Epilogue
Dual POV
The sugar maples along the western shore of Lake Cochituate had turned the color of struck matches, dropping crimson and beaten gold across the dark slate of our back terrace.
Through the French doors of our stone house, the autumn afternoon came in warm and amber, smelling of cedarwood, woodsmoke from the fieldstone hearth, and the crisp, clean draft off the water.
I leaned against the kitchen island in a thick cream knit cardigan that slipped off one shoulder, holding a mug of cinnamon tea between both hands.
On my left ring finger, a platinum band set with an emerald-cut diamond caught the sunlight, throwing small prisms against the butcher block.
Around my neck, resting on a delicate gold chain beneath my collar, hung Justin’s silver ECAC Championship ring—scratched, heavy, and worn smooth from three years against my skin.
Across the wide expanse of the living room rug, two hundred and thirty-five pounds of first-pairing National Hockey League defenseman was currently folded in half on the floorboards.
Justin was on his hands and knees on the thick wool rug, wearing faded gray sweatpants and a black compression shirt with the sleeves pushed past his elbows.
His broad, heavily muscled shoulders—marked with functional scars from skate blades, crosschecks, and the healed line of his right clavicle—were hunched forward, serving as a mountain for our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
"Giddy-up, Daddy," Maya commanded.
Her voice was high, sweet, and possessed the exact stubborn cadence that had once gotten me written up in Dr. Vance’s department logs.
She was perched on his lower back, her small knees gripping his ribs through his shirt, wearing a tiny black-and-gold Boston Bruins sweater with a gold number four stenciled across her shoulder blades.
Her dark, unruly curls were bound into two messy puffs by gold ribbon, her hazel eyes glittering with pure, fearless authority as she patted Justin’s bearded jaw with one sticky palm.
"Faster," she ordered, tugging the dark hair at his nape. "The bears are coming."
Justin didn't buck. He didn't shift his weight in a way that would tilt her by a fraction of an inch.
The man who had put eighty-four opposing wingers through the plexiglass at TD Garden moved across the rug with slow, exaggerated patience, letting out a low, gravelly growl that made Maya shriek with delighted laughter.
"The bears don't stand a chance, Maya," he rumbled, his deep baritone vibrating the baseboards. "Daddy’s got the blue line locked down."
He crawled around the low cedar coffee table, his massive, scarred hands moving with terrifying gentleness over the wool fibers, until he brought her safely to the edge of the hearth.
He paused, his head turning toward the kitchen.
His dark eyes found me through the amber light.
The ruthless, stone-carved enforcer who had terrorized collegiate hockey was gone, burned down to ash three years ago in a snowstorm on the coast of Maine. In his place was a man whose gaze held an unyielding, worshipful stillness that still stole the breath straight out of my lungs.
He didn't speak. He reached back with one large, calloused hand, scooped Maya effortlessly off his back, and rose to his feet in a single, fluid surge of athletic power.
He set our daughter onto the shelf of his left forearm. Maya immediately wrapped her small arms around his thick neck, resting her chin on his collarbone, completely accustomed to observing the world from a height of six feet and four inches.
Justin crossed the room, his bare feet silent on the dark hardwood.
He stopped at the edge of the island, his shadow falling over me, warm and familiar as a winter coat.
He didn't set Maya down. He reached out with his free right hand, his broad palm cupping the side of my jaw, his thumb smoothing over my cheekbone with that slow, possessive pressure that had anchored me through every storm of my life.
"You've been staring at me for twenty minutes, Dr. Correa," he murmured, his voice a low, gravel-scraped rasp meant only for my ears.
"I'm evaluating your lumbar load mechanics, Captain," I whispered, leaning my face into his palm, feeling the steady heat radiating from his callouses. "Your posture has a slight forward tilt when you're carrying a toddler."
A slow, wicked grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, softening the jagged white scar slicing through his left eyebrow.
"My posture is fine, sweetheart," he murmured, leaning down until his lips grazed mine, tasting of black coffee and fresh autumn air.
He didn't give me a polite peck. His mouth lingered, claiming my lips with an unhurried, bruising warmth that sent a heavy, familiar shudder down the back of my thighs.
Maya giggled between our faces, patting Justin’s shoulder pad. "Mommy, Daddy’s eating your mouth."
Justin pulled back half an inch, resting his forehead against mine, a deep, rumbling chuckle shaking his chest.
"Daddy’s kissing his wife, Maya," he rasped, his thumb catching the corner of my jaw, tilting my face upward so he could look into my eyes. "And he’s never going to stop."
* * *
The roar inside TD Garden was a concussive wall of sound that vibrated the concrete foundations beneath the ice sheet.
Seventeen thousand eight hundred and fifty fans on their feet, chanting the rhythm that had defined the city of Boston for a century.
Twenty-two seconds showed on the third-period clock. Score: 3-2, Bruins over Montreal.
I took the defensive-zone draw on the right circle, my skate blades digging into the ice, my composite stick flexed to absorb sixty pounds of torque.
When the puck dropped, the opposing center tried to muscle his way to the top of the crease.
I didn't reach with my blade. I lowered my center of mass, used my right hip to seal the lane, and drove him cleanly into the corner boards with an immovable, legal check that rattled the acrylic glass to the yellow kick-plate.
The puck squirted loose into the neutral zone. Declan Ward gathered the disc at the red line, spun around a lunging defenseman, and sent the rubber sailing two hundred feet into the empty net as the horn blew its deafening, continuous blast: HOOOOOORN.
The red light spun.
The horn tore through the rafters.
The glass behind our bench shook as the Garden erupted into black-and-gold chaos. Declan threw his gloves into the air, turning to sprint across the ice, leaping straight into my chest plate, pounding his stick against my shoulder pads.
"That's twenty-eight wins, Cap!" Declan roared into my earhole, his face flushed red under his visor. "Best goal-differential in the Eastern Conference!"
The rest of the starting five swarmed the crease, helmets clashing, sticks clattering against the ice.
I stood in the center of the sheet, my chest heaving under my heavy black-and-gold sweater, the number four damp with sweat against my spine.
I didn't look at the television cameras swinging out over the blue line on their hydraulic booms. I didn't look at Raymond Cole standing in the executive box, smiling behind his gold Bruins pin.
I broke through the huddle, coasting backward on my outside edges toward the corner boards beneath Suite 4.
I stopped at the glass.
I pushed my visor up with the heel of my glove, my dark hair plastered to my temples with sweat, and tilted my head back.
Standing against the plate glass of the private owners' suite, thirty feet above the ice, was my entire universe.
Penny stood with her hands resting on the brass rail, radiant in a black cashmere coat, wearing my spare game sweater draped over her shoulders like an iron mantle. Her dark curls framed her high cheekbones, her hazel eyes bright and fierce under the stadium floodlights.
Perched on the leather railing beside her, held securely in Penny’s arm, was Maya. Our daughter was waving two small, mitten-clad hands against the glass, jumping up and down in her tiny jersey, her mouth moving in a silent, frantic cheer that carried straight into my breastbone.
The noise of seventeen thousand screaming fans vanished into a distant, meaningless hum.
The twenty-four-million-dollar contract extension sitting in my lawyer’s office, the Norris Trophy buzz in the sports columns, the league rankings—none of it meant a single damn thing.
The only ice that mattered was the ground beneath their boots.
I reached down with my right hand, stripped off my heavy leather hockey glove, and tossed it onto the pine bench.
I raised my bare left hand toward the glass.
I brought my lips to my knuckles, kissing the solid platinum wedding band that never left my finger, then pressed my bare palm flat against the acrylic glass beneath their suite.
Above me, Penny smiled—a slow, blinding, indestructible curve of her mouth that lit up the dark cavern of the arena. She pressed her own hand to the glass, her diamond catching the glare of the rafters, matching my palm through thirty feet of air.
I've got you, her lips mouthed against the glass.
All mine, I answered into the roar of the rink.
I turned toward the runway, my boots hitting the rubber matting, heading straight for the only tunnel that led to home.
* * *
The master suite of our lake house was quiet as a cathedral.
It was 12:45 AM.
Down the dark hallway, the nursery door stood cracked two inches, the soft, rhythmic hum of the monitor transmitting Maya’s steady, deep breathing beneath her quilt.
Outside the glass balcony doors, a midnight frost had silvered the surface of the lake, mist rising from the black water to meet the autumn stars.
Inside the bedroom, the only illumination was the orange glow of the birch coals pulsing behind the hearth screen and the amber moonlight falling across the unmade charcoal linen sheets.
I closed the bedroom door with the heel of my foot, turning the brass lock with a quiet, definitive click.
Penny stood by the edge of the low cedar dressing table, her back turned to me, unbuttoning the front of her black cashmere coat.