CHAPTER 31
Julian
Istand in the owner’s suite watching the game unfold below while the arena buzzes with energy around me. The crowd is louder tonight, the building alive in that invigorating way it becomes when the Vipers are playing well.
Behind me, sponsors and executives move through the suite with drinks in hand, but my attention isn’t on any of them.
It’s on Harper.
She stands in front of me in a Vipers jersey, Dylan at her side, both of them wearing infectious smiles. It’s been a week since Harper and I stood together in the cemetery, with me revealing the past, and it’s as if my life can be split into two time frames.
Pre-Harper and post-Harper.
I can tell you, the post-Harper man is an entirely different being and while I thought I knew what happiness was, I’m not sure I ever really did.
It’s not like the past has disappeared. It hasn’t.
Kylie and Ben remain part of me. They always will.
But for the first time in years, their memory is no longer an anchor dragging me back in time.
I manage and honor my grief now rather than allowing it to burden me.
More importantly, I have an excitement for the future that I can truly say I never felt before.
Maybe one must experience the most painful of losses to be able to aspire to be in a better place.
I think coming out of darkness, grief and loneliness, that when you finally have love and companionship, it’s better than you could have ever imagined.
Hope is an amazing thing and sometimes it takes true love to help you find it.
For so long, I convinced myself that surviving loss meant forfeiting the right to happiness afterward. That loving Kylie and Ben properly meant remaining frozen beside their memory forever.
But standing here now, watching Harper smile beneath the arena lights while Dylan argues hockey analytics beside her, I finally understand how wrong I was.
The past shaped me, but it does not own me.
Harper catches me staring and smiles softly. “What?”
I shake my head, unable to stop smiling back. “Nothing,” I say.
But it isn’t true. It’s everything. Her smile is everything to me.
I slip my arm around her shoulders. She leans into me, so naturally, like she’s always been there.
The Vipers are dismantling the Nashville Badgers tonight, and the energy inside the building is reflective of my life lately… confident, cohesive, finally moving in the right direction.
Beside me, Dylan is deep in conversation with our head of analytics, both of them hunched over a tablet while discussing player transition metrics with an intensity that borders on alarming.
Every few seconds, Dylan gestures wildly toward the ice while our analytics director nods approvingly like he’s discovered a hidden prodigy.
I don’t know if it gets better than this.
In a few months, Dylan will officially begin interning with the team’s analytics department and judging by the way he lights up every time he discusses the internship, I suspect he may have found exactly where he belongs.
“How was work today?” I ask, brushing my fingers along Harper’s lower back.
Her entire face brightens. “Amazing as always.”
“I can’t wait for the day you become CEO of that company,” I say.
Harper rolls her eyes affectionately. “You’re cute in your unbridled faith in my abilities.”
I give her a squeeze. “Mark my words.”
The arena explodes around us as Tanner Wylie buries another shot top shelf past the Nashville goalie. Hats immediately begin raining down onto the ice.
“Hat trick!” Dylan yells, jumping up and down and high-fiving me.
Harper frowns. “Wait… why are people throwing their hats on the ice?”
Tanner throws both arms into the air while the crowd completely loses its mind. He skates to center ice, pumping his fists.
“It’s called a hat trick,” I explain. “He’s scored three goals in a single game, so the fans all throw their hats on the ice to celebrate.”
“But… but… how do they get their hats back?” she asks as she watches attendants swarm the ice to scoop the flood of hats into large garbage bags.
She’s fucking adorable. I lean down and kiss her temple. “They won’t. Those are now officially donated to an unhoused shelter.”
Harper nods, watching Tanner’s antics on the ice as his teammates swarm him. “He’s ridiculous.”
“He is,” I agree. “But he’s got tremendous potential if he can keep the off-ice distractions to a minimum.”
“Meaning?”
“He enjoys the nightlife,” I say diplomatically.
“And women?” she asks knowingly.
“And women,” I admit with a laugh. “But he’s a good man underneath it all. One of the best teammates in that locker room.”
On the ice, Tanner launches himself against the glass while thousands of fans scream his name.
A few feet away, Dylan is trying to explain advanced in-zone puck possession analytics to someone from corporate sponsorships who looks deeply overwhelmed.
Harper notices too and laughs beneath her breath.
“You know,” she says, leaning into me, “I think he’s really happy. And look, I know you’re disappointed the league didn’t give the Vipers the All-Star game acceptance but there’s always next year.”
“There is indeed. They sounded very encouraged by all our progress and I know we’ll get it soon…thanks in large part to you and all your innovative thinking.”
She glances up at me, eyes soft with love. “I do what I can. I didn’t ever think I could be this happy. How about you?”
I don’t tell her that there’s one thing that could make me happier, and that’s if she and Dylan would move in with me. I’ll hit her up with it at some point soon, but not right now. So I smile and bend down to kiss her. “The happiest I’ve ever been.”
The final buzzer of the period sounds soon after.
Vipers four.
Badgers two.
The crowd rises to its feet in thunderous applause while green towels whip through the air across the arena.
Standing there in the middle of it all—with Harper beside me and Dylan smiling nearby while the organization and city I love thrives around us—I feel something I haven’t felt in longer than I can remember.
Peace. I wasn’t sure I would ever recapture this. For years I believed grief would define the rest of my life.
Instead, love won out.
And as the crowd continues roaring beneath the bright lights of the arena, I realize with complete certainty that life is good.