Epilogue #2
It had taken months before Olivia and I could sit across a table without every sentence carrying old damage.
Our divorce was finalized quietly in the winter.
She was fair when she did not have to be.
Angry when she needed to be. Gracious only after she had told me exactly how badly I had hurt her.
I had not asked her to make me feel better.
Eventually, she stopped needing me not to.
When she reached me, she smiled. Soft. Real.
“House looks good,” she said.
“Jace hid most of the chaos in the laundry room.”
“I heard that,” Jace called from the cooler.
Olivia laughed. Then she looked at me more carefully. “You look happy.”
“I am.”
Her eyes moved to where Camille was talking to Tessa near the patio. “Me too.”
“I’m glad.”
“I know.”
That was all. It was enough.
Vanessa came later with a man named Ellis, a photographer with rolled sleeves and a nervous smile.
Her presence had been the surprise. Her forgiveness had been slower, sharper, and less predictable than Olivia’s.
For a long time, she only spoke to Jace through necessary texts about belongings and public statements.
Then, after her own social media storm settled and her followers found newer scandals to devour, she asked to meet him for coffee.
Jace came home wrecked from that conversation.
Not because she had been cruel. Because she had been honest.
She told him she had loved parts of their life more than she had loved him.
She told him he had made her feel foolish.
He told her she deserved better than being someone’s camouflage, even accidental camouflage.
They did not become friends overnight. They were not pretending nothing had happened.
But when she hugged him today, it was brief and genuine.
“I brought dessert,” she said.
Jace looked at the box. “If that’s another gluten-free brownie situation, I’m calling this off.”
She smiled. “It’s lemon bars. Calm down.”
“I am calm.”
Roman passed behind him. “He is not.”
By late afternoon, the backyard had settled into the kind of chaos that made my chest feel full.
Kids ran around Tiny, who believed every child was his personal assignment.
Someone had started music. Owen was losing at cornhole and claiming wind interference despite the air being still.
Tessa sat under the umbrella with Olivia and Vanessa, the three of them talking in a way that looked easy from a distance and complicated up close.
Jace kept finding me.
Not dramatically. Not like we needed to prove something.
His hand brushed my lower back when he passed.
His shoulder pressed against mine while we listened to Roman complain about playoff officiating.
When I stood at the grill, he hooked two fingers through my belt loop for three seconds, then let go.
Benny noticed the third time and groaned. “Do you two have a minimum contact requirement?”
Jace didn’t miss a beat. “Yes. It’s in the conflict management plan.”
Tessa looked over her sunglasses. “It is absolutely not.”
“Addendum,” Jace said.
I put a hand on the back of his neck and squeezed once. He quieted under it, not submissive in front of everyone, not performing, just steadying. His eyes flicked to mine, and there he was. Still quick. Still restless. Still too full of feeling for one body some days.
Still here.
As evening cooled, people began leaving in slow clusters. Hugs. Leftovers packed into containers. Tiny collapsing dramatically on the grass as if he had hosted the entire event himself.
Jace and I stood on the patio after the last car pulled away. The yard was a mess. Cups, napkins, one abandoned toy truck, three half-empty chip bowls. Inside, the kitchen would be worse.
“We should clean,” Jace said.
“We will.”
He leaned into my side. “In five minutes?”
“In five minutes.”
His hand slid into mine.
The sky over Denver had gone pink at the edges. He was quiet long enough that I looked down at him.
“What?” I asked.
He rubbed his thumb over my knuckle. “Nothing bad.”
“All right.”
“I was just thinking I used to want the future to arrive with instructions. Like if I could see every step, I wouldn’t screw it up.”
I waited.
He breathed out, almost a laugh. “Still wouldn’t hate instructions.”
“We have calendars.”
“We have Tessa.”
“We have your angry onion list.”
He smiled, then tipped his head against my shoulder. “Yeah. We’ve got systems.”
Not cures. Not guarantees. Systems. Work. Apologies when we needed them. Boundaries that held. Love that had learned to be patient without becoming passive.
I kissed his hair. “We’ll keep building them.”
He looked up at me. “You think we’ll be good at this?”
“No.”
His eyebrows shot up.
I touched his face, thumb brushing the edge of his jaw. “I think we’ll be honest when we’re bad at it. I trust that more.”
His expression softened in that unguarded way that still felt like a gift every time I earned it.
Then he rose onto his toes and kissed me in the fading light, in our backyard, with no locked door between us and the world.
Inside, Tiny barked at nothing.
Jace sighed against my mouth. “Our child is awake.”
“Our child ate three burger buns and a napkin. He’s got energy.”
“We’re terrible parents.”
“We’re learning.”
He laughed, took my hand, and pulled me toward the house.
There would be dishes. Work. Seasons. Hard conversations we had not reached yet.
Family holidays. Media questions. Bad brain days.
Good games. Bad ones. Mornings where Jace lost his keys while holding them.
Nights where I tried to carry too much until he called me on it.
A future that would not unfold neatly just because we had fought for it.
I followed him anyway.
Gladly.
Jace glanced back at me from the doorway, bright-eyed and tired and happy, his fingers still locked with mine.
“Come on, Coach,” he said. “Five minutes are up.”
I went with him, into the noise, into the mess, into the life we had chosen in full view at last.