Epilogue
Three Months Later
The meeting runs long, which is a mercy.
It gives me more time to sit in that church basement light and let the words settle—words I used to spit at the ceiling at three a.m., but now hear like a map: honesty, amends, one day at a time.
When the leader slides the little wooden chip across the table, it feels smaller than I expected, but the weight it carries isn’t in size.
It’s the weight of three months, of mornings I didn’t wake up to vomit and shame, of nights I told myself to hold on.
My fingers take it before my head gets too full.
“There you go, Flint. Three months.” There’s a round of claps.
A woman I barely know squeezes my shoulder.
I catch her eye and she gives me a look that says you earned this.
For a second, my face betrays me—gooseflesh, a little wet at the corners of my eyes—and I have to swallow hard to keep it from sounding like a sob.
Outside, the evening air is cold and clean, the way the world always smells after rain.
I breathe it in like I’m learning to fill my lungs again.
The chip rolls in my palm, and I press my thumb against the number glued to it—a tiny, shining marker that says I kept a promise.
To myself more than anyone else. God, I needed that.
My phone vibrates in my pocket as I cross the parking lot.
Alaric is a patient driver, and that’s useful tonight. He waits while I settle, glances sideways with that gentleness of his, hand resting on the stick shift like he’s grounding us both. “You good?” he asks, the question loose and real, not the cavity-seeking kind my old life asked.
I nod, and I mean it. “Yeah.” My voice is quiet, still rough from the meeting and from the echo of three months of not drowning. I turn the little wooden chip in my hand and feel the grain. “Well worth the badge, huh?”
He laughs, the sound soft, quick. “I’m proud of you. Three months is huge.”
It’s enormous to me. It’s also terrifying—like balancing on a narrow ridge I can’t slip from without consequences. But for once I let the terror sit next to the pride and not drive me. I can hold both.
The drive to Molly’s takes us through the neighborhoods I used to hate—rich, stern houses, lawns trimmed like currency.
For years I thought I’d never belong in that landscape.
Now I’m heading to one of those doors with Alaric at my side and the civic pride of the place feels irrelevant.
What matters is the family waiting on the other side: Molly, who leaked a story that saved me; the dinner she said she was hosting that night to celebrate small things; a living room that remembers me as a person, not a headline.
When I let myself look back at the last season, it still feels like a blur stitched from headlines and late-night calls.
Alaric’s father had done everything in his power to bury me—leveraged sponsors, whispered to the right people, started a push to get me cut from the Wolves after the season finished.
It should have felt like a war. It was, but it was also the starting signal for something I didn’t expect: the rally that followed.
Molly went nuclear. She leaked the story to a well-known sports blog, but she didn’t just leak it to stir the pot.
She handed over proof of the underhanded deals, emails cobbled with bribery and threats.
The internet does what it does best when the truth is naked: people are unpredictable and sometimes brilliant.
Fans rose, more loyal than any PR team expected, and they did what fans do—they made noise.
Social feeds filled, hashtags trended, podcasts lit up with indignation.
Support for me and Alaric morphed into a cultural pressure the team and sponsors couldn’t ignore.
The lawyers scrambled. Alaric’s father had to make a move because the heat got too hot; the easiest thing for him to keep his hands clean was to sell the team.
He sold the Silver City Titans—an act intended to shield his reputation—but in doing so he lost the platform he’d used as leverage.
Funny how the world sometimes corrects itself.
Alaric kept his condo. His grandfather’s will was clean—no clauses, no strings.
A small miracle in the kind of life where everything is bartered for.
We moved in together, two sovereign men learning what living together meant.
It wasn’t cinematic at first. It was all takeout and new laundry, the awkwardness of whose toothbrush goes where, of who gets up to make coffee.
The small things are the ones he taught me to love.
I glance at him driving and think of how much of my old self would look at this and laugh—mock that men can be so honest, so tied to comfort.
There’s truth in that. Men get broken and used to folding their softness inward, tucking it away.
I almost did it. To have someone hold it out to me—someone who’d risk losing everything for me—is not something I expected.
It’s harder than rehab sometimes, knowing someone would let you be small and forgiving at the same time.
The chip rests in my palm and I feel the ridges of it like a ledger.
Molly’s porch light is already on when Alaric pulls the car into the driveway.
It’s the kind of soft yellow that makes everything look warmer than it really is, like a photograph that’s been loved too long.
My palms are still a little damp from holding my three-month chip.
It’s sitting in my pocket now, warm from my body heat, solid and real in a way I still can’t quite believe.
Alaric kills the engine, and for a second neither of us move. I can smell the faint salt of his cologne, the faint tang of takeout from lunch that still lingers in the car. He looks over at me and grins, that small, easy smile that took weeks to come back after everything.
“You ready?” he asks.
I nod, rubbing my thumb over the chip again. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
He snorts and I follow him up the steps. The air smells like leaves and garlic. The front door opens before we even knock.
“About time!” Molly says, pulling Alaric into a hug and then turning to me. “Magnus Flint, get in here before Butter loses his mind.”
The dog comes skidding across the hardwood like he’s been waiting his whole life for this exact moment. I crouch just in time to catch him, laughing when he tries to lick my chin.
“You’ve officially outranked me as favorite human,” Molly says.
“That’s because I give him snacks when no one’s looking,” I say, scratching behind Butter’s ears.
“Pure bribery.”
Molly grins and steps aside. “Dinner’s almost ready. Mom’s in the kitchen trying not to burn the rolls.”
Alaric freezes for a half second at the word Mom, but he recovers quickly, brushing past his sister to kiss her cheek. “You actually got her to come?”
“Don’t sound so shocked,” Molly says. “She wanted to. Said she had something she needed to say.”
I straighten, a little unsure.
“Magnus,” Alaric’s mom says quietly, coming toward me. “It’s good to finally meet you properly.”
I shake her hand, trying not to feel awkward. “You too, ma’am.”
“Oh, please, it’s Joanne.” She glances at Alaric and Molly, then back to me. “And I owe you an apology.”
The words hit the air like something sacred. Alaric’s shoulders stiffen beside me.
Joanne takes a slow breath. “I can’t undo what their father did. What he said. But I can tell you that not all of us agreed with him. He—he thought he was protecting the family name, but he destroyed something good in the process. I’m sorry for that, Magnus. Truly.”
It takes me a moment to answer. My throat feels tight. “Thank you,” I manage. “That… means a lot.”
Molly, bless her, claps her hands like she’s announcing dessert. “Alright, enough emotional purging. Dinner’s ready!”
We settle around the small dining table. There’s a big bowl of pasta in the middle, a salad that looks store-bought, and rolls that are slightly singed on one side. It smells incredible anyway.
“This looks amazing,” I say.
“Liar,” Molly says, grinning. “But I appreciate it.”
Butter curls up under the table by my feet. Joanne pours wine for herself and water for me and Alaric. She doesn’t comment on it, doesn’t make a show of it, and that alone feels like a small miracle.
Molly looks at Alaric. “You hear from Kyle lately?”
Alaric shakes his head. “Last I saw, he got traded to some expansion team in Arizona. Probably chasing warmer weather and fewer reporters. And good riddance,” he mutters.
I nudge him under the table. “Let it go, babe.”
He exhales, then grins faintly. “Working on it.”
After dinner, Alaric and I help clear the table while Molly sneaks Butter scraps under the counter. Joanne hugs me before we leave, longer than I expected.
“I’m glad you stayed,” she whispers. “He needs you. And I think… you need him too.”
I can only nod. My throat’s too tight to speak.
Outside, the air is cool, crisp with the smell of rain.
Alaric laces his fingers through mine as we walk to the car.
The drive home is quiet in the good way.
The streetlights slide across the windshield in long gold stripes, flickering over Alaric’s face as he dozes in the passenger seat.
His head lolls slightly toward the window, his mouth just barely open.
I keep one hand on the wheel and the other resting near the gearshift, close enough that our fingers almost touch.
The hum of the engine fills the silence. Alaric murmurs something in his sleep—my name, maybe—and I feel my chest pull tight, that old ache that used to mean pain but now just means alive.