Epilogue
Luke
Four months.
That was how long it had been since the parade. Since I held the Stanley Cup over my head on a float going down Sixth Avenue, confetti stuck in my hair, and I yelled Dani’s name into the mic for half of New York city to hear.
Now there was no doubt she was mine as much as I was hers.
They did know. Everyone knew now.
The season started back up in October, and somewhere in the weeks since, I'd stopped being the backup. Coach Greaves hadn't made a big announcement about it. He just kept writing my name on the lineup card, night after night, until one morning I realized I hadn't seen the bench in six weeks.
Starting goaltender of the New York Leopards. Some days I still had to remind myself that this was real.
I stood in the hallway of the apartment, routine Bulletproof coffee in hand, looking into Lily's room. The door was cracked open. Yellow walls, exactly the shade she'd picked out that first week, standing in the paint aisle with the seriousness of a general choosing a battle plan.
Her dragon guard picture hung dead center on the wall, the way I'd finally gotten it straight after three tries. Me in my goalie mask, arms spread wide across the net, a crayon dragon breathing fire at me from the other end of the paper.
"You're doing the staring thing again," Dani said, coming up beside me with her own mug.
"What staring thing?"
"The one where you look at that picture like it's going to disappear if you stop watching it."
"Maybe I just like it."
"You like that it means something."
"Same thing." I bumped her shoulder with mine. "She still tells people about it?"
"Some kid in her class asked if you were a real superhero last week." Dani smiled into her coffee. "She said, and I quote, 'basically.'"
"Basically. Strong endorsement."
"Forty-two saves on Tuesday. I'd say you earned it."
Four months since we'd hung that picture up on moving day, and it still stopped me every time I walked past it. A kid's crayon proof that I'd made it into her life for good, long before I'd figured out how to say so out loud.
Dinner at Eli and Maya's had become a standing Sunday thing by now—not a novelty anymore, not something anyone had to sneak around or pretend not to notice. Just family. Loud, warm, occasionally garlic-scented family.
Lily sprinted for the kitchen the second we walked in, already yelling something about helping Maya with dessert. Wyatt caught her under the arms and spun her once before setting her down, and she shrieked with the kind of joy that filled up the whole house.
"There he is." Eli met me at the door, pulling me into the same hard, brief hug he'd been giving me all season. "Forty-two saves. You're making the rest of us look bad."
"Somebody's got to."
Wyatt was already in the kitchen, arguing with Kylie about garlic ratios in something that smelled incredible, the same argument they seemed to have every week and never actually resolved. He looked up when we walked in.
"There's the starter," Wyatt said. "Stanley Cup champion, now stealing the number one job. You're an overachiever, Bennett."
"Learned from the best."
"Damn right you did."
Amber stood near the front door with a large, wrapped frame tucked against her side.
“I brought you something,” she said, grinning as she held it out to me. “For your new place.”
I took it from her and peeled back the paper.
For a second, I couldn’t speak.
It was the night Dani and I met. Me on the floor, bleeding, my usual grin nowhere in sight. Dani knelt over me with one hand pressed flat against my chest and the other holding a towel to my forehead, her face focused and worried like nothing else in the room existed.
“You took this?” Dani asked quietly beside me.
Amber nodded. “I almost deleted it because it felt too private. But it was the beginning of everything.”
I looked at Dani, then back at the photograph.
“This is going right by the front door,” I said. “Prime real estate.”
“You were bleeding on the floor,” Dani reminded me.
“And you were already obsessed with me.”
“I was making sure you didn’t die.”
“Same thing.”
Finn leaned back against the couch. “Careful, Amber. He’s going to call it the best gift he’s ever gotten.”
“It is,” I said.
“Low bar,” Finn said. “You cried when you got your first goalie mask, according to your mother.”
“That was one time. I was seven.”
“She showed me the video.”
“I’m going to need her contact information revoked.”
Dani laughed beside me. I slid my arm around her waist and pulled her in.
She leaned into me. This right here was the best gift I’d ever gotten.
Not even being number one on the team beat her being mine.
The next few hours passed in a blur of food, laughter, and more fun than I could remember having in a long time.
Once the dishes were cleared and Lily had commandeered Wyatt for a very serious game of Go Fish at the kitchen table, Dani and I ended up on the back porch, the way we always seemed to by the end of these nights.
The air had gone properly cold now, real winter pressing in at the edges, but neither of us moved to go back inside.
"Four months," she said, like she'd been running the same math I had. "Feels longer than that. In a good way."
"Feels like no time at all to me. And also forever. Both at once."
"That's very poetic for a guy who once described playoff hockey as 'a lot of guys trying to hit each other while I stand very still.'"
"I contain multitudes."
She laughed, and I pulled her back against my chest, chin resting on top of her head, watching our breath fog.
I turned her to face me. In the porch light, her eyes were soft, open in a way they hadn't been back in May, back when every conversation between us came wrapped in warning labels.
"I have something to tell you," I said.
"That sounds ominous."
"It's not. I promise."
She waited. I took a breath.
"I've been thinking about the future," I said.
"Not in a vague way. I don't want this to just be an arrangement that works right now.
I want it to be the permanent thing. You, Lily, whatever comes after that.
I'm not going anywhere, Dani. That's not conditional on anything—not the season, not my contract, not whatever happens with hockey next year or the year after. "
She was quiet for a long moment. Behind us, through the window, I could hear Wyatt groaning about losing at Go Fish to a five-year-old.
“You beat me to it,” she finally said. “I was waiting for the perfect moment to let you know that I want to take this further with you. I can't imagine a future without you in it, Luke.”
I kissed her. Slow, unhurried, the kind of kiss that didn't need an audience or a countdown clock. Just us, on a porch, with the people who'd become our family arguing happily on the other side of the glass.
When we broke apart, she rested her forehead against mine.
“Thank you,” she said. I arched my brows and pulled her closer.
“For what?”
“For fighting for us. For showing me how beautiful it is to be genuinely happy again. For making my fears become long forgotten memories.”
I huffed a laugh against her hair. “We did all this together, Dani. If you didn't have the willpower to meet me halfway, then we wouldn’t be here. You gave us a fighting chance.”
I kissed the top of her head.
Through the window, Lily's laughter rang out again.
Inside, the Wests were chaos.
Dani's hand found mine.
Four months. From a hotel room and a packed bag to this. To her, being mine.
"You're stuck with me," I said. "For as long as you'll let me."
She tilted her head up at me. "Then you'd better be prepared to be stuck with me forever."
My smile cracked wide. "Good. I wouldn't have it any other way."