Epilogue
Jacks
Six Months Later
“Stop fidgeting with your tie,” I said for the third time, reaching up to straighten Skyler’s already-perfect bow tie. “It’s fine.”
“It doesn’t feel fine.” He was standing in front of the full-length mirror in the small room behind the chapel, running his hands through his hair for what had to be the tenth time in five minutes.
“Does my hair look weird? It feels weird. Should I have gotten it cut shorter? Or longer? Maybe I should—”
“Your hair looks perfect, even better than Dean’s,” I interrupted, catching his hands and holding them still. “You look perfect. Everything is perfect.”
“But what if—”
“Sky.” I cupped his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me instead of the mirror. “Breathe.”
He took a deep breath, then another, his shoulders relaxing slightly.
“Better?”
“Better.” He leaned into my touch. “I . . . this is happening. It’s really happening, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, this is really happening.”
It had been six months since the press conference that changed everything.
Six months of interviews and photo shoots and think pieces about representation in professional sports.
Six months of mostly positive fan reaction, with only a handful of ugly comments that we’d learned to ignore, and an entire hockey season that had been nothing short of magical.
The Lightning had sailed through the playoffs like a team possessed, sweeping the first round, winning the second in five games, taking the conference championship in six.
Skyler played the best hockey of his career, and while they’d lost the Stanley Cup Final in game seven to Colorado, the series had been so thrilling, so perfectly played by both teams, that nobody could call it anything but a triumph.
“The season ending was supposed to be sad without the Cup,” Skyler had said the night after they lost game seven. “But it feels like the beginning of everything else.”
Everything else, as it turned out, included this.
“You ready?” I asked now, adjusting my own bow tie in the mirror behind him.
“I’ve been ready since the day I met you.”
The chapel at the Don CeSar Hotel was small and intimate, the perfect size for the wedding we’d planned.
We’d chosen this place because it felt like us—elegant but not pretentious, beautiful but not overwhelming.
It was a place where our two worlds could come together without looking or feeling forced.
“Did you ever think,” Skyler said now, straightening his cuffs for the hundredth time, “when you were handing me that first beer at Barbacks, that we’d end up here?”
“Honestly? I thought you were hot but way out of my league. I was hoping you’d come back for a second beer.”
“I was planning to come back every night until you agreed to go out with me.”
“Oh, really? Every night?”
“Every single night we didn’t have a game.”
A knock on the door interrupted us. “Five minutes, gentlemen,” came the voice of the wedding coordinator.
“Five minutes,” Skyler repeated, like he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Five minutes before we start a lifetime together.”
Skyler’s smile could’ve melted all of Antarctica.
We walked to the door together, hand in hand. I glimpsed the chapel through the crack as someone entered from the main area. It was packed, every seat filled with cameras set up in the back and a low murmur of conversation that suggested everyone was as excited about this as we were.
“You see all those people out there?” Skyler whispered. “They’re all here for us.”
I nodded, no longer trusting my voice against the lump in my throat.
Our families would be in the front rows—Skyler’s parents and Dean and Marcus on one side, my parents on the other.
Behind them would be Mark and Benji, Erik and Tyler And Murph, the Lightning players and coaching staff who were still in town and able to attend, and select members of the Tampa Bay sports media who had covered our story with respect and professionalism.
“Ready?” Skyler asked, offering me his arm.
“Let’s get hitched, Mr. Shaw.”
We walked out together, side by side, and the chapel erupted in gentle applause, but as we made our way down the aisle, I saw something that made me stop short.
There, at the altar, stood Finn and Chase.
Both of them wore matching black tuxes.
Both of them holding hands.
Both of them looking at us with expressions of pure joy and mischief.
“What—” I started.
“Surprise,” Skyler said beside me, his voice shaking, though with laughter or nerves, I couldn’t tell. “Finn called me last week, said he and Chase didn’t want to wait any longer, and asked what we thought about making this a double wedding.”
I stared at our friends—our family—standing at the altar where they’d apparently been planning to meet us all along.
“You knew?” I managed.
He nodded. “I knew, and I couldn’t think of a more perfect wedding present to give you than sharing this day with the people you love most in the world.” Skyler squeezed my arm. “For all four of us to start this new chapter together.”
My eyes welled, then brimmed, then spilled over. Fucking Skyler Shaw and his fucking beautiful fuckery.
Damn it, I hated him.
And loved him so much it hurt.
The rest of our walk down the aisle was a blur of happy tears and shocked laughter from our guests, who were as surprised as I’d been. When we reached the altar, Finn pulled me into a quick hug.
“Hope you don’t mind sharing your big day,” he whispered.
“Are you kidding? This is perfect.” I looked around at the faces of everyone we loved, all of them beaming with delight at the surprise. “This is absolutely perfect.”
Chase was beaming beside Finn, his usual energy amplified by what was clearly the best-kept secret in Tampa Bay.
“We wanted to be here for each other,” he said. “All of us, the way it’s always been.”
The ceremony itself was a blur of emotions and beautiful words and moments that felt too amazing to be real. The officiant—who had been in on the surprise—spoke about love and commitment and the unique bond between two couples who had found their way to this moment together.
Finn and Chase exchanged vows first, simple and heartfelt promises that made half the room cry.
When it was our turn, I looked into Skyler’s eyes and promised to love him through winning and losing seasons, through good games and bad, through everything that came with being partnered to someone whose life was lived in the public eye.
“I promise to always be your safe harbor,” I said, my voice shaking like the Bay Bridge in a hurricane. “The place you can come home to and be yourself. I promise to support your dreams and challenge you to be your best self and love you exactly as you are.”
Skyler’s vows were about authenticity and courage and how loving me had taught him that being honest about who you are wasn’t just brave—it was necessary.
“I promise to never take for granted how lucky I am that you chose me,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “I promise to love you loudly and proudly and without reservation for the rest of my life.”
Midway through the exchange of rings, I heard a strangled sob from the second row and looked over to see Benji losing it, his face buried in his hands, bright blue hair bowed, shoulders shaking with emotion.
Mark had wrapped an arm around him and was murmuring something soft and comforting, his own usually stoic eyes suspiciously bright.
“You okay, Benj?” Skyler called from the altar.
“I can’t. I just can’t with you two,” Benji managed through his tears. “A double wedding! I’m so happy I might die.”
“Don’t die at our wedding,” Finn said. “I’m pretty sure that’s bad luck.”
The laughter that rippled through the chapel was warm and full of love, the kind of moment that made everything feel right—exactly us.
When the officiant pronounced both couples married, the celebration was immediate and overwhelming.
Our families rushed the altar, my mom hugging Skyler like she was welcoming home a son from some distant war she didn’t believe he’d survive, his parents embracing me with the same warmth and acceptance they’d shown from day one.
Tyler and Erik presented us with what they claimed were “ancient Viking wedding chalices” but looked like beer steins they’d picked up at a tourist shop near the arena.
During the reception that followed, Dean gave a speech about how he’d never seen his big brother as happy as he’d been over the past year, how love looked good on him, and how I had been the best thing to ever happen to the Shaw family, short of his birth, of course.
Mark, of all people, grew emotional during his toast, talking about how Barbacks had always been about bringing people together, about creating a place where everyone belonged, and how watching both of our love stories unfold had reminded him why he’d gotten into the business in the first place.
“You four knuckleheads proved that love really does conquer all,” he said, raising his glass. “Even if two of you are too pretty for your own good.”
As the evening wore on, I found myself standing at the edge of the reception, watching Skyler dance with his mother while Finn spun Chase around the floor with surprising grace.
The cameras had stopped rolling, the media interviews were done, and what was left was our friends and family, our chosen people celebrating the official beginning of the lives we’d been building.
“Still in shock?” Chase appeared beside me, his tie loosened, his face flushed from dancing and more than a few drinks.
“Complete shock,” I admitted. “How long have you guys been planning this?”
“About two weeks. Finn got the idea and couldn’t let it go. He said it felt right, all of us doing this together.” Chase grinned. “Plus, he was secretly terrified about being the center of attention at his own wedding. This way he gets to share the spotlight.”
Skyler caught my eye from across the dance floor and beckoned me over with a grin that was pure sunshine. I was halfway there when Benji intercepted me, pulling me into a hug that was surprisingly strong for someone his size.
“I love you, you fucking asshole,” he said fiercely. “I love all of you, and I love this whole ridiculous, beautiful wedding.”
“We love you, too, Benj.”
“You changed everything, you know that? You and Skyler and Finn and Chase and this—it made all of us believe in love again, even me. It made me remember that happiness is possible, that people can surprise you, and that sometimes the universe gets it right.”
Before I could respond, he was pulling away, diving back into the crowd toward where Tyler was attempting to teach Erik some kind of complicated dance move that looked like loading a dishwasher or baking a cake or some other odd domestic task that should never be part of a dance.
“Dance with your husband,” Skyler said, appearing beside me and offering his hand.
“My husband,” I repeated, testing the words. “I like how that sounds.”
“I love how that sounds.”
We danced to a song I didn’t recognize, surrounded by everyone who mattered, while cameras captured moments we’d treasure for the rest of our lives. This was our beginning—not only as husbands, but as partners in a life that would be lived partly in public, partly in private, but always together.
“So what now?” I asked as the song wound down.
“Now we go home,” Skyler said. “To our place with our stuff and our lives and our stupid, perfect little family of weirdos.”
“And?”
“And we keep being happy, we keep being honest, and we keep being us.” He spun me around once, making me laugh. “We keep proving that love stories don’t have to be complicated or angsty or filled with obstacles to be extraordinary.”
“That’s very poetic, Mr. Shaw.”
“That’s Captain Shaw to you, mister.”
As the evening ended and we said goodbye to our guests, I realized that this wasn’t an ending at all.
It was what Skyler had called it—a beginning.
It was the start of everything we’d been building toward since that first night when a nervous hockey captain had ordered a beer from a barback who wasn’t even supposed to serve customers alcohol.
We were both wrong about a lot of things back then.
But we were right about this.
We walked out of the chapel together—all four of us—two couples who’d found love in the most unexpected places and decided to celebrate it together, hand in hand, ready for whatever came next.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t worried about the future.
I was excited to see it unfold.
I really hope you loved the story of Jacks & Skyler.