.
I skate to the glass and stop hard enough to send ice spraying against the boards. My glove goes up first.
She puts her hand against the glass from the other side, her palm flat against the place where my glove waits. One inch of plexiglass between us. The same barrier. The same gesture.
Her mouth forms two words.
I know what they are.
Come home.
Cole
The penthouse is quiet.
Dante is in the kitchen, knife on the cutting board, garlic sizzling in olive oil, the whole apartment smelling like Serena's kitchen even as he denies it. The man cooks Italian after every win.
I know the recipe because Serena taught it to me herself last Christmas in Milan.
She stood beside me at her stove for two hours, correcting my knife work, calling me tesoro, and feeding me bites of sauce from a wooden spoon while Dante watched from the doorway looking like he had walked into an ambush and decided to let it happen.
Milan happens twice a year now. Christmas and summer, because Serena insists. Every Sunday she calls Maya, every Wednesday she calls me, and every time she has opinions about our apartment, our diet, and whether I'm getting enough sleep.
She's right about the sleep.
Maya is on the couch with her laptop open and her glasses on, wearing my Blackhawks jersey, the away white, the collar pulled sideways enough to make the twenty-six sit crooked. Somewhere around the second season, she stopped borrowing and started owning. Her closet is half our numbers now.
She's editing. The cursor moves in bursts: a flurry of keystrokes, a pause, a deletion, another flurry. That rhythm is familiar. Final pass. Her jaw is set, and the deadline clock is probably open in another tab.
"Is this the concussion piece or the expansion draft?" I ask from the kitchen doorway.
Maya keeps typing. "Concussion protocols. The expansion draft is filed. This one's better."
"You said that about the last one."
"The last one was good. This one is the best thing I've written."
I lean against the doorway. "You said that about the last one too."
"Cole."
"I'm being supportive."
Her eyes stay on the screen. "You're being annoying."
"Both."
She looks up, and the glasses make her look like a professor who would ruin a man academically, then correct his grammar on the way out.
I find this unreasonably attractive. She knows it too.
More often than her prescription requires, she wears them, and we both keep pretending I'm subtle about staring.
The concussion piece is going to win her an award.
She has spent eight months building it from a retired enforcer's wife, training staff interviews, leaked medical records, and public filings that looked harmless until Maya put them side by side and made them confess.
Hockey is the beat. Investigation is what she does with the piece she won't let go of until every document lines up.
Dante's phone buzzes on the counter. Over the stove, he glances at it. His jaw tightens in that old family way before the rest of his face goes still while the garlic hisses in the pan.
Marco: Fundraiser next month. Milan. We want all three of you. No excuses this time.
One-handed, Dante types back, stirring with the other. His expression stays flat as his shoulders set half an inch lower before he turns the heat down.
My phone buzzes a minute later. A photo from Addison fills the screen, the new Briarcliff recruiting class on the ice, fresh-faced kids in navy jerseys with clean gloves, perfect tape jobs, and their first real season waiting for them.
Underneath: Built different this year. Reminds me of your group. Tell D I said hello.
I show Dante the photo over the stove. He looks at it, and his mouth twitches with the almost-smile.
"He's never going to stop coaching," Dante says.
"He's never going to stop comparing every class to ours."
Dante turns back to the pan. "Because every class is worse than ours."
"Obviously."
I carry my phone to the couch. From the group chat, active for eight years and pinging at all hours across four time zones, a third message buzzes in.
Declan: Talia's white coat ceremony is June 12. Penthouse after. All of you. Non-negotiable.
Adrian: We're there. Clara already bought a gift.
Gio: We're in. Zoe already bought her outfit.
Genny: I'll be there. Booking the flight tonight.
Adrian: One hotel room, Cole? Three people? The math checks out.
Maya: The math has always checked out.
I lock the phone. Dante glances over from the stove.
"Talia's ceremony?" he asks.
"June. Everyone's coming."
Reaching for the plates, Dante says, "Declan's going to cry."
"Declan doesn't cry."
"Declan is going to stand in a corner with his arms crossed and his jaw locked and his eyes will be completely dry and everyone in the room will know he's crying."
"That's the Declan version of crying. It counts."
Onto the counter, Dante slides a plate. Pasta. Sauce from scratch. The one Serena taught me, the one he has perfected over a hundred Sunday nights.
"Dinner," he says.
Maya closes her laptop and crosses to the counter. Without looking, she reaches for him. Their fingers interlace for three seconds before she picks up the plate. I watch the plate. The hand. The three seconds.
Maya brings the plate to the couch and sits between me and the arm, her feet landing in my lap like she owns the space.
"The story's done," she says between bites.
"Good?" I ask.
"Good." She looks at me, then at Dante, her eyes steady and her face still flushed from the deadline. "It's the best thing I've ever written."
Dante joins us at the couch and leans over to kiss her temple.
"It is," he says. "I read the last draft. It's extraordinary."
Maya points her fork at him. "You're biased."
"I'm accurate."
"You're both," I say.
Maya smiles, full enough that the room seems to move around it.
The kitchen light stays on behind us. Somewhere in Milan, Serena is probably planning a menu. Somewhere far away from this room, in a federal facility, David Ashford is serving the rest of a sentence that will outlast all of us.
The penthouse is quiet.
Maya
The bedroom is dark except for the lamp.
The gray sheets are tangled around my thighs, the California king stretches beneath us, and the original wool blanket sits folded at the foot of the bed. It migrated from the couch to the bed years ago and never left.
They're here. Both of them. Dante in front of me. Cole behind me. The warmth of two men in a bed that was bought to hold three people and has held us through everything.
Dante reaches for me first, his hand sliding along my hip with that controlled patience he uses when he wants me to feel every inch he takes. Slowly, deliberately, he pulls me across the sheets, careful now in the same hands that know exactly how to leave marks when I ask him to use his teeth.
Tonight, his mouth is warm. Patient.
"Come here," he says, low.
"I'm right here."
His fingers tighten on my hip. "Closer."
His mouth finds mine, and his hand slides from my hip to the curve of my ass, pressing me against him. Against my thigh, he hardens. The barbells pierced through his cock drag beneath the fabric, ridges unmistakable even through cloth, and four years later my thighs tighten before I can help it.
Cole rolls toward us until his chest fits against my back and his mouth finds my shoulder. His hand slides down my arm, over my hip, then under the hem of my shirt, palm flattening against my stomach and holding there.
Cole has touched me a thousand times, but his fingers still slow at every place that makes me react.
"You two started without me," he says against my skin.
"You were slow," Dante says.
Cole's mouth curves against my shoulder. "I was savoring."
"You were on your phone."
"I was watching the replay. The overtime goal is already trending."
"Cole," I say. "If you talk about hockey highlights while Dante's hand is on my ass, I'm going to lose my mind."
"Multitasking."
I reach back and grip his hair. "Focus."
His mouth finds the back of my neck. His teeth graze the spot below my hairline. Before I can stop them, my hips press back. He found that spot the first week we were together and has been using it against me ever since.