40. Epilogue — Ty
Epilogue — Ty
One year later.
December.
The same gala.
***
Same ballroom. Same mandatory black tie. Same terrace doorway where Marcus stood last year holding an untouched drink.
Sienna Hart's cameras are at every corner. She's Sienna Royce now — has been since August. The cameras are better than ever.
Different everything else.
***
I'm no longer a rookie.
I stand near the bar — not performing, not working the room — and watch the door.
I've been watching the door for eleven minutes. I'm aware of this. I don't stop.
***
The team moves around me the way it always does. Jax and Wren are near the bar — Wren with a drink, Jax with water, same as every year. The first ones this season to figure it out, though they'd never say so.
Dante and Sara work opposite sides of the room. They find each other anyway. They always do.
Marcus and Nora hold the terrace wall — barely a step ahead of me and Ava, and quietly satisfied about it.
***
Declan and Sienna Royce are at the center of it all. The season before everyone else. The ones who started it.
Only now she has his name.
He has that specific look — the one he gets when he thinks nobody's watching. I've spent a year learning to recognize it. It's the man underneath the franchise owner.
***
Near the entrance, Ruiz is talking to a young man in a suit that's slightly too big.
New draft pick. Nervous. Clearly unsure where he belongs yet.
Ruiz says one thing. The kid's shoulders drop half an inch.
***
I watch my coach.
Think about standing in this same room a year ago. Saying the exact wrong thing to the exact right woman.
Changing everything.
***
The door opens.
Ava crosses the threshold in a red dress. Twenty feet. Thirty. Across the whole room — she finds me immediately.
That's what we do now. Find each other in whatever room we're in.
***
She stops in front of me. Looks at my chest.
"You're wearing a waterproof suit."
"I'm an optimist."
She tips her head. "It's been a year."
"I remember." I hand her a glass. "Still no cocktails near me."
***
She takes the glass. Looks up at me with the expression she has now.
The one that isn't armor. The one she just lets live on her face because she decided to.
I'll never stop being glad she decided.
***
"You know," she says, "for a man with no filter—"
"Don't."
"—you turned out to be surprisingly—"
"Ava."
"—worth the trouble."
***
I grin. Wide open. The one I stopped dimming.
"Was that a compliment?"
"Don't push it, Knox."
I pull her in. She lets me.
***
Across the room Marcus catches Dante's eye. Dante tilts his head toward us.
Marcus nods once.
***
Near the entrance, Ruiz glances over. Looks at his daughter. Looks at his wide receiver.
Looks at the nervous rookie in the slightly-too-big suit and goes back to talking to him.
That's all. That's enough.
***
The ballroom fills. The rest of the season ahead.
The whole franchise held together by people who chose to stay.
***
I lean down. Say something in Ava's ear.
She laughs — the real one. Sharp and bright and entirely hers.
I keep my arm around her and look at the room.
***
Jax catching Wren's eye across two feet of bar space, saying something low that makes her shake her head. Then smile anyway.
Dante finding Sara's hand in a crowd of forty people without looking for it.
Marcus and Nora — Nora saying something that makes the captain's whole face change, quiet and certain, in a way the rest of the room never gets to see.
***
Declan and Sienna at the center. Still. Always.
Ruiz near the door, still talking to the kid in the too-big suit. Still coaching.
***
This is the thing.
Right here. The ordinary middle of a life I used to dream about from a bedroom in Indiana on a Saturday afternoon, watching film alone, thinking: someday.
Someday turned out to be this room. These people. This woman, warm against my side, rolling her eyes at something I just said.
I wouldn't change a single stupid word of it.
THE END