Epilogue
MATT
“Absolutely not.”
“Stellan.”
“No.” He burrowed deeper into the passenger seat, all righteous morning grumpiness under three layers of borrowed winter gear, a knit cap shoved over his curls. “You seriously dragged me out of bed at the crack of dawn just to watch me fall on my ass?”
Well. Kind of.
I killed the engine and looked out across the lake—a broad white stretch under a pale morning, pines and bare trees at the shoreline. Mist clung low over one end, the sun weak enough that the whole world looked like a half-finished painting.
No one else around. Just us, my dad’s truck, and the kind of cold that made every breath feel clean.
“It’s how I started learning,” I told Stellan.
He shot me a quick look, slightly softer around the edges, then firmed again. “Except you were, like, three or whatever. Center of gravity two inches above the ground. Me? I’ll bruise. No sex for a week. Think about that.”
I bit my cheek against a smile. “I’ll catch you.”
He scoffed.
“There’s hot chocolate after,” I said.
His attention sharpened.
“With whipped cream,” I added.
“Whipped cream.” He repeated it slowly, like the words didn’t quite line up. “You?”
“Christmas calories don’t count.”
They did, of course. I’d go light on the whipped cream, light on the chocolate, too.
But I deserved one day of small indulgences.
The team had been playing hard and fast for weeks, and I was having one of my best starts in years, my head quieter on the ice.
Turns out life got a little easier once I stopped splitting myself in two.
“That sounds like a thing your mom would say,” Stellan told me. Not wrong.
“Come on,” I said. “Half an hour. Then hot chocolate.”
He looked at the frozen lake, then at me again. “You’ll really catch me?”
“Promise,” I said.
Something in his face softened, eyes a clear green with just a hint of blue in the morning light. “Okay. But for the record, this was not on my bingo card when you said, ‘Come join me for Christmas at my parents’. It’ll be fun.’”
Ha.
He’d meant to work while Ronan was off with Claire, but after I’d asked, Stellan had managed to trade his shift for New Year’s week.
He’d arrived yesterday, a day after me, with a carry-on, a jacket far too thin for Minnesota winters, and an expression of disbelief that he was actually here.
Same, honestly. My childhood bedroom had looked even smaller with Stellan in it, taking up more of my narrow bed than he was rightfully entitled to. I didn’t mind one bit.
I got out first. The cold hit fast, snow crunching under my boots. I’d checked the ice with Dad yesterday afternoon, same way he’d taught me as a kid—don’t trust it just because it looks right, stay close to the shoreline, don’t skate out to the middle like idiots in a local news segment.
This was where I’d learned to love skating.
Still grumbling, nose already pinking up, Stellan followed me toward a bench by the shore. I showed him how to tighten the laces on his skates, and he shot me a look from underneath his lashes. “Be honest: You just want to show off.”
“Maybe a little.” I grinned at him, a lightness in my chest I was still getting used to. “Mostly, I want to show you what it feels like, being out on a frozen lake like this. It’s like dancing.”
“Okay.” One dimple popped into view. “That might be the gayest thing you’ve ever said.”
It surprised me into a laugh. “True to character, then.”
He didn’t reply, but his gaze was bright on me, warm, maybe even a little proud.
We stepped onto the ice—or I did. Stellan clung to me, grabbing at my coat as his first foot slid a fraction too far. “What the fuck,” he muttered.
“Hot chocolate,” I reminded him.
He squinted at me, morning sun tangling in his eyes. “Half an hour, right? That’s it.”
“Half an hour, yes,” I said, then paused. “Unless you end up enjoying yourself.”
“Don’t mock me when I’m already down.”
“You’re vertical.”
“Pretty sure that won’t last.”
I laughed and moved closer, steadying him with one arm around his waist. He went quiet for a second—not from nerves, or at least not entirely.
Just us. No one around but trees and sky and the thin sheen of mist that hung above the far shore.
Maybe this was why the piano worked for me, because it reached for this exact feeling.
The open air, the soft hush of the lake, movement so clean it made room in my head where there usually wasn’t any.
“Okay,” he said, quieter now, almost to himself.
Okay.
I held him through his first shaky push, then another. The ice gave a thin hiss under our blades. Beautiful—this. Him, once he started finding his balance and managed a tiny controlled slide, his face shifting into something surprised and softly pleased.
“That’s it,” I told him. “Exactly that.”
“Still easier when you’re three,” he said, less of a grumble now.
“I was four.”
“That’s what I said.”
Minutes slipped by, the lake bright and open around us. Each time he wobbled, I was right there to catch him, and the third time it happened, he kissed me, quick and cold-nosed, smiling in the winter air.
This.
We returned to the truck when a family of four arrived, waving at us as they laced up their skates, kids already out on the ice by the time I poured hot chocolate into the metal cups I’d brought.
He took one sip and closed his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Now I understand Christmas.”
It made me wonder about his childhood, whether he remembered a time before his parents fell apart, when Christmas had been a sparkling tree and too much sugar and presents.
I’d ask, one day. Not right now, though, when he looked at me with his cheeks red and his eyes clear, wearing a knit hat with actual ear flaps he wouldn’t be caught dead in if this were Seattle.
“Glad to be of service,” I said instead.
He studied me over the rim of his cup. “You’re happy,” he said, voice pitched as if it were a small revelation. And, huh.
Yeah. I was.
I took a sip of my own hot chocolate, the sweetness thick on my tongue. “I am,” I said, softer than I meant to. “It’s… Things are good, aren’t they? Us. But the other stuff, too.”
Like my hockey season.
Like Suit Up Wednesdays, with three signed donor commitments and one partnership with a youth employment nonprofit on the horizon. Naomi was giving it two real days a week and had started speaking fluent spreadsheet, which was exactly what the project needed at this stage.
Like my sky-high apartment, which had never really felt like home anyway.
Reid had nosed around options without even asking, which meant he’d contacted the owners of the mid-century house I’d only planned to rent for a day, with its trees and creek and wooden lines.
The deal wasn’t done, not yet. But it was real enough that my apartment had started to feel temporary.
“Things are good,” Stellan said now. His voice was low, like he still wasn’t fully sure how to trust that.
I gave myself a moment to take him in—folded into the passenger seat, hands wrapped around his cup and body almost swallowed by borrowed winter layers. “Hey,” I said. “I’ve been thinking.”
He raised a brow to signal he was actively choosing not to make the obvious joke.
I grinned at him. “About the house.”
His attention flicked up. “Yeah?”
“Just that—” I shrugged, suddenly aware of my own hands, my mouth, the winter cold misting up the glass. “If it happens—when it does. I’d want my wall in the living room. The one I keep repainting. Not because it’s, like, art in capital letters. But because it’s me, you know?”
He nodded, smiling a little. “I like that. You should do it.”
What if it’s not just me in that house? What if it’s us?
“And no orchids,” I said.
He snorted. “Agreed.”
“And maybe…” I let my eyes drift to the lake, kept my tone casual. “Maybe you could help me pick a couch that doesn’t look like it belongs in a law firm.”
Subtle as a brick—yeah, that was me. My pulse still jumped a little.
He took a small breath. When I glanced over, I found him watching me with a bright, unguarded expression.
“Matt,” he said.
I cleared my throat. “I’m not asking yet.”
“You kind of are.”
“Not officially.”
He laughed, warm and a little breathless. “Good. Because if you asked officially, I’d pretend to at least think about it before saying yes.”
My ribs opened wide, lungs full. “Right. Pretend all you want.”
“I will.” He took a sip, eyes happy and fully focused on me. “For maybe ten seconds.”
My mouth tugged up into a smile that probably turned out goofy, nothing I’d ever share with the big screen. “God, you’re high maintenance.”
“You love it,” he said, easy and confident, and—yes.
“I do,” I said, and thought, Mine. Not in the grasping way, not like something I owned, but a choice, a relationship we were building one step at a time.
A life.
*
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