Epilogue
Dual POV
Nadia POV
The scent of crushed sugar maple leaves, dry lake stones, and woodsmoke drifted through the open French doors of the cedar veranda.
October fourteenth. Three years later.
Outside, the calm, gray-blue expanse of Lake St. Clair stretched toward the Ontario horizon, glittering beneath a mild, golden afternoon sun.
Across the three acres of sloped rye lawn leading down to our private dock, two-year-old Clara was running at full tilt, her short legs pumping furiously inside red denim overalls and miniature leather work boots.
Her dark chestnut curls were a wild, chaotic cloud around her face, identical to the ones I had spent twenty years trying to tame with silver clips.
"Dada, catch!" Clara squealed, her high, bell-like laugh cutting through the rustle of the dry oaks.
Ten feet ahead of her, lying flat on his back in the dew-damp grass, was Killian.
Twenty-five years old. Six feet, four inches of dense, functional muscle, carved from four hundred professional games between the boards.
The first-line captain of the Detroit Red Wings.
The league's most feared enforcer and its most lethal power forward, earning nine million dollars a year to punish opposing defensemen across North America.
Right now, he was entirely at the mercy of twenty-eight pounds of toddler.
He lay motionless in gray sweatpants and a worn black team long-sleeve, his hands folded across his chest, playing dead with absolute, solemn commitment. The two-inch silver scar through his left eyebrow caught the autumn sun, his jaw relaxed, his dark stubble dusted with yellow pine needles.
Clara launched herself onto his ribs, her small boots digging into his hip bone as she planted both palms directly over his heart.
Killian let out a dramatic, bone-rattling groan that vibrated across the lawn, his massive arms coming up to wrap around her waist with infinite, feather-light care.
"You got me, monster," he growled softly, his voice thick with that deep, familiar gravel that still made my pulse skip a beat across a crowded room. "You broke the captain clean in half."
He rolled onto his side, scooping her into the air with one massive forearm, balancing her high above his chest while Clara shrieked with delight, her hands tangling into the short dark curls at his temples.
Sitting on the wide cedar deck beside me, a pair of black graphite forearm crutches rested against the railing.
Mateo Castaneda leaned back in an Adirondack chair, his long legs stretched out into the sunlight, taking a sip from a mug of cider. His face was full, healthy, tanned from a summer spent out on the water, his eyes bright with laughter as he watched his brother get mauled in the clover.
The $140,000 promissory note had been incinerated the week Killian signed his entry-level contract. Mateo was twenty-two now, walking unassisted for hundreds of yards at a stretch, finishing his mechanical engineering degree at the University of Michigan with an internship waiting in Detroit.
"Look at him," Mateo chuckled, shaking his head. "The Chicago Blackhawks spent sixty minutes on Friday trying to put him through the glass, and he didn't even drop his gloves. Clara hits him with a pinecone, and he surrenders the franchise."
A soft, sweet warmth expanded behind my sternum, so deep and full it made my throat ache with gratitude.
"He's a soft touch," I murmured, resting my hands on the warm cedar railing.
On my left ring finger, the platinum-and-diamond wedding band Killian had slipped onto my skin two summers ago in an empty Duluth chapel gleamed in the sunlight.
On a delicate gold chain around my neck hung the brass key from his old saltbox house—the one I had thrown into his palm in the dark, and the one he had placed around my neck the day we bought this land.
Killian rose from the grass in one fluid, effortless lift, settling Clara securely in the crook of his broad left arm.
He crossed the lawn with heavy, unhurried strides.
He didn't look at the lake. He didn't look at Mateo.
His dark eyes, black pupils rimmed with rich amber, locked directly onto my face from fifty yards away. The enforcer mask he wore for national broadcasts had vanished, replaced by a quiet, worshipful devotion that felt like an iron anchor holding down my world.
He reached the porch steps, cleared the risers, and stopped right in front of me.
"Mama's staring, Clara," Killian murmured, his voice dropping into that low, private register that belonged only to us.
He reached out with his free right hand, his broad, calloused palm cupping the side of my jaw. His rough thumb brushed slowly across my cheekbone, catching the autumn warmth on my skin.
He leaned down, his mouth finding mine in a slow, lingering kiss that tasted of cider, fresh air, and absolute possession.
Clara giggled between us, pressing a sticky hand against Killian’s ear, but he didn't rush.
He held my mouth with steady, unyielding reverence until my fingers came up to knot into the cotton of his shirt, my breathing syncing perfectly with the slow, heavy rise of his chest.
He broke the kiss by a fraction of an inch, his forehead resting against mine.
"You're beautiful, Nadia," he rasped, his voice a low vibration against my lips. "Every damn day."
My hand moved down his arm, my fingers locking through his scarred knuckles, holding on with a certainty that had been forged in the coldest winter of our lives.
"Go get your gear, eighty-eight," I whispered softly. "You have a home opener to win."
* * *
Killian POV
The roar of twenty thousand fans inside Little Caesars Arena was a deafening, metallic vibration that rattled the acrylic dasher boards against the concrete footings.
Third period.
Ten seconds on the digital clock.
Detroit: 3. Boston: 2.
The Bruins pulled their goaltender, flooding six skaters into our defensive zone for a desperate, final faceoff.
I settled my skates into the left-wing circle, leaning heavy on my composite stick, my resting pulse sitting at a steady, rhythmic fifty-two beats a minute.
The captain's C was stitched in heavy white twill over the winged wheel on my red game jersey.
The bruised knuckles, the broken molar from my senior year at Barrow, the surgical scar along my collarbone—they were just functional details now, tools of a trade I practiced with surgical, ruthless discipline.
The linesman dropped the puck.
Hayes Bennett tied up the Boston center on the dot. I read the puck rotation off the half-wall in half a second, lowered my left shoulder, and drove the trailing defenseman into the glass with a clean, devastating check that separated him from the vulcanized rubber.
I gathered the loose puck on the backhand, turned my hips, and cleared the zone high off the glass into the neutral ice.
00:03.
00:02.
00:00.
The arena horn blasted through the roof, a deep, abrasive shriek of victory that triggered a blizzard of white and red confetti from the steel rafters.
The glass rattled with fans banging their palms against the boards. Hayes skated up, slamming his padded glove into my chest plate, shouting over the bedlam, while our goaltender threw his arms around my neck.
I bumped helmets with my linemates, answered the referee’s formal handshake, and coasted through the center circle.
I didn't look at the television cameras tracking my stride.
I glided toward the home-bench dasher boards, my head tilting back as I looked straight up past the lower bowl to the private glass suite hanging directly above the player tunnel.
Standing against the acrylic partition in the private box was Nadia.
She wore a long black wool coat over a red-and-white team jersey bearing my name and number, her dark chestnut curls swept up in those same bronze pins she had worn the night of the alumni gala. Perched on her hip was Clara, waving a miniature foam finger with wild, uncoordinated enthusiasm.
My chest caved in with an ache so profound, so violent, that my lungs starved for air in the middle of twenty thousand screaming strangers.
I reached up with my left hand, pulling off the thick leather hockey glove, letting it drop to the ice at my skates.
Beneath the white zinc tape on my ring finger, the wide platinum wedding band rested heavy and cold against my bone.
I raised my bare hand toward the glass box above, pressing my lips to the metal ring, then held my open palm flat against the air, aimed directly at the woman standing in the light.
High above the ice, Nadia saw the movement.
She raised her left hand, pressing her palm against the glass in the exact same spot, her diamond catching the arena halogens in a bright, blinding star.
The multi-million-dollar contract extension sitting in my lawyer's office in Birmingham was paper. The ninety-foot banner hanging in the rafters was cloth.
The two souls standing behind that glass were the only championship I had ever cared about winning.
I picked up my glove, turned toward the dark runway, and skated off the ice to go claim my family.
* * *
Dual POV
Nadia POV
The master bedroom suite of our home on the bluffs was washed in deep blue moonlight, the French doors cracked two inches to let in the crisp, sub-zero draft off Lake St. Clair.
Midnight.
Clara was sound asleep in her nursery down the hall, tucked beneath her fleece quilt, her breathing soft and rhythmic through the baby monitor on the nightstand.
The heavy cedar door of our bedroom clicked shut.
Killian crossed the dark oak floorboards in his bare feet.
He had washed the ice and blood from his skin in the arena training room, wearing only dark gray flannel lounge pants that hung low on his waist. His damp dark hair was pushed back from his forehead, steam still rising faintly from his broad shoulders, his dark eyes locked onto mine with that unhurried, predatory heat that never failed to make my stomach tighten in a sweet, aching spasm.