Epilogue
Five years later
My body being close to freezing and my hands almost always encased in gloves had become my favorite feeling. My favorite place above all other places was now the Crystal High School hockey arena.
Jonah handed a player a green water bottle and quickly scurried out of the way. At twelve, he was in the stage of acting too cool to do the things he did when he was younger, and still so much a child. It was hard to balance the expectations with his need to grow up while having the memory skills of a mouse. Hockey, in whatever form he could get it, playing, watching, or helping Graham, was still his favorite thing. The one constant thing about him I could count on.
Another player jumped off the ice and Jonah handed him another water, grinning broadly at something Graham said to him. These were the moments I treasured the most. The moments when Graham never failed to treat Jonah as if he was his, even if he now legally was. The moments when I got to watch the most incredible, loving, and patient husband treat our children with more kindness and grace than I’d ever remembered experiencing in my entire life.
Cold tears swamped my vision, and I sniffed them back. I probably only had one or two more years left of being able to sit in the stands and watch Jonah on the bench, handing players skates and grabbing water bottles and towels from the bench floor wherever they were flung when players jumped to the ice for their shift. At least, until he was hopefully sitting on the bench or on the ice as a player. If that happened, it wouldn’t be with his dad as his coach, which was a bummer.
Graham was decked out in his Crystal High School coaching colors. He still hadn’t been able to find a job in Deer Creek, but Crystal was only the next town over, so he was close. He landed his job teaching chemistry the summer he decided to stay for six weeks.
I truly had no idea when he did all that that he’d be here all these years or that we would have been married three years ago. That on that same day, Jonah would ask if he could be adopted so we could all share the Marchese name.
Or that a year and a half later, we would get the best surprise of our lives.
Somehow, the surprises kept coming, and life kept getting better.
“How’s she doing?”
Trina sat down next to me and flicked the tiny green ball on top of Anna Grace’s hat. She and Cole came to as many games as they could, which was a lot considering they now had their hands full with their own four kids. Two from Cole’s first marriage, and two with each other.
“Sleepy, cranky, and teething.” I grinned as I said it though. I didn’t take a moment of my life for granted, nor the fact I was able to have kids naturally in the first place. After years of surgeries, fibroids, and eventually losing an ovary, I had started doubting it’d ever happen for us, but at some point, in time, Lady Luck had decided to glance in my direction again, and there I was.
Spending a Friday night with my daughter, named after Graham’s mom, my best friend on one side of me, and my father-in-law on the other.
Who would have thought.
“Let me at her.” Trina wiggled her fingers and reached for the buckle on my baby carrier.
Next to me, Jordan scoffed. “Grandpa privileges come before friend privileges, Miss Paxton. We’ve discussed this.”
“Unfair.”
“Fair,” he stated, like he was getting ready to state in case in front of a judge. “You see her more. If anyone’s getting their well-washed hands on that baby, it’s me.”
I chuckled. It was possible I’d become slightly neurotic after Anna Grace’s birth about germs and touching and hand washing.
“Not nice, Jordan.”
“Come on, come on. My turn.” He slapped his gloved hands together.
Graham wasn’t an exact replica of his dad, but man, it was close. Jordan was older, nearing sixty and had bought a condo on the mountain so he could visit on the weekends but still give us privacy. It was the best of both worlds, especially since he was nearing retirement.
I might not have had a good dad in my life, and there were moments the reality of what I missed out was a painful pierce to the heart, but being around Jordan had been healing. It took three visits with him to get over the awkwardness of who I was, how our paths would have initially crossed had I been at my father’s trial, but after the third visit, he pulled me aside and told me he was proud of the life I’d built. Enjoyed the person I was. He assured me he didn’t see me and think of missing Sophie, or become angry at my father, and somehow, slowly after that, I began trusting him too.
Hard not to trust a man who reminded me so much of Graham in the first place.
“All right, all right.”
I unbuckled my daughter from her carrier, and before I could tug her feet out of the holes, Jordan pulled her into his arms. She was eight months old, happy as a clam most days, and was born with Graham’s curly dark hair. Doctors had told me she’d probably lose it in the first few months, but it was still there, a fluffy little mop on her head when I didn’t make her wear a hair tie.
Jordan gently bounced her in his arms, and I glanced back to the game, to the man at the bench, and found his focus on me instead of the game.
A soft smile curled his lips, and I blew him a kiss.
He turned back to the game, and I sat back and enjoyed watching every moment. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t blown me a kiss.
I’d get one later.
A better one.
* * *
Graham
Game nights were exhausting. After a week of morning practices and then school, having to be out until nearly ten o’clock at night had my bones hurting like I was closer to my dad’s age than thirty-five. It also meant little time with the family, and I hated missing out on bedtimes and baths and all the chattering that happened during the end of the night. Considering Anna Grace wasn’t sleeping, Holly was equally exhausted, and missing tonight made it all worse.
I clicked the front door shut of the new house we’d bought shortly after learning Holly was pregnant. The townhome had been great for us while Jonah was still young and we were getting our feet beneath us, but with a baby coming, and hopefully more on the way, I finally sold the home in Denver I’d been using as a rental property to grow more passive income and bought a house close to town.
If Holly wanted to, she could now walk to work. Jonah biked to middle school, and it was only a fifteen-minute drive for me to get to school.
The house was quiet as I entered, but that wasn’t surprising. If Jonah was awake, he was playing video games with friends, and if Holly was still awake, I knew exactly where to find her.
Slipping out of my shoes, I dumped my wallet and keys on a tray by the door and headed upstairs. Anna Grace was an easy baby, full of smiles and few tears, but Holly was always slow to put her down to sleep in her crib, snuggling with our daughter every last second that she could.
The pale light in the hallway coming from Anna Grace’s room proved my theory correct, and I headed in that direction, stopping as Holly’s soft voice whispered into the hall.
My lips curled up as I listened, and then I carefully peeked into the room. She was in the glider chair, feet kicked up on the ottoman. I couldn’t see Anna Grace beneath the bundled blankets in her arms, so I figured our daughter was eating.
And while she was, her mom was talking.
“There was once a prince, young and bold and brave, who loved a young, broken girl very much…”
I slunk to the floor in the hallway with my back to the wall and closed my eyes and listened.
Like Jonah, and someday hopefully Anna Grace, this was also my favorite story. I didn’t need to listen to Holly to fall in love with it, but man, I loved listening as she told it.
After all, it was my story, too.
Our story.
* * *
“You scared me.” Holly jumped as she reached the hall, one hand pressed to her chest. “How long have you been out here?”
I climbed to my feet and instantly went to my wife, wrapping her in my arms. “Since the story started.”
“Why don’t you ever come in?”
“I like listening. Like knowing you give our kids that.”
Her arms wrapped tightly around me, and she inhaled, snuggling into my embrace even deeper. “Good game tonight.”
“Thanks.” I kissed the top of her head. “She sleeping?”
“Soundly, for now.”
“Ready for bed?”
She burrowed into my chest and squeezed me tighter. “Always, husband. My prince.”
“Come on then.” I spun her around and gently guided her toward our bedroom down the hall. “Let’s go create a whole new not-safe-for-kids scene in that story of ours.”
I followed Holly’s amused chuckle into our bedroom, ensuring the door was locked behind us, happier than I ever could have imagined being. I had a boy, who might not have been mine by birth but was my son all the same, a healthy daughter, and a wife who never stopped showing how deeply she loved all of us.
Loving Holly had been as frustrating and daunting as it’d been easy. Fortunately, she’d given me the chance to scale all her walls years ago, and now there was nothing but all that light and goodness I’d seen in her from that very first night. Years later, I never would have guessed we would have been settled in Deer Creek, raising a family, but there we were, living out our very own real-life, happy ever after.
And as I stripped my wife and showed her without words how much she meant to me, like everything else Holly did, she gave it back in a multiplied measure, making me feel like I could always be the man she needed, the man she loved and trusted. A man who could truly scale castle walls and make all her dreams come true.
* * *
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