Epilogue
JESSICA
Two weeks later…
The arena explodes.
Sound hits me first—a wall of noise so loud I feel it in my sternum. Then my feet leave the ground as everyone in the WAGs section surges up, screaming, hands in the air. The woman next to me grabs my arm, laughing, and I barely register her face because my eyes are locked on the ice.
Jordan lifts the Cup.
He's center ice, teammates mobbing him from every direction, but he holds it above his head—both hands, steady, like it weighs nothing.
The overhead lights catch the silver and throw it back white-hot. His face is tilted up, eyes closed for just a second, and then he's looking at the crowd, at the banners hanging from the rafters, at the building that's been his home for years.
Eight Cups. The last one.
My throat tightens. He's done. After tonight, he's off the ice for good.
"Jessica."
I turn. Maya's beside me, her phone in one hand, her face unreadable in that way publicists have perfected.
"He wants you on the ice."
My heart kicks. "What?"
She's already moving, gesturing for me to follow. "Come on."
The corridors are concrete and echo and adrenaline. Maya walks fast, her heels clicking, and I'm half-jogging to keep up. She doesn't explain. Just leads me through security, past staff, down a ramp that slopes toward the ice-level entrance.
The cold hits first.
Then the noise—louder down here, bouncing off the boards, the crowd a living thing above us. The ice stretches out under the lights, white and bright and impossibly smooth.
Jordan's there.
Still in his gear, hair plastered to his forehead, sweat staining his jersey. The Cup is somewhere behind him with the team, but he's not looking at it. He's looking at me.
The arena fades—twenty thousand people, cameras, lights, all of it background static. He walks toward me, skates traded for boots, his stride sure and deliberate.
He stops an arm's length away. Reaches into the pocket of his pants—how did he have pockets in hockey gear?—and pulls out a ring.
No speech. No preamble.
"Jessica, I know you're cold so I'll keep this short and save the big speech for later. Will you marry me, baby girl?"
The crowd roars before I can answer. Someone must've seen it on the jumbotron. The sound shakes the boards, rolls through the building like thunder.
I don't hear it.
"Yes. Of course, I'll marry you."
His hand cups my face, thumb brushing my cheek, and then he's kissing me—hard, deep, the kind of kiss that says mine in front of God and Chicago and every camera in the building.
When we break apart, he presses his forehead to mine.
"I love you."
"I love you."
The arena shakes. The lights burn. The ice is cold under my feet.
And Jordan Scott—eight-time Stanley Cup champion, my stepfather, the man who found me sobbing in a shitty apartment months ago—slides the ring onto my finger and pulls me close.