Epilogue
~DOMINIC~
The Cup’s on my kitchen counter, and my beach house looks like a locker room detonated. There are empty beer bottles, swim trunks drying over chairs, a damp towel abandoned in the hallway, and someone drew a dick on the balcony glass with sunscreen.
Outside, my team is loud enough to scare the tide back. There’s laughter, the occasional shouted insult, the hiss of the grill every time Zed flips something over open flame. The music is low but constant.
Second Cup as captain. Feels different than the first. The first one was proof I can do this. I’m not just some political puppet who learned how to skate. This one feels like… confirmation. I didn’t fluke my way into anything.
I lean in the doorway and watch them for a second. Tanner’s in the pool up to his chest, talking to Addams on a flamingo floatie. Davidson’s got Matt in a headlock. Jace is glued to Zed’s side at the grill, talking his ear off.
“…I’m just saying, if we do the lake house for training camp, we can convince Dom to get jet skis.”
Zed grunts, noncommittal, tongs poised over a row of burgers. He looks almost relaxed. He’s still quiet, still Zed, but every time he tries to fade to the edges, somebody drags him back in.
Everyone is trying to talk to him. They aren’t letting him disappear.
Good.
I feel something loosen in my chest at the sight of it. The Cup’s great. Rings are great. But your team becoming family? This is the point.
I scan the group again, looking for my girl. When she’s nowhere in sight, I stop Melody to ask.
“She went inside like a minute ago,” Melody says, drink in hand .
“Thanks,” I say, pushing off the frame. “Try not to let Jace bore Zed to death.”
The noise dulls as I step back into the house. The AC hits my skin, cool against the heat that’s permanently settled in my bones since June started.
I find Jessica upstairs. Our bedroom door is half open. Sun slants in through the balcony glass, casting long rectangles of light across the floor.
She stands in the middle of it, barefoot, still a little damp from the ocean. She’s wearing a bikini top, tiny bottoms, and a sheer dress thrown over it that does nothing besides turn everything underneath into suggestion.
She’s looking at the wall. More specifically, at the stick mounted above the dresser. Old composite, black, tape fraying at the top in a way I’ll never let anyone “fix.” Plaque under it with a date and a team logo.
Her arms are folded, head tipped.
I lean on the doorframe for a second and just watch.
Both my home and beach house used to feel too big for one person. Too grand, too quiet, like a reward I didn’t really need. Now it looks wrong without her shit scattered through it.
A sketchbook on my nightstand. A hair tie on my doorknob. A fabric swatch draped over the back of a chair like she’ll be back for it in ten seconds. I don’t remember how I ever lived there before her.
“You planning to stare a hole through that thing?” I say, making my presence known.
She turns and flashes me a smile. The dress is technically decent, but the light hits it and suddenly I’m getting curves, shadows, and skin. Her hair’s still damp at the ends, curling a little. There’s a faint pink strip across her nose from the sun she swore she wasn’t getting.
“Can’t stay away from me for even a minute, Captain?” she raises a playful brow.
“Try a second,” I chuckle.
She uncrosses her arms with a roll of her eyes and steps closer to the stick, gaze flicking over the shaft.
“Why this one?” she asks. “You’ve got, what, a graveyard’s worth of sticks in the garage. Why is this one on the wall? ”
I push off the frame and walk in. From here I can see her, the stick, and a slice of blue ocean through the glass behind her.
“That’s the first stick I played with in the League,” I say, pointing to it. “First game after I got drafted. The equipment guy wanted to toss it in with the rotation. I told him I’d give him a grand if he let me keep it.”
“You did not.” Her head snaps toward me, amused.
“I did. I gave him the money, and he gave me the stick. Turns out you don’t need to pay for tokens like that, you can just ask. But I was young, didn’t know you could just get things without having to bribe everyone.”
She shakes her head, smiling, and looks back at it. “So it’s a… what. Souvenir?”
“Marker,” I correct. “Line in the sand.”
“Just like this house,” she suggests.
“Just like the house,” I confirm with a nod. I look at the stick and let my brain touch the memory.
“That first game?” I smile. “That was the first time I stepped on the ice and thought, ‘This is my life now. Mine. They can’t take it back.’ Same with this place.”
She looks between the ocean, the stick, and me. Something playful flickers across her face, then she reaches up. I automatically straighten a little as her fingers close around it.
She lifts it off the hooks and looks back at me with mischief. It’s a two-hander for someone her size, but she flips it easily, testing the weight, visibly surprised by how light it is.
“What are you doing?”
She ignores me and twirls the shaft once. It’s not graceful, exactly, but there’s a smoothness to it.
“You’re gonna chip the blade on the floor.”
“Relax, Captain. I’m not going to hurt your precious freedom stick.” She laughs and pivots to face me fully.
She plants the butt end on the floor, leans lightly into it, and the motion pulls that sheer dress tight over her body.
“That’s not how you hold it,” I tease, unable to stop my smile.
“Mmm.” She tilts her head, eyes dragging slowly over me, from my bare chest down to my board shorts and back up. “Maybe you should come over here and show me.”
The way she says it sends a hot line of want straight down my spine.
I don’t move. I want to see what she does next.
“Fine,” she sighs dramatically. “Have it your way.”
She shifts her hands, sliding one higher on the shaft, one lower. The motion forces her to step wider for balance, bare feet braced on the hardwood. The sheer fabric of her dress slips up her thighs.
Then she starts to move to the low beat of the music from outside. A slow drag of the stick along her body as she turns it vertical, the blade skimming up the outside of her calf, past her knee, pausing at the curve of her hip. Her fingers trace the tape, eyes never leaving mine.
She slides her hand down, following the stick as she lowers it again, the movement pulling the dress higher, the outline of her ass clearer against the light. My cock twitches in my shorts.
She lifts the stick, shifts her grip, one hand higher on the shaft, one lower. Then she starts walking toward me slowly. The blade taps my chest and she pushes. It’s not hard, but it’s firm and insistent. She uses the stick like a lever, guiding me back step by step.
“What are you doing?” I ask, even though my legs are already moving, letting her steer.
“You’ll see,” she says.
Another nudge. My calves hit the armchair behind me. I drop into it, more because she clearly wants me sitting than because I chose to.
She plants the butt of the stick on the floor between us, the sheer fabric of her dress slipping higher over her thighs with the shift. Then she starts to move to the low beat of the music again.
My gaze rakes over her, my mind at war with the urge to haul her onto the bed and end this.
She catches the way I tense and smiles.
“What is this?” I rasp, feeling the blood rush to my dick.
She tips her head, pretending to think. “Call it…” Her mouth curves. “…a stick tease.”
I chuckle, tilting my head. “Have at it, baby.”
The blade traces the line of her thigh, catching on the hem of that useless dress.
The stick plants on the floor between us with a quiet tap, the curve of the blade just inside my knee.
Then she really starts moving. She uses the stick like a guide, like a line she can draw her body along. Down, slow, until she’s almost crouched, the dress taut across her hips. Up again, unhurried, spine rolling, hair slipping over one shoulder.
The shaft glides along her side, her hands sliding over tape I wrapped myself in some locker room a lifetime ago.
If someone walked in right now, they’d see her in a cover-up holding a hockey stick, more or less decently. It’s all implication. Space. The promise between motions.
But my head fills in the rest too easily.
I’ve used sticks my whole life to carve open the ice, to push past people, to get somewhere no one wanted me to be.
Watching her use one to put me on the defensive feels wrong in a good way.
She turns, back to me now, the stick tilted so it runs along the curve of her spine. She looks over her shoulder, eyes lazy with heat, and slides the shaft down until the blade rests at the back of her thigh.
My fingers tighten helplessly on the armrests.
“What’s the matter?” she asks. “You look… tense.”
“I’m fine,” I lie with a smile.
She hums in fake sympathy, shifting her weight from one leg to the other, hips rolling slow as tide.
She takes a step closer, and the blade bumps my knee.
She nudges it outward with a little twist of her wrist. My leg obeys before my brain does, spreading to give her room.
She does the same to the other side and suddenly I’m sitting wider, open, and she’s standing between my legs with my first NHL stick in her hands and a smug little smile on her mouth.
“Sit up,” she says.
“I am sitting,” I say.
“Properly.”
She taps my chest with the butt end. It’s not hard, but it’s not gentle either. I straighten, shoulders lifting off the back of the chair, abs tightening automatically.
Her gaze flicks down for a second, appreciative, then she schools her face back to infuriating calm.
“Such a good boy,” she murmurs .
Heat sparks deep in my groin. Fuck.
She shifts the stick again, plants it on the floor just in front of me, and wraps one hand high around the shaft. The other goes lower, closer to the blade, and she leans into it, using it as balance as she starts to move in earnest.