Epilogue
DYLAN
EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER
This was so much worse than the hundreds of games I’d watched Cassius play over the years. And from the way he gripped my hand and the hoarseness of his voice from shouting, I figured it was a nightmare for him too.
Watching my son’s team be on the brink of a spectacular win was too much for my heart to handle.
With a minute on the clock, it could so easily go the other way. Five points was nothing with those sixty seconds still on the board.
“Fuck, I don’t think I can watch.” I winced as the Coyotes intercepted the pass from Ethan and groaned when the Coyotes scored.
“Come on, Britton.” Cass clapped, encouraging our son.
He’d played incredibly all his way through college. This summer he was even going to Montview Academy. Then just one more year, where he’d promised to finish his degree—like his dad finally did fourteen years ago—and then he was holding on for the draft.
“He’s got this.” I pushed confidence in my voice. But that didn’t stop me from asking, “Right?”
If Mikey’s team, Barth’s Renegades, lost, our boy would rally, as he always did. But that wouldn’t stop him from being devastated.
“They can do this,” Cass confirmed, nothing but conviction in his tone.
Thirty seconds on the clock and I wished I’d brought a hip flask.
Twenty seconds and Jackson, the Renegades’ forward, scored, and I shouted my happiness along with half the stadium in this final game.
Cameras flashed, and the volume was close to bringing the roof down.
“Come on, come on,” I chanted, willing Mikey to intercept.
I gasped. He did. “Come on, Britton,” I yelled, my voice scratchy.
The whole stadium jumped to their feet.
Five seconds.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
That Cassius wasn’t chuckling and laughing at how I was losing my shit told me he was right there with me.
When he launched the ball, I watched Mikey’s face rather than the hoop.
One beat passed, then two…
He grinned, shouted in glee, his head immediately turning, gaze finding mine, his dad’s, and the buzzer sounded.
Smiling so wide, I pumped my fist in the air, hoping Mikey felt just how happy we were for him. That and so fucking proud.
A second later, he was in the middle of his teammates, and I was wrapped up in Cass’s arms.
“Holy shit, they did it.” I smacked a loud kiss on my husband’s lips, pulling away, grinning manically.
Cass, eyes wet with pride, nodded, then shook his head, nodded again, clearly not knowing how to react to the team’s win.
“Let’s go down.”
Taking hold of his hand, I hauled him down with me, passing through the crowd. Thankfully, it was fairly easy. I was pretty sure most people in the stadium knew who Cassius was at least. If not because of his own impressive career, then because he was one of the dads of the Renegades’ star players.
On the court, I sidestepped the cameras, hoping they wouldn’t collar Cass for an interview.
Since he’d retired from the League thirteen years ago, he’d been balancing his time between working on investment profiles—and making a ridiculously tidy profit—and doing charity work.
It was the latter that we worked on together, finally bringing to life a passion project to support LGBTQ+ youth kicked out of their homes, I’d dreamed up when I’d been seventeen and left home.
It was then I’d promised myself that one day, I’d help kids who weren’t as lucky as I was.
Those who didn’t have the Brittons as the best surrogate family ever.
Mikey spotted us first and was before us in the next breath, wrapping his sweaty giant arms around me and his dad.
“I’m so proud of you.” I pressed a kiss to his cheek, having to go on my damn tiptoes to do so.
Cassius followed suit, without straining his neck, though. “Proud of you, son. You feeling good?”
“Amazing.” Mikey pulled back, all bright-eyed and filled with so much unfiltered happiness, emotion caught in my throat.
Paula would have been just as proud. Hell, my sister would have been decked out in the Renegades’ colors and cheering the loudest.
“We’re still good to go to the family party at Coach Maple’s house?”
“Of course,” Cass answered.
Tiller, Mikey’s college team coach, was kick-ass at his job. He’d also arranged for a barbecue at his house for the team and their families. That was with the expectation that the players would last maybe an hour before they went and celebrated without their parents cramping their style.
That was more than okay with us.
Before I could ask where his girlfriend was, Millie appeared, smiling widely and throwing herself into Mikey’s arms. As they kissed, I looked away, searching for Kelsey and Tim, her husband. I knew they were coming, but we must have sat on opposite sides of the arena.
Since we had plans to catch up for drinks tomorrow—something we didn’t have much chance to do since she’d settled in Michigan not long after her divorce—I wasn’t concerned about searching for them in this massive crowd.
When Millie and Mikey finally came up for air, Millie hugged Cassius and then me.
“You doing okay? How’s your voice holding up?”
Millie laughed. “I don’t think I’ll have a voice tomorrow. I was screaming so loudly. Mikey was amazing.” Happiness shined brightly in her eyes.
“He did. Your folks still around?”
She shook her head. “No, they’ve already gone to the hotel.”
Mikey called her over, and she smiled as she headed to him.
“They all look so young.” I shook my head, watching Mikey with his friends and his girlfriend. With the world right there at their feet, they had so much living to do. So many exciting days ahead of them.
Likely some heartbreak and tough times too.
But we’d be there whenever our son needed us.
“They are.” Cass looped his arm around me, and I melted into his touch.
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we’d both liked green gummy bears?” I asked, feeling nostalgic.
The sound of his hearty laugh pulled my attention. Face alight with humor, he always looked extra handsome when he was like this. “Gummy bears? God, it’s been a long time since I’ve even thought about gummy bears, let alone had one.”
“You mean you’ve forgotten how you wooed me with red gummy bears?”
“Wooed? Is that what I did when we were what, five?”
I quirked my brow in challenge, a smirk directed his way.
“I would have still shared them with you. Hell, maybe I would have given you all my favorite green ones.”
“Hmmm.” I hip-checked him. “I would have let you eat all my red ones, too, if those had been the only ones you liked.”
To be where we were now, to have lived this incredible life together, what wouldn’t I have done to make him mine?
Cass’s grip on my waist tightened as he leaned in close and breathed me in, right at the juncture of my neck and shoulder that he loved. “I think we need to go to the store after the barbecue and buy a giant bag of gummy bears.”
With his warm breath skating across my skin, a delicious shiver danced down my spine.
“You do, huh? Any particular reason?”
“Let’s see how many we can eat off each other before one of us is begging to come.”
I barely held back my groan. “Asshole.” I nudged him. This man of mine was incorrigible, in the most delicious of ways. Seeing Mikey heading back toward us, I whispered out the corner of my mouth, “You are so on, and you are so going to blow before me.”
As he shifted his body with a grunt, angling a little toward me to hide his groin, I grinned. Yeah, getting each other hard at the most inappropriate times was something that would never get old.
Another eighteen years and I suspected nothing would change. Those dreams we had, that we talked about all those years ago, at a game not so dissimilar to this, every day I pinched myself, grateful we were living them.
As Cassius pressed a kiss to my head as I spoke to our son, I knew he did the exact same thing.
Read on for a bonus scene, plus more information about team captain, Ollie’s story.