Epilogue
Maddox
Grace’s flight from Los Angeles lands while I’m still at practice. I wanted to pick her up, be the first thing she saw after nearly three weeks of distance, video calls, and late-night texts that never quite filled the space she left behind. But she shut that down fast.
“Coach, think of your team.” She knew where to poke to make her point. “Do what you do best, they need you, and we’ll see each other at home.”
Home.
The word settles deep, solid, and right. She’ll be home any minute now.
I arrived about forty minutes ago and have been working hard with Percy to get everything ready before she arrives. Our friends are coming for dinner in about an hour. Mom, Katie, Wren, Oliver, half the town if they could swing it, wanted to be here. They missed her. Of course they did.
I missed her most.
Mom wanted to be here when Grace arrived, but I put an end to that. I needed her to myself, if only for an hour, before the house filled up and I had to share her again.
“I think we’re done. Let me just set the timer on the oven for the appetizers, and then I’ll get out of here.” Percy places the last glass on the table and spins on her heel toward the kitchen.
The dining room looks spectacular—balloons, streamers, and a ‘welcome home’ banner strung across the far wall. It might be a lot for only three weeks apart, but I wanted to mark the occasion properly.
I wanted to give Grace something that said this is real, you live here now. This party is both a welcome to town and a homecoming, and I make no apologies for it.
“It’s too bad you can’t stay tonight. Thanks for everything, Perce.”
“I’ll see Grace soon enough.” She wipes her hands on a dishtowel and turns to face me.
“Besides, Pop wanted to be here, and someone’s got to hold down the fort at the Grill.
That’s the goal.” A small smile crosses her face.
“Grace has been giving me pointers, actually—how to make Pop feel like he’s in control while I quietly shape the way things run. ”
That doesn’t surprise me in the least. Grace has a gift for finding the person in the room who needs a hand and figuring out exactly how to extend one without making them feel small for needing it.
Pop’s a good man, but he’s been dangling that carrot in front of his daughter for far too long, and Percy is more than qualified to take the reins.
The front door opens, and my heart stutters—hard—and then a thud echoes through the entryway, the unmistakable sound of a bag hitting the floor.
“Honey, I’m home.”
I can hear her smile in the words, and mine is already forming before I’ve taken a single step.
I move before the door even clicks shut, crossing the kitchen and down the hallway to the front. My hands find her coat and my mouth finds hers, the kiss landing hard. Everything about me has been holding its breath for three weeks, and finally, gratefully, I exhale.
Grace makes a soft sound against my lips, surprise giving way to heat. I chase it without hesitation, angling closer until we’re pressed flush against each other in the entryway.
“I missed you.” The words break apart in her mouth as I say them, barely coherent. I rest my forehead against hers for one long beat, just breathing her in. “I need you.”
The truth of it hums under my skin, low and steady and absolute.
Her fingers curl into the waist of my jeans. “Me, too.”
Her hands go for my button, and I reach for the silk of her blouse, working through each small fastening with more patience than I currently possess. The sight of her breasts in a sheer white bra evaporates whatever is left of my restraint. Behind us, a throat clears—leisurely and deeply amused.
We freeze.
Percy.
Grace presses herself into my chest and peers over my shoulder.
“Hey, Grace. Welcome home.” Percy’s tone is sheer delight.
Grace buries her face in the crook of my neck and releases something caught between a giggle and a groan, her greeting muffled against my skin. Her shoulders shake with laughter she’s absolutely failing to suppress.
I turn around and keep most of my body in front of her, blocking Percy’s view so she can redo her buttons.
“Um, sorry, Perce.” I rub at the back of my neck. “I guess we, uh—”
“Missed each other.” Percy grabs her bag off the hall table with an expression that says she intends to hold this over me indefinitely.
She lifts her coat from the hook. “Grace, don’t get dressed on my account. I’m leaving. I’d hug you, but this one might tackle me.”
She guffaws at her own joke, utterly delighted with herself, and slips out the door with a light squeeze to Grace’s arm. “I’ll text you so we can catch up. You look beautiful.”
The door clicks shut, and Grace is unusually quiet, her face a spectacular shade of crimson, lips pressed together in a thin, mortified line.
“Oh my God.” She covers her face with both hands and dissolves into laughter, shoulders shaking, the sound of it filling the entryway and doing something irreversible to my chest.
I cringe, needing to explain, end her embarrassment. “I saw you, and I just—”
She kisses me, her smile pressing warm against my lips, cutting off whatever excuse I was assembling.
“Mad.” She pulls back just enough to look at me. “Anyone else here? Your mom? Katie?”
“Not yet.” I kiss her deeper this time, slower, making a point. “We’ve got maybe an hour.”
She laughs softly against my mouth. “Slow down, tiger. We have right now, and we have later after everyone leaves.” Her fingers trace along my jaw. “We have all night and the rest of our lives.”
She’s right. She is completely right, and it doesn’t slow me down even slightly. Now that I’ve had a taste of her, the rest of the evening feels like an obstacle. What was I thinking, having a party the night she came home?
I cup her face in both hands and hold it there, steadying myself in the sight of her. Blue eyes warm and familiar, pretty pink mouth curved up at the corner, real and here and mine. “I figured something out while you were gone.”
Her brows lift. “What’s that?”
“I love you, Buchanan.” The words lodge somewhere behind my ribs every time I look at her, every time she isn’t in the room, and I feel the shape of where she should be.
Her smile settles into something soft and certain. “I love you, too, Coach.”
I slide my hand into her hair, palm warm against her scalp, and she leans into it without hesitation, like she’s been doing it her whole life. I walk her backward toward the stairs, and once we reach the top, something in the air shifts—thinner, charged, the quiet of the house folding in around us.
Nudging the bedroom door open, I draw her inside. Grace turns to face me and rests her palm flat against my chest, right over my sternum. It’s like she’s checking for something—for me, for this, for the reality of us in the same room again after three weeks of distance.
I cover her hand with mine and press it there, and then my mouth finds her jaw, slow at first, a deliberate drag that turns into the graze of my teeth, just enough to pull a sharp inhale from her lips.
I want urgency. But I want to draw this out more. “Look at me.”
She does, her eyes dark, lips parted, and waiting.
“I’ve got you.” My lips brush her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, barely a touch. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Her fingers curl into my shirt, twisting the fabric. “Good,” she whispers. “Because neither am I.”
I kiss her deep and claiming and completely unrestrained, the sound of it filling the quiet room, hungry and unhurried all at once. I walk her backward until the backs of her knees meet the bed, never breaking the kiss, my hands firm at her hips.
She goes willingly, a soft gasp leaving her lips as she sinks down onto the edge, looking up at me with dark eyes and no trace of hesitation. I follow her down onto the bed, my weight careful but undeniable, my thumb tracing a line along her jaw and down the column of her throat.
Her skin is warm and soft and responsive beneath my hands, and I take my time with her.
“Mad.” My name leaves her lips—this time a plea, low and unraveling at the edges.
I smile against her mouth. “I know.”
And I kiss her harder and slower all at once, making her wait even as the need pulls tight in my gut. Because I want her aware of every inch of space I close, every beat of the pace I set, the absolute certainty underneath all of it. I want her to feel how sure I am.
Time slips. Breath stutters. Heat builds in slow, relentless increments until the world narrows to the press of skin against skin, the rasp of breath in the quiet room, the deep and unshakeable rightness of being exactly here, together.
Afterward, we lie tangled under the covers, her head resting on my chest, my arm heavy and certain around her shoulders. Her fingers trace slow, idle patterns along my ribs like she’s writing something only she knows the words to.
The house is quiet, and the afternoon light has gone amber and soft through the curtains. Then the front door opens downstairs, and I groan. Of course she’s early.
“Maddox?” Mom’s voice carries up through the house, bright and entirely uninvited. Then, without pausing even a breath for an answer, “Grace? Sweetheart? I brought food and opinions, and I’m not afraid to use either.”
Grace laughs against my chest—warm and completely unselfconscious—and I feel it more than I hear it.
“And before either of you pretends not to hear me.” Mom’s voice grows closer, already halfway up the stairs by the sound of it. “I love you both dearly, but if I find so much as one sock on the staircase, I’ll start assigning chores.”
I press a smile into Grace’s hair and drop a kiss to her temple before yelling out, “Give us two minutes.”
Mom huffs with the patience of a woman who has been negotiating with me for twenty-eight years.
“Two minutes. I mean it.” She pauses, and then her voice softens. “Also… Grace, welcome home. We missed you.”
Her footsteps retreat down the stairs, and I tighten my arm around Grace and drop my mouth close to her ear.
“Welcome home.” The words come out low and certain.
“This is what it looks like. Mom dropping in unannounced.” I growl and smile at the audacity of Meri Hartley.
“Endless interruptions when we grab a coffee or bite in town. Basketball games, town square events.” I press a kiss behind her ear. “This is us. Every day, always.”
She tilts her face up to look at me. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Her smile is slow and sure and completely bare. The smile of a woman who’s stopped searching for a wrong to right, who has decided, finally, to simply believe what is right in front of her.
I believe it, too.
Every single word.