EPILOGUE
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
Our coffee table has a scratch on the left corner from when we moved it in.
Jax said the old one was too small. He was right. I told him so eventually, and he said, “I know,” then went back to his coffee.
That’s him. That’s exactly him.
My notebooks are on it. His Cup ring is on it too — just sitting there like a set of keys, like it isn’t the thing he spent four seasons building toward. I look at it every morning and still can’t believe it’s just there.
The plant on the windowsill is still alive — still overwatered, still somehow refusing to die — and Brick’s blanket is in the corner, the soft gray one I picked out while he pretended not to care and then immediately claimed with great authority.
My camera bag is by the door where it always lands.
Sixteen months in Canyon Bay. I stopped counting.
I’m writing a book. I’m writing it as Nova Shaw.
V. North still exists in archives and old bylines I can’t unpublish. I used to think that name protected me. Maybe it did, for a while.
Mostly, it gave me somewhere to hide.
I don’t need it anymore.
It’s about goalies. About standing between something precious and everything trying to destroy it — what it costs, what it builds, what happens when someone finally names the thing you’ve been carrying.
My editor says it’s the best thing I’ve ever written.
She’s right. I know what it’s really about.
Dina is in the window. Inside, in the sun, tail around her feet, watching the street. She still won’t let anyone touch her. But she’s here. She stayed.
Griffin Novak was traded in February.
I didn’t write about it.
Some stories close themselves.
Aurora and Aiden arrive at noon with the baby. Three months old. Aiden’s eyes, Aurora’s stubbornness — I can already see it in the set of her jaw. Jax holds her the way he holds everything that matters — both hands, completely present, no bullshit.
I watch him with her and something happens inside that I’m not going to examine right now because Aurora is already photographing it and I don’t need her to snap my face looking some kind of way too.
I photograph Aurora photographing it. Aiden photographs both of us. The baby is completely unbothered.
“She’s going to be a writer,” I say.
“Goalie,” Jax says.
“Writer.”
“Goalie.”
He looks at me. I look at him. Neither of us blinks.
Aurora looks at Aiden. “They’ve been doing this for months.”
Brody, from the couch: “She could be both. I’m basically both.” Liam looks at him. Nobody says anything.
Brody has Hendricks in his jacket again. Eight months old now, fully grown, and Brody still carries him around like he’s a kitten.
Hendricks has Brick’s markings, Dina’s eyes, and the same expression of complete authority that got Brick into trouble in the first place.
Liam and Katarina took one — said Liam needed an emotional support cat.
Hey, who am I to judge?
Aiden and Aurora have one too, and the baby and the kitten are apparently best friends already and Aurora sends photos at least twice a week. Riley took one. Said nothing about it. Just showed up one day and left with a kitten tucked under her arm like she’d always planned to.
“Riley just took one,” I say. “She never even asked.”
“She asked me.”
I stare at him. “When.”
“Week three of your embed.”
I open my mouth. Close it. “She knew in week three.”
“She said she was hedging her bets.”
“On what.”
He holds my eyes for a second. Brick blinks once from the counter.
“Oh,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says.
They leave at four.
Aurora yawning, Aiden steering her out, Brody tucking Hendricks back inside his jacket, Liam’s single wave. The door closes. Just us and the Sunday quiet and the light coming through the windows.
Jax picks up the manuscript.
I sit across from him and pretend to look at my phone while he reads.
He reads the way he does everything — completely, actually there, no performance.
Every page. He doesn’t know I’m watching.
He already knows I’m watching. He puts it down and I’m still pretending to look at my phone and he lets me pretend and that’s him too. That’s exactly him.
“It’s good,” he says.
“Which part.”
“All of it.”
He looks at me with that look — the certain one — and I feel it the same way I felt it the first time and apparently that doesn’t stop.
“You mean me,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I know.”
“Don’t ever stop.”
The corner of his mouth lifts.“Keep it.”
I keep it. I keep all of it.
Carson Webb ran his story. Turns out blackmailing a journalist in a dead-end hallway is a bad long-term career strategy. Riley made sure everyone who mattered knew exactly how he’d gotten his information.
He hasn’t had a press credential at a Cyclones game since.
Brick walks across the manuscript and sits on it.
I look at him. “You know this is about you.”
He blinks.
“You snuck out,” I tease him. “Came back married with kids and acting like nothing happened.”
Brick looks at the wall.
“That’s not —” I look at Jax. “Is that not insane to you.”
“That’s Brick.”
“He didn’t even introduce her first. Just showed up with a whole situation.”
“He knew what he wanted.”
“That’s not a defense.”
“It worked though.”
I look at Brick. Brick does not look at me. That absolute menace.
I look at the room. His coffee cup and mine on the counter. My camera bag by the door. The plant. Brick on the manuscript. Dina in the window. The Fancy Cat can on the shelf where it’s been for eight months.
There it is.
“Eight months,” I say.
“Record,” he says.
“You knew I’d stay.”
“I hoped.”
I go still. I hoped. Not I knew — not the certain one, not the all the way in one. I hoped. I sit with that for a second before I cover it.
“That’s the closest thing to vulnerable I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Don’t push it.”
“I’m going to need you to say that again sometime.”
“No.”
“For the book.”
“Absolutely not.”
He’s trying not to smile. I’m already smiling. Brick watches from the manuscript with great neutrality.
“The Fancy Cat can,” I say. “From the night we argued at the grocery store. I tried to give it to Dina once. She walked away.”
“Apparently.”
“It’s been on the shelf for over a year.”
“I know.”
“You never asked for it back.”
He looks at Brick. At Dina. At the room. “Didn’t need to,” he says.
I look at my hands. Then at him. “I asked for Liam’s number that night. On the way out of the grocery store.”
“I paid the check anyway.”
“You knew.”
“I knew something.” He looks at me. “Didn’t know what yet.”
I shake my head. He watches me do it. I look at the room and then at him and then at the room again.
“Okay,” I say.
Just that.
Okay.
Brick’s on the manuscript. Dina’s in the window. The Fancy Cat can’s on the shelf. The coffee cups are his and hers. The plant is alive.
Everything exactly where it belongs.
I stayed.
For the first time, I’m not something being chosen around.
I’m the point.
And I don’t feel like I have to prove it.