Epilogue
Dual POV
The morning sun broke over the jagged granite crests of the Front Range in an expanse of pale gold and liquid amber.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass of our timber-framed home in the foothills outside Colorado Springs, the mountain air was sharp, smelling of ponderosa pine, cold granite, and woodsmoke drifting from our stone chimney.
Golden aspen leaves carpeted the flagstone patio fifty yards down to the edge of the private lake, shivering in the clean autumn breeze that swept down from the snowfields above the timberline.
I stood at the kitchen island, both hands wrapped around a ceramic mug of peppermint tea, watching the living room rug.
My laptop was open on the marble counter, displaying a batch of three-dimensional load-management telemetry models from yesterday’s testing session at the Olympic Training Center.
Beside the keyboard sat my leather research notebook, stamped with the gold foil seal of the United States Olympic Committee, and next to it lay a pair of toddler-sized yellow fleece mittens.
On the thick wool rug before the hearth, Ryan Owen was flat on his stomach.
Six feet three inches of dense bone, corded muscle, and functional athletic scars—the NHL’s premier shutdown center, an athlete who had leveled an opposing winger into the boards on national television forty-eight hours ago—was currently acting as an immovable mountain for a two-year-old girl.
Maya sat squarely between his broad shoulder blades.
She had my dark, unruly curls and Ryan’s unyielding jawline, her cheeks flushed rose, her small feet tucked into knitted wool booties. In her tiny hands, she held four wooden alphabet blocks, carefully stacking them one by one on the back of his neck.
"Hold still, Daddy," Maya commanded, her reedy toddler voice holding that same stubborn, horizontal cadence I had used on him in Sub-Level Two four years ago. "The tower is tall."
Ryan didn't move a single muscle fiber.
His massive chest rose and fell in microscopic, shallow intervals, his cheek pressed flat against the sheepskin rug, his scarred hands tucked palms-down beside his ribs.
His dark hair was sleep-ruffled, his jaw covered in twenty-four hours of dark stubble, his slate-grey eyes wide and soft as he tracked her small fingers in his peripheral vision.
"Holding still, sweetheart," he rumbled softly, his gravelly baritone vibrating straight through the floorboards into the soles of my bare feet. "Tower looks good. Don't let it fall."
Maya placed the fourth block, giggled with delight, and brought both of her small palms down flat against his upper spine with an uncoordinated slap.
The blocks tumbled across his shoulders, clattering onto the wool rug.
"Avalanche!" Maya squeaked, throwing her arms around the thick column of his neck and pressing her face into his hair.
Ryan let out a low, rumbling laugh that shook his ribcage.
In a fraction of a second, his massive arms reached up, scooping her off his back with effortless, liquid grace, rolling onto his side to tuck her into the protective hollow of his chest. He blew a raspberry against her chubby neck, making her shriek with breathless laughter, her small hands grabbing his scarred ears to hold him still.
Out on the sunlit stone terrace, the hum of a lightweight electric motor sounded.
Leo glided past the glass doors in the custom, carbon-fiber mobility chair I had spent eight months engineering during my residency.
His shoulders were thick, his face healthy, his lap holding a stack of business administration textbooks from his remote degree program.
He caught Ryan’s eye through the pane, tapped his wristwatch with a grin, and gave a crisp thumbs-up before turning toward the lake trail.
The ghost that had haunted our lives for four years was dead. Leo had his independence, his trust fund was untouchable, and the guilt that had once choked Ryan’s windpipe had been buried under miles of open sky.
Ryan sat up on the rug, lifting Maya onto his left forearm as if she weighed less than a hockey stick.
He rose to his full height in one smooth, continuous surge of power, his dark grey athletic pants hanging low on his hips, his bare torso a familiar landscape of old bruises, dense muscle, and healed surgical lines.
He didn't look at the television. He didn't check his phone.
His slate-grey eyes locked onto mine across the sunlit kitchen, burning with a slow, heavy, permanent devotion that took the breath straight from my lungs.
He crossed the timber floorboards with long, grounded strides.
He stopped at the island counter, bracketing my hips with his body, and settled his free right hand against the side of my face. His calloused thumb smoothed over the crest of my cheekbone, his skin blazing hot, smelling of clean pine and sleep.
"Morning, wife," he murmured, his voice dropping into that dark, intimate register that belonged solely to me.
He leaned in, his lips meeting mine in a slow, deep, devastatingly unhurried kiss that tasted of sweet tea and four years of absolute surrender.
Maya reached out, her small fingers patting my cheek, her laughter bubbling between our mouths as Ryan pulled us both against his chest, locking us inside his perimeter.
* * *
The red goal light behind the Dallas Stars' net detonated into a blinding, spinning glare.
The final horn sounded—a concussive, mechanical shriek that was swallowed whole by eighteen thousand screaming fans leaping to their feet inside Ball Arena.
AVS WIN. 4-2.
A shower of cut ice sprayed against the yellow kick-plate as I dug my blades into the frost, coasting backward through the slot with my composite stick raised in my right hand.
My chest was heaving beneath the burgundy and blue Avalanche sweater, the stitched white 'A' resting over my right collarbone, the fabric soaked through with sweat from twenty-four minutes of shutdown ice time.
Knox Mercer slammed his gloves against my shoulder pads, yelling something incoherent over the roar of the arena organ, while the rest of the first unit mobbed the crease in a chaotic clatter of helmets and sticks.
I bumped fists with our goaltender, skated through the handshake line, and turned toward the glass boards along the north tunnel.
The television cameras swiveled toward me, their red lights blinking, but I didn't look at the broadcast row.
I glided to a halt six inches from the glass, looking up toward the private family box perched directly above the home bench.
Nylah stood at the front railing.
She wore my dark burgundy #4 team sweater, the oversized wool draped loosely over her slim frame, her dark hair falling down her back in loose, glossy waves.
Her amber-flecked eyes were shining in the arena spotlights, her chin lifted with that unyielding, beautiful pride that had brought me to my knees on a frozen porch in Canada.
In her arms, she held Maya.
Our daughter was dressed in an identical miniature burgundy jersey, her small hands flat against the safety glass, jumping up and down in her mother's grip as she spotted my skates.
My throat tightened, a thick, sweet ache expanding behind my sternum that knocked every drop of adrenaline out of my blood.
I dropped my composite stick against the boards.
I reached up with my left hand, pulling off the heavy leather hockey glove with my teeth, letting it drop to the ice.
Beneath the white athletic tape wrapped around my left ring finger, the plain, heavy band of platinum was pressed flat against my bone. I raised my bare hand, pressing my lips firmly against the ring, and held my palm flat against the cold plexiglass beneath their box.
Sixty feet above me, Nylah mirrored the gesture.
She lifted her left hand, pressing her diamond wedding band against the glass, her lips parting as she mouthed three silent words through the roar of the arena:
I love you.
The ten-million-dollar contract, the Stanley Cup ring locked in the safe at home, the media accolades calling me the best defensive center of my generation—it was all dust. It was white noise that meant nothing.
My whole universe was standing behind that glass, wearing my name, waiting for me to take them home.
* * *
Midnight arrived in the mountains with a blanket of total, pitch-black quiet.
Down the cedar-paneled hallway, the nursery monitor rested on the nightstand, glowing with a soft green indicator light that broadcast the steady, rhythmic sound of Maya’s even breathing against her flannel sheets.
The master bedroom suite was vast, dark, and warmed by a roaring fire of pi?on pine in the raised stone hearth.
Outside the open French doors of the cedar balcony, the crisp autumn wind whispered through the spruce branches, carrying the scent of sub-zero snow from the fourteen-thousand-foot peaks above.
Ryan closed the heavy timber bedroom door with his heel.
The brass deadbolt turned with an authoritative, permanent click that sealed the rest of the earth out in the cold.
He had showered at the arena; his dark hair was clean, curling damply against the nape of his neck, his body stripped down to a pair of low-slung black sweatpants.
The functional athletic scars across his chest, the faint silver mark through his left eyebrow, and the thick, dense ropes of muscle along his shoulders were illuminated by the amber firelight.
He crossed the dark hardwood floor with unhurried, predatory power.
Before I could take a step back from the edge of the platform bed, his massive hands clamped around my waist.
He lifted me clean off the floor, his broad chest pressing flat against the front of my silk camisole, carrying my frame backward until my spine met the deep, soft mattress.
The breath left my lungs in a sharp, shivering gasp of anticipation.
* * *
I followed her down onto the charcoal linen.
I didn't rush. The game was over. The house was quiet. The world was miles away down the mountain.
I settled my heavy frame between her parted thighs, propping my weight on my forearms, caging her small body beneath two hundred and twenty-five pounds of unyielding muscle.
The heat radiating off her skin was an open furnace, smelling of sweet almond, clean rain, and the wild, addictive scent that had lived in my marrow since the morning she dropped her binder in The Foundry.
Her amber-flecked eyes locked onto mine in the firelight, dark, dilated, and stripped of every defense she had ever owned.
"Ryan..." Her voice was a raspy, reedy whisper that scraped across my jawline.
"Look at me, Nylah," I growled, my gravelly voice dropping into that dark, ruined rasp that resonated straight into her ribcage.
My hands slid beneath the hem of her silk camisole, gathering the fabric upward, my rough, calloused palms mapping the soft curve of her waist, the flare of her hips, the smooth line of her ribs.
My mouth dipped, taking hers in a slow, devastatingly heavy kiss that tasted of sleep, fire, and absolute possession.
She groaned into my mouth, her small hands flying to the back of my neck, her fingers knotting into my hair, pulling me down until there was not a single millimeter of air left between our chests.
The friction was concussive.
Every slow, rhythmic press of my body against hers was a brand burned into the mattress. I moved with the agonizing, unhurried dominance of a man who knew his claim was permanent, driving her nervous system into pure somatic overload.
My mouth dragged down the flushed line of her throat to the hollow beneath her collarbone, my teeth grazing the soft skin until her hips arched violently off the sheets, seeking the friction she craved.
"Good girl," I rumbled against her skin, my voice thick with a ruined, worshipful awe that made my chest ache. "Look at what you've given me. Look at what you made out of a broken bastard who had nothing."
"You weren't broken," she sobbed softly, her nails digging through the muscle of my trapezius, her heels locking around the backs of my thighs as the pressure coiled to a blinding peak. "You were just waiting for me."
"My wife," I rasped, burying my hips hard and deep into her warmth, claiming her with a slow, sacred rhythm that shattered every lingering shadow in our universe. "All mine. Forever."
The release took her in long, shuddering waves, her breath fracturing into breathless cries against my neck.
My control snapped. With a deep, guttural roar that vibrated against the headboard, I drove into her one final time, burying my face in the crook of her neck as my own release tore through my frame in concussive, trembling waves that left us gasping for air in the dim amber light.
* * *
The fire had died down to glowing orange embers, casting long, peaceful shadows across the cedar ceiling.
I lay tucked against Ryan’s side, my head resting directly over his sternum, the heavy charcoal down duvet pulled up to our shoulders. The cool mountain draft from the balcony washed across the room, but beneath the covers, his body was an unyielding wall of protective heat.
My small hand rested flat over the center of his chest.
Beneath my palm, his heart beat with a slow, heavy, permanent rhythm—the exact same steady cadence that had grounded my nervous system when our world had been on fire.
Ryan’s heavy right arm was banded across my waist, his thick fingers interlaced with mine, our wedding rings pressed together against his ribs.
His chin rested against the crown of my head, his chest rising and falling in deep, synchronized intervals that matched mine stroke for stroke.
"Nylah," he murmured into the quiet dark, his gravelly voice low, soft, and vibrating straight through the bones of my skull.
"Hmm?"
He shifted slightly, his rough, calloused thumb stroking the soft back of my knuckles, his lips pressing a lingering, reverent kiss to my forehead.
"From that freezing hallway in Maine when you dropped your papers... to this bed tonight... you are the only home I will ever need."
I smiled against the warm skin of his chest, tightening my fingers in his, listening to the mountain wind whisper through the trees.
The ice had melted.
The battle was won.
And in the shelter of his arms, our love was indestructible.