Epilogue
Max and Toni
MAX
The city view from the thirty-second floor suite is expansive.
I know this hotel. I booked it six weeks ago. Elena said somewhere with a view. I said the same view as the rooftop. She said that's either extremely romantic or evidence of a fixation. I said both.
Toni sets her bouquet on the table near the window. White peonies. Her mother's flowers. She has been carrying them since the tunnel mouth and she sets them down now with the careful attention she brings to everything. My wife.
I have been saying this word in my head since the ice. Not out loud. Just in my head, where I've been running it over the same way I run new footwork, checking the weight of it, the balance, whether it holds.
It holds.
She turns from the window and finds me watching her and doesn't drop her gaze.
Toni holds the gaze now. That's different from September, from the service dock, from the hotel corridor.
She chose it. She crossed the ice in a wedding dress and chose it in front of everyone, and now she's standing in a thirty-second-floor suite still choosing.
She reaches up and takes her hair down.
I track this. I have been tracking Toni Amato for four months and the specific moment her hair comes out of its arrangement is the moment Antonia arrives.
It has been this way since September. I catalogued it then.
I catalogue it now. Her hair falls around her shoulders and she tips her chin up. "We made the papers.”
"Trey texted me from the bench," I say. "During the vows."
She smiles. "What did he say?"
"I can't repeat it in this context."
She laughs. The full one. Head back. The one from Rockford that I spent a year looking for and found in a locker room in September and have been deliberately engineering ever since. I cross the room.
Her hands go to my chest. They always go there. Her palm flat over my heart, where she has been putting it since the first night she knocked.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi." Her green eyes are steady. Level shoulders. No wall anywhere on her. "The team is going to be insufferable about this for the rest of the season."
"The rest of my career," I correct.
I reach the zipper at the back of her dress and take my time with it and I intend to continue this policy indefinitely.
The silk parts. Her spine is warm beneath my hands, and she exhales.
The dress falls. She steps out of it and I catch it before it hits the floor because it is her wedding dress and some instincts are correct.
She stares at me for one second. "You caught the dress."
"I catch things."
The corner of her mouth moves. "I know."
I set the dress over the chair. Turn back. She is standing in the ambient light of the Chicago skyline with her mother's ring at her throat and the superstar bracelet on her wrist, and she is twenty-four years old and my wife and the most specific person I have ever known.
I take my time.
This is a man who has been paying attention to this woman since a bar in Rockford two years ago and intends to continue paying attention for as long as she'll allow it, which, as of two hours ago in front of an arena full of witnesses, is the rest of his life.
She breathes my name, in her mouth, the way it sounds when she has forgotten to manage it.
I hold her to me and stay there. A woman in a wedding dress crossed a sheet of ice, determined to be more reckless with the things that mattered.
She chose this. She chose me. I'm going to spend a considerable amount of time being grateful for that.
ANTONIA
I have been saying this word in my head since the ice. My husband. I approach it the same way I do with a new assessment framework: I check the variables and look for any errors. There is no error.
I've been cataloguing Max Stevens since September.
I have notes on his tells. The jaw shift.
The difference between the performance smile and the real one.
The way his weight shifts when he's bracing for something difficult versus when he's at ease.
I built a behavioral profile with a thorough methodology and I know this man's patterns the way I know my own.
What I didn't document: the specific quality of his focus when there's no audience. The way it narrows. The way it costs him nothing to be still.
He crosses the room without hurrying. That is its own information.
"Hi," he says again. But the register is lower, quieter. A word not performing for anyone.
"Hi." My voice comes out steadier than I expected.
The significance of the love he holds for me is evident in his actions.
I reach up, my fingers tracing the line of his chin, the rough stubble that's grown since this morning.
His hands. I have a data point for each location: the small of my back, my shoulders, and my jaw.
I have been pretending I don't. I stop pretending.
"You're doing it," he says.
"Doing what."
"Cataloguing."
He smiles, the one that only exists when no one is watching and something genuine has occurred to him.
"I'm allowed," I say.
"Yeah," he says. "You are."
I reach up and put my palm flat against his chest. His heart is going at a rate I could clock without a watch.
"You're nervous," I say.
"Correct." He doesn't move. His eyes stay on mine.
"Good," I say. "So am I."
I'm standing before him in my underwear, my mother's ring at my throat, the superstar bracelet on my wrist. His eyes roam over me, taking me in. He reaches out, his fingers tracing the line of my collarbone, the swell of my breast. I shiver, my breath catching in my throat. His touch is gentle, reverent. He exhales, the specific exhale I’ve catalogued from the dock, corridor, and empty rink, signifying he’s holding something and has set it down.
I understand it now from the inside. He’s been observing me the same way I've been observing him.
My body presses against his. The heat of him, the strength is so sexy hot.
His hands find my waist, his fingers splaying, pulling me closer.
One slides up my back, the other cups my chin, and his thumb traces my bottom lip.
My tongue darts out to taste him. He lets out a low, vibrating groan causing shivers.
I find his shirt buttons, my fingers brushing his skin, feeling the hard planes of his torso and flexing muscles.
He's watching me, his eyes dark, his breath coming faster now.
Nothing has prepared me for being the thing he's paying homage to when there's no distance left. He takes his time the way he takes everything seriously, and the specific deliberateness of it undoes the last thing I was holding together.
I say his name. It emerges from the register I have been concealing for months with no management on it, no professional sentence preceding it, merely his name in my mouth as it sounds when I cease being cautious.
His hands tighten. He says mine back, the full version, Antonia, and that's the one that breaks me open.
Everything that follows, I don't catalogue. I note this as a specific departure from my established methodology. Some data you collect not to analyze but to keep.
This is what I keep.
He guides me backward, toward the bed. I go, my body moving with his as I undo the buckle of his belt, the button of his pants, and the zipper. I push them down, my hands sliding over the hard muscles of his thighs, his ass.
He's naked now, standing before me, his body a work of art. He's beautiful. And he's mine. I reach out, my hand wrapping around the hard length of him. He groans, his head tipping back, his eyes closing. I stroke him, my hand moving slowly, learning the feel of him, the weight of him.
His hand covers mine, stopping me. "Not yet," he says, his voice ragged. "Not like this."
I climb onto the bed, feeling his body envelop mine.
The weight and heat of him are overwhelming.
His passionate kiss deepens as his hands explore my burning skin, finding the spots that make me gasp and causing my body to arch into his touch.
It's Max, paying attention, the way he always does.
His lips caress my breast, his tongue tracing the hard peak.
I moan, my fingernails scoring into his hair, holding him to me.
He moves down, his mouth exploring my stomach, my hips, the edge of my panties. He hooks his fingers into the lace, pulling them down, his mouth following the path of his hands. When he pleasures me with his mouth I gasp, my body arching into his touch. He's slow, deliberate, the pleasure building.
He slips a finger inside me, then another, his mouth and his hand working in tandem, driving me closer to the edge. I'm panting now, my body moving with his, my fingers fisting the sheets.
"Max," I gasp, my voice ragged. "Please."
He looks up, his eyes meeting mine. "What do you need, Toni?" he asks, his voice low, husky.
"You," I say, my voice barely a whisper. "I need you."
Max moves up, his body covering mine. The hard length of him rests on my stomach while reaching for a condom on the bedside table.
He enters me slowly, his hands holding me, guiding me. I wrap my legs around him, pulling him closer, deeper. He groans, his head tipping back, his eyes closing.
We rock together, his body sliding in and out of mine, his pace slow, deliberate. Every inch of him, every movement, every thrust. It's Max, making love to me. I'm close, so close. My back arches, my eyes squeeze shut, my orgasm building.
“Max," I gasp, my voice ragged. "I'm close."
He reaches between us, his fingers locate my clit, rubbing slow circles. That's all it takes. I fall, my body shuddering, my pussy pulsing around him. He follows me, groaning as he releases inside me.
Max collapses on top of me, his body spent, his heart pounding. I wrap my arms around him, still trembling with aftershocks. He rolls to the side, taking me with him, his arms wrapping around me, holding me close.
We lie entwined, our bodies breathing in unison, our breaths slowing down. The city goes on outside the window, but we're in our own world, our own bubble. Max and Toni. Husband and wife.
I tip my head up, my eyes meeting his. He smiles, his hand cupping my jaw, his thumb tracing my bottom lip. "I love you, Antonia Amato-Stevens," he says.
"I love you too, Max Stevens," I respond, smiling.
At this precise second, I realize that this is it, the summit of every hill I'd spent a lifetime climbing. This man, this love, this life. It may not be perfect or easy, but it’s ours, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
He falls asleep before I do, and he always will.
I’ll learn this about him and add it to the list of things that are mine to know.
I lie in the ambient light of the Chicago skyline with his arm across my waist, my mother's ring at my throat, and the superstar bracelet on my wrist. I don't file this away.
For the first time in my adult life, I let something true sit where it is without building a case against it.
I chose him. Twenty thousand people watched me do it.
He was worth every one of them.
The GOLD COAST GUARDIANS series will continue in book #4