Extended Epilogue
JORDAN
Fifteen years later…
The ice sounds different when no one's watching.
Jack's skates scrape as he adjusts his stance, stick too high, shoulders hunched. Chase circles back, faster, lower to the ice, already figuring out what his brother's still learning.
"Grip's too tight," I tell Jack. "You're choking it."
He loosens his hands. Fourteen years old, already tall enough to look me in the eye if he stands up straight. He won't for another year or two—teenage boys hunch like it's their job—but the height's there. The reach. The way he reads the ice before he moves.
I see myself in that. The same instinct I had at his age, before the scouts came, before the league, before any of it mattered beyond the feel of the puck on my stick.
Chase tries a crossover and almost sticks it. His edges catch, and he goes down hard on one knee.
"Up," I say. "Again."
He grins—more Jessica than me, that grin—and pushes himself back up.
Sophie's voice cuts across the rink from the benches. "Chase, you fell like a baby."
"Did not."
"Did too. Daddy, tell him."
I glance over. Jessica's got Eli in her arms, the baby's fist jammed in his mouth, drool everywhere.
Lily sits beside her, strawberry blonde hair tucked under a knit hat, watching her brothers.
Sophie stands on the bench, mittens on, her coat unzipped because she runs hot and doesn't care that it's freezing.
Finn's three feet away, gnawing on a glove he found somewhere.
Jessica catches my eye. Raises an eyebrow. Mouths something I can't quite make out but definitely includes the word help.
I almost lose my footing.
"Focus," I tell the boys. "Chase, show me the move again. Jack, watch his hips."
They skate. I watch. The rink's small, private, ours. No cameras. No crowd. Just the scrape of blades on ice and Sophie yelling commentary no one asked for.
Fifteen years ago, the world had a lot to say about us.
Still does, probably. The stepdad who married his ex-wife's daughter.
The age gap. The headline that wrote itself.
People see us at a restaurant, at a game, at the grocery store with six kids in tow, and I can see it in their faces—the quick math, the double-take, the whisper to whoever's standing next to them.
Let them talk.
Jessica was twenty-one when I met her. I was thirty-eight. She opened the door to that shithole apartment with a wet shirt and red eyes, and I knew—right then, before I said a word—that she was mine. Not because of Erin. Not because of some technicality on a marriage certificate no one knew about.
Because I looked at her and something in my chest said her.
We're two adults who fell in love. That's it. That's the whole story.
Our kids are loved. Our kids are safe. Our kids are loud as hell and currently arguing about whether Chase fell like a baby or a drunk penguin.
Jack's learning to read the ice the way I did.
Lily's got her mother's sharp eye and her father's patience.
Sophie's fearless in a way that's going to give me a heart attack in about eight years. Finn's eating a glove. Eli's asleep.
Nobody's hurt. Nobody's damaged. Nobody needed saving.
They're just ours.
Jack lands a clean pass to Chase. Chase takes it, skates hard, and fires at the net. Misses by a mile, but the form's there.
"Better," I say.
Jessica calls from the bench. "Jack, your brother's showing off."
"He always shows off."
"Yeah, well, he gets it from your father."
I skate toward them, stop at the boards. Eli's awake now, blinking up at me with Jessica's blue eyes. Sophie climbs onto the boards to get closer, and Finn drops the glove to grab my stick.
"Daddy, can I skate now?"
"Next year, Soph."
"You said that last year."
"And I'll say it again next year if you don't get taller."
She narrows her eyes. Jessica laughs.
The ice is cold. The rink smells like rubber and metal and the faint tang of Finn's discarded glove. My boys are sweating through their layers. My girls are plotting something. My wife is looking at me like she still can't believe this is her life.
I can't either.
But here we are.
The world can say whatever it wants. I've got six kids, a wife who still makes me lose my balance with one look, and two boys on the ice who are getting better every damn day.
That's all that matters.
That's all that's ever mattered.
Thanks for reading!