Epilogue
Harlow
Two years later
Harlow
Seattle in October feels like stepping inside a watercolor painting.
Colorful leaves cover the sidewalks and are a stark contrast against the green grass. The air smells like coffee, but the air has a bite to it that I can’t say I’ve missed while living in California.
Maybe because this city already feels a little like him.
Steady. Quiet in some ways, loud in others. Beautiful without trying too hard.
“Already regretting your decision?”
I turn at the sound of Grayson’s voice and find him halfway out of the building’s front door, one hand braced against the frame, the other holding a cardboard box labeled BOOKS in my handwriting.
He’s grinning.
That grin still does something unfair to me, even now. Almost two years in, and my body still reacts to him like it doesn’t know how to be normal about it. Maybe it never will.
He’s in a dark Storm Breakers hoodie with the sleeves shoved up to his forearms, black joggers, and the backward cap he wears on off days. There’s a smear of dust on his wrist from carrying boxes, and his hair is curling slightly at the edges from the misty air.
He looks like home.
I shift the strap higher on my shoulder. “I was having a moment.”
He steps fully onto the sidewalk, box still in his arms. “A dramatic one?”
“An observant one.”
His mouth twitches. “Ah. Very different.”
“Completely.”
He glances up at the building, then back at me. “So what did your observation tell you?”
I look past him to the windows on the fourth floor, where his—our—apartment sits with the curtains open and one lamp already on. It’s weird, seeing the space that’s existed for the last year as his and realizing that by tonight, it won’t just be his anymore.
It’ll be ours.
“That this feels big,” I say honestly.
The grin fades from his mouth, not because he’s upset, but because he knows me well enough now to hear the things underneath what I say. He sets the box down carefully on the dry patch of concrete beside the door and walks toward me.
“Big in good way?” he asks.
I nod.
His hands slide to my waist, grounding and warm. “Yeah?”
I nod again. “Yeah.”
Because it is.
It’s big in the way all the best things in my life have been big. Not because they came with fireworks or fanfare, but because they changed the shape of me without asking permission first.
Two years ago, I was still learning how to want things without apologizing for it.
Now I’m standing outside an apartment building in Seattle, moving in with the man I love while he plays his second season in the NHL.
His thumbs brush over the sides of my sweater.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
I smile up at him. “I’m more than okay. No more long distance or seeing you just a couple times a month.”
Something in his face eases, and then his expression shifts into that teasing look he gets right before he says something annoying on purpose.
“Great,” he says. “Then grab a box.”
I gasp. “You are unbelievable.”
He kisses my forehead and steps back before I can swat him. “Come on, baby. We still have the kitchen stuff, three bags of clothes, and whatever was in that suspiciously heavy tote you wouldn’t let me carry.”
“That,” I say, bending to grab the tote in question, which is full of my annotated books, “is between me and God.”
His bark of laughter follows me through the front door.
By the time we get the last of my things upstairs, the apartment looks like my entire life exploded across his very clean living room.
Which, to be fair, it kind of did.
There are boxes stacked near the couch, my clothes draped over the back of a dining chair, two throw pillows Wren insisted I buy tossed onto the floor, and a half-unzipped suitcase at the end of the hallway spilling scarves and tangled charger cords onto the rug.
Grayson stands in the middle of it all with his hands on his hips, surveying the mess.
“Maybe I should’ve gotten a bigger place,” he says.
I pause mid-unpacking and stare at him. “Did you just complain about me moving in?”
He turns toward me so fast he nearly walks into the kitchen island.
“No,” he says immediately.
I cross my arms. “It sounded like you did.”
He points at me. “That was a joke, and you know it.”
I try to hold onto my offended expression, but his eyes narrow in suspicion.
“You’re messing with me.”
I shrug, which only proves his point.
He lunges.
I yelp and dart around the island, laughing so hard I almost collide with a box marked BATHROOM. He catches me before I make it more than two steps down the hall, hooking an arm around my waist and pulling me back against his chest.
“Got you,” he says into my neck.
“You cheated.”
“I’m six-three and play professional hockey. None of this counts as cheating.”
“It absolutely counts as cheating.”
His mouth brushes the spot below my ear. “You moved in with me anyway.”
The words send a warm little thrill through me, still new enough that my chest catches on them.
I turn in his arms and loop mine around his neck. “Yeah,” I murmur.
“Yeah,” he echoes, like he likes the sound of it as much as I do.
For a second, everything else falls away—the boxes, the unpacking, the city outside the windows, the distance we’ve spent the last year learning to bridge between my final semesters and his road schedule and the reality of building a life in overlapping pieces.
It’s just him and me in the middle of our apartment.
There’s something about that word that keeps getting me.
Our.
It used to be such a dangerous thing to want.
Not him, exactly. Him, I wanted from the beginning, even when I shouldn’t have, even when it felt impossible, even when I still thought wanting anything that badly might ruin me.
But this part?
The steady part.
The ordinary part.
The part where love stops being a secret or a fear or a question and starts becoming a life.
That used to feel impossible too.
And now I’m standing in the middle of it.
Grayson brushes a strand of hair away from my face. “What are you thinking about?”
I lean into his hand. “How weird it is that this is real.”
His expression softens. “I know.”
“You do?”
He huffs a quiet laugh. “Harlow, I still come home from road trips and have a half-second where I’m surprised your face is on my lock screen and your mug is in my cabinet and half my closet smells like you.” His thumb drifts across my cheekbone. “I know exactly how weird it is.”
The smile that pulls at my mouth feels almost helpless.
“I’m not sure weird is the word you want there.”
He shrugs. “Insane? Unreal? Best thing that’s ever happened to me?”
I laugh. “That’s better.”
“Yeah, I thought so too.”
Then he kisses me, slow and smiling and familiar, and it feels like every version of us layered on top of each other at once—the anonymous messages in the dark, the impossible ache of wanting him in crowded rooms, the first time I let myself believe he might really stay, the first time he actually did.
When we finally pull apart, I rest my forehead against his.
“We should probably unpack,” I whisper.
“We absolutely should.”
Neither of us moves.
I smile. “Gray.”
He exhales dramatically. “Fine. But if I open one more box and find another candle, I’m staging an intervention.”
Three hours later, the kitchen is mostly done, my sweaters are in his dresser, and the rain has started up again in earnest, tapping softly against the windows.
We ordered takeout because neither of us had the energy to cook, and now we’re sitting on the floor with our backs against the couch, eating noodles out of cardboard containers while the lamp in the corner makes everything feel a little more cozy.
Figure skating coverage from some early-season event streams across the TV, because Grayson handed me the remote twenty minutes ago without asking what I wanted to watch and then didn’t complain once when I picked this instead of sports analysis.
He’s gotten weirdly good at identifying jumps.
I glance over just as the skater on screen lands a combination, and he nods like he approves.
“That was underrotated,” he says.
I blink. “Excuse me?”
He shrugs and takes another bite. “A little.”
I narrow my eyes. “You need to stop absorbing my hobbies this aggressively.”
He swallows. “Counterpoint. No.”
“Counterpoint doesn’t work like that.”
He nudges my knee with his. “You love me.”
“I do,” I say, too fast to even pretend otherwise.
His eyes flick to mine, and that soft smile appears again. The one that still feels a little private, like it belongs more to us than anyone else.
“I know,” he says.
There was a time when those words would’ve terrified me.
Not because I didn’t feel it. Because I did. Too much, too fast, in ways I didn’t understand how to survive.
But now? Now it feels like the safest thing in the world, handing him my love and knowing he’ll hold it carefully. Knowing he always does.
I rest my head on his shoulder and watch the skater glide across the ice.
“Thank you,” I say after a minute.
“For what?”
“For today. For making this easy.”
He turns his head just enough that his cheek brushes my hair. “Moving three states’ worth of your life into my apartment was not easy.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
His voice is quieter when he speaks again.
“You never have to thank me for making space for you.”
The words hit somewhere deep.
I lift my head and look at him. “Grayson—”
“I mean it.” He sets his takeout container down on the coffee table.
“Harlow, you are not an inconvenience. You never were. You moving in here isn’t me doing you some huge favor.
This is…” He glances around the apartment, at the boxes and blankets and evidence of me tucked into all the corners already.
“This is what I want. You are what I want.”
Emotion rushes up my throat so fast it almost hurts.
He notices, obviously.
“Oh no,” he says gently. “Don’t do that.”
I let out a watery laugh. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re getting tears in your eyes.”
“I told you, those don’t count if they’re happy.”