EPILOGUE
FOUR YEARS LATER
My fingers lose their grip against the cold glass, sliding slightly as I center myself and continue to take deep breaths.
I focus on the frost collected on the window pane, letting it ground me as air travels in and out of my lungs.
Despite the chill bite from outside, my skin is coated in sweat, and my limbs are numb to the touch.
I can’t help the panic that’s attacking me, right here in this dressing room.
I spot my dress hanging on the wardrobe door, the white velvet glistening from the sunshine.
It’s beautiful, and I can’t wait to put it on, but my anxiety holds me hostage in this room, desperate to keep me locked in my misery a little while longer.
And it’s all my mother’s fault.
I should be used to her selfishness by now, but the kid who always needed her mother’s love is still wounded inside of me.
I thought things would get better after my relationship with Axl came out.
I thought she would start to see things for the way they are, not how she wants them to be, but she fought us at every turn.
No matter how amazing Axl was, how many manners he presented or gestures he gave her, she never warmed up to him.
She would look at him with disdain, ignore his commentary, and pass aggressive comments around like it was candy.
Axl didn’t really care; he’s used to being mistreated and spoken to unfairly, but after a while, it took a toll on me.
I realized waiting for her to come around was diminishing the happiness I should have felt from falling in love.
My joy did nothing to squash my mother’s pessimism. If anything, it made it more prevalent.
And after my father divorced her, things became unsalvageable.
It wasn’t a quick process. My father told me it would have happened way sooner, but she refused to sign any papers or proceed with the legal precedents regarding their marriage agreement, but a year and a half after the tape scandal, they were officially divorced.
No one reacted the way I thought they would to the news.
It was just another day for everyone in Greenwood.
Although I’m sure my mother’s friends gave her shit for losing her alpha husband.
Bad company breeds delusional expectations.
To my mother and her pretentious inner circle, it was a travesty. To everyone else, it was long overdue.
As far as I was concerned, it was a damn miracle. They could finally go on with their lives and find someone that made them happy. But moving on has never been my mother’s specialty.
So now, we’re here, in the mountains of Aspen, where Brent and Nolan work during the slope season, and I have a plethora of guests waiting for me to walk down the aisle.
My father and his new girlfriend are here, my old teammates, Axl’s friends.
His father even hugged me this morning, crying, grateful there was a new member of the family.
But my mother isn’t here, and my stomach is roiling from the pain of it.
“Stacey?” I hear Whitney’s voice, her fist pounding on the door. “You’re five minutes late. Is everything okay?”
“We’re coming in,” Hannah says.
I never knew I could have female friendships as sincere as the ones I have with Hannah and Whitney.
In fact, we’re such a unit I couldn’t even decide between them when it was time to choose a maid of honor.
So, they both have MOH badges on their chests, proudly splitting the responsibilities for my special day.
My chest pinches when I see them come through the door, and they run right to my side the second they see the hurt on my face.
“What’s wrong?” Hannah asks, her eyes bulging with concern.
“Fuck,” Whitney mutters before reaching into her bag. She produces a little mini-fan, turning it on and facing it in my direction. “You’re burning up. Are you sick?”
“No,” I quickly say, shaking my head but letting out a sigh of relief at the cold air hitting my face. “I’m just freaking out. I need Axl.”
Hannah nods, and they both stand. “We can get him.”
“But make him close his eyes,” I say quickly. “He can’t see me. It’s bad luck.”
They both nod in agreement before exiting the dressing room.
I suddenly wish the fireplace were empty.
The flames roar at me tauntingly, making the heat feel that much more exhausting.
I keep the mini fan on me, focusing on the cool breeze over my heated skin before loud thumps echo down the hallway.
“Stacey?”
Axl’s voice comes a second before the door opens. I panic and yell, “Close your eyes!”
We both do. I can tell he’s still there from his heavy breathing, but there’s only black behind my eyes.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“On the floor,” I say. “Follow my voice.”
There are a few footsteps, then he grunts as he runs into something.
I hold my arms out, feeling for him seconds before his hand collides with mine in the air.
I help him get to the floor with me. “Let’s sit back to back,” he says, and I nod in agreement even though he can’t see me.
When we finally get settled, resting on each other’s body, I let out a deep sigh of relief.
“Your scent is nearly burning, Stace. What’s wrong?” he asks. “They said you were having a panic attack.”
“I was,” I admit begrudgingly. “I was just thinking about everything and how my mother isn’t here, and it suddenly got really hot and I couldn’t breathe, and then I thought about how my mother would think I’m a failure—”
“Stacey.” His voice cuts through the panic, my name firm in his mouth. I stop, taking a deep breath again to prevent another spiral. “That’s it. Good girl, breathe for me.”
I inhale and exhale a few more times, breathing like my therapist has taught me.
Panic attacks aren’t common for me, but they’re not nonexistent.
I’ve discovered growing up in a town as horrible as Greenwood can cause a bit of stress, and I’ve needed some help reworking that.
Axl, who has been studying psychology and clinical therapy, knew it would help me, and now the tools I’ve learned are keeping me grounded.
When I get my breathing even, Axl asks, “Are you okay? Better?”
I murmur a “yeah” and relax against him.
“Okay.” He sighs. “I know your mother not being here sucks—”
“No, it’s more than that,” I whisper, trying desperately to focus on our entwined fingers rather than the nausea in my throat. “I… I think I’m pregnant.”
His hand freezes against mine, his back tensing the second the words leave my mouth. “Really?”
I gulp. “I can’t see you. Are you mad? Please don’t be mad.”
That seems to tug him out of whatever freakout he’s having because his hand squeezes mine, grounding me. “No. Never. That was just the last thing I expected you to say.” He swallows, the gulp loud in the silent room. “Are you feeling sick? Did you already take a test?”
My heart warms. “I did. Who knows if it was correct? I could stand to take a few others because I’m still not convinced it’s fully happening. I should have told you sooner, but… my mother got in my head.”
“What did your mother do?” he asks. I can tell he’s frustrated by the grit in his voice, but his hand is still soft, comforting.
I bite my lip. “A part of me thought telling my mother would help, but really, I think I just wanted to reach out to her. I wanted my mother to comfort me, to tell me it was all going to be okay, but she didn’t.
She kept going on and on about what people would think about her child having a baby out of wedlock. ”
Tears conjure in my eyes, but I try desperately to keep them back. My mother has taken enough from me. She’s not going to ruin my wedding make-up too.
“We’re getting married today.”
“I know,” I reply. “I think she still thought, for some reason, that the wedding wouldn’t happen.
She just kept… praying for our downfall, I think.
That’s what broke the camel’s back… Why I didn’t invite her to the wedding.
She’s so unsupportive of us being together that she imagined a future where I was a single mother rather than us being a happy family. ”
I shake my head, still hearing her words. They echo in my head, and I finally let a tear fall. “She can’t be in our lives anymore. In any way,” I tell him.
“I agree.” He caresses my thumb with his, and it brings a moment of reprieve. “You deserve to be happy. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I know that, like, consciously, but something still feels like I have. Her warped reality is so… I don’t want to say contagious, but it’s so confusing. Like, why can’t she just be happy for me?”
“She doesn’t know what happiness looks like,” he says simply. “She knows order, control. She knows false perceptions. And maybe, a tiny part of her is resentful. That you get to have what she never did.”
We wrap our arms around each other a little bit more. It’s torture not being able to see him, but I won’t risk it. There’s been enough anxiety riddling me, I won’t add that superstition to the mix.
“It’s going to take some time to rewire what you’ve been taught, baby,” he says, his voice soft, lulling. “There are belief structures that will come up, time and time again.”
A wet laugh escapes me. “You really were paying attention during those psychology courses.”
“Just because I like punk music and smoking cigarettes doesn’t mean I was a shit student,” he jokes. “But seriously. It’s going to be a long road, but I know everything is going to be okay.”
“How?”
“Because we love each other. Before we could vocalize it, or tell each other, our love was strong, and it’s going to keep being strong despite the adversity we faced.” He pauses. “I’m going to be here for you. Stuck to you like velcro.”
“Ew, velcro.” I scrunch up my nose and laugh. “Can’t it be cute, like little bows?”
“You and your bows.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “I have the pink one on me right now.”
“What?” More tears spring to my eyes as they widen. “Where?”
“In my pocket.” He moves, and a second later, the tiny pink bow from all those years ago is sitting in my palm. My finger brushes over it, my heart suddenly full and completely in awe.
“I didn’t want to get married without it,” he says. “It was the first thing I had that tied me to you. It represented how gone I was for you, even then.”
“Now we’re getting tied together in a different way,” I say, echoing the sentiment. “You’re everything to me, Axl.”
“And you to me, Little Reckoning.” He places his hand over mine, encapsulating the bow in our combined fists. “And I’m going to love you until every bow withers and disintegrates. Til death do us part.”
A snort escapes me. “Only you can make death sound romantic.”
“Oh, shut it.” He laughs and stands, pulling me to my feet with my eyes shut tight. “We’ll worry about that part later, but right now, we have a life to live. And a life to birth and cherish.”
His hand moves over my stomach, cradling the human growing there, and a sob leaves me as I peer into the black behind my eyelids. “And we’ll raise them somewhere else. Not in Greenwood.”
“Never in Greenwood,” he agrees. “We’ll find a home somewhere, as long as we’re together.”
I can’t tell if he’s looking at me or not, but I suddenly don’t care.
I realize there’s nothing in this world that can keep us apart.
No make-believe curses or cynical relatives or pretentious strangers.
The odds of us being separated is as unlikely as a nuclear bomb hitting the resort at this exact moment.
So, I open my eyes and his brown ones are looking right at me, care and adoration bleeding in his features.
I cradle his face in mine, everything clicking in place, and nod. “Together.”