Epilogue - JAKE #2
“I am serious,” he says. “I have spent most of my life prioritizing hockey. I told myself I was doing it for the family. For stability. For legacy. For all the reasons men use when they want to feel noble about neglect.”
No one moves.
He looks at his daughters, and there is something raw in his face now.
“But recently,” he says, voice lower, “I have had to ask myself a question I should have asked much sooner.”
He pauses.
“If all that work leaves me successful and alone… what exactly have I won?”
The question lands in the middle of the table and stays there.
Katia reaches for his hand without hesitation. “I’d say still quite a lot,” she says softly, trying to keep some lightness in her tone. “But yes. Point taken.”
He turns his hand and squeezes hers.
Coach looks at Talia next. Then at both of them together.
“I missed things,” he says. “Important things. I do not intend to miss more.”
My chest tightens unexpectedly.
There’s a man in front of me waking up too late and deciding not to lose what’s left. A man looking at the wreckage of his own priorities and choosing differently.
This family is healing in front of me.
Katia wipes under one eye with her free hand and mutters, “I swear to God, if we all cry in this restaurant, I’m blaming you.”
Talia laughs through tears.
Coach looks vaguely alarmed by the emotional response he created, which almost makes me laugh too.
Almost.
Instead, I glance at Talia.
She’s staring at her father like she’s seeing him clearly for the first time in years.
Then she looks at me.
And I know.
It’s time.
I clear my throat.
Every head turns toward me.
I look at Talia, just to be sure.
The question is silent.
Are we doing this?
She reads it instantly.
Her eyes soften and she nods.
I take her hand. “We actually have something to share too,” I say.
Katia straightens so fast her chair squeaks.
Coach narrows his eyes, like he’s not entirely sure he wants to hear what we have to share.
“Talia’s pregnant.”
The silence lasts maybe half a second.
Then Katia absolutely loses her mind.
A squeal tears out of her so loudly that two people at the next table turn around.
“Oh my God!” she shouts, launching out of her chair. “I KNEW IT. No, I didn’t know it, but I spiritually suspected it!”
She rounds the table and throws her arms around Talia, who’s laughing and crying at the same time.
“I’m going to be an aunt,” Katia declares dramatically. “A cool aunt. A devastatingly stylish aunt. This child is doomed in the best possible way.”
I laugh, full and open and happy.
Talia hugs Katia back, cheeks flushed, eyes bright.
“Congratulations,” Katia says, then immediately ruins the sincerity with, “I call naming rights.”
“No,” Talia and I say in unison.
“Rude.”
Coach hasn’t spoken yet. He’s sitting very still.
His gaze moves from Talia to me to her stomach and back again.
Then he nods once.
Just once.
“Good.”
That’s it.
One word.
But relief floods through me so hard it almost makes me dizzy.
Good.
Katia points at him. “That was way too calm. I need more.”
Coach lifts one shoulder. “I am pleased.”
“You’re going to be a grandfather,” she says. “You can use more than two syllables.”
He considers that. “Very pleased.”
That does it.
Talia laughs so hard she has to lean into me, and I wrap an arm around her waist automatically, my hand settling over her stomach without even thinking.
Dinner after that is chaos in the best possible way.
Katia starts brainstorming names immediately, most of them terrible.
“If it’s a boy, Roman,” she says.
“No,” I say.
“If it’s a girl, something elegant. Like Vivienne.”
Talia makes a face. “That sounds like a perfume ad.”
“It sounds expensive,” Katia argues.
By the time dessert arrives, none of us are really hungry, but Katia orders two anyway on principle. Talia steals bites from mine. I pretend to object. She ignores me. Coach actually smiles once when he thinks no one’s looking.
We leave the restaurant together, stepping out into cool night air that smells like rain and city lights and late summer finally giving up.
Katia links her arm through her father’s, while Talia stands beside me, leaning lightly against my side.
My arm wraps around her shoulders. Then lower, until my hand settles protectively over her stomach.
It still feels unreal in the best possible way.
My wife. Her sister. Her father. Our baby.
The little family that came together in the strangest, messiest, most improbable way possible.
A few months ago, if you’d asked me whether my life was good, I would’ve said yes.
Of course I would have.
I had the captaincy. The house. The control. The illusion of being exactly where I wanted to be.
I was wrong.
That life wasn’t full.
This is.
I look at Talia as she laughs at something Katia says, one hand resting over mine where it covers her stomach.
I look at Coach, who’s listening instead of directing for once in his life.
I look at Katia, alive in a way she almost wasn’t.
I look at the future pressing softly under my palm.
And I realize I don’t miss the man I used to be at all.
Turns out the best thing that ever happened to me wasn’t winning championships.
It was getting pucking hitched.
THE END.