Epilogue Finny
Few months later
Oh my God.
OH MY GOD.
I think I’m going to die.
Why are my hands shaking so bad?
I’ve spent the last four months tracking down a very specific piece of junk.
It took two private investigators, a sketchy mechanic in eastern Ohio who didn’t ask why I needed a forty-year-old van delivered in the middle of the night, and a stack of cash that probably should have gone toward my actual pension fund.
But three days ago, a flatbed trailer dropped it off, and I haven’t slept since.
The Goalie-Mobile is back.
It still has the faded primer on the driver’s side door. It still has that iconic, ugly dent on the rear bumper from where I backed into a concrete dumpster in Memphis.
The only difference is the engine actually turns over without sounding like a lawnmower full of rocks, thanks to Nico spending three weekends grease-deep in the engine bay while calling me a romantic idiot every ten minutes.
I parked it down by the old, weathered dock this afternoon while Scottie was inside the White Mountains cabin taking a work call.
The White Mountains cabin has become a tradition after that first disastrous weekend—same dock, same lake, same collection of idiots, just one year older.
I planned this meticulously.
I practiced my speech in the shower, in the SUV, and once while brushing my teeth like a total lunatic.
Every time I rehearsed it, I had the distinct sense I was tempting fate, because Scottie has a literal sixth sense for emotional significance and will absolutely derail any moment that feels too scripted or too much like a movie.
She’s sitting at the edge of the dock now, her legs tucked under her, wearing one of my old Reign hoodies that she’s officially claimed as her own through a series of adverse possession legal maneuvers.
She looks peaceful in a way that still, after all this time, knocks the oxygen right out of my lungs.
I sit down beside her, our shoulders brushing. The wood of the dock is cool, but the proximity of her radiates heat.
“You’re quiet, O’Connell,” she says, glancing at me sideways. “Did you break something in the cabin? Is there a leak in the roof? Did Brick set the hammock on fire again while I was inside getting the wine?”
I smile, because she knows the contours of my soul better than I do. “Just enjoying the view, Scottie-girl. For once, I don’t have a witty comeback.”
She snorts, leaning her head on my shoulder. “Liar. You’ve been shaking for twenty minutes. I can feel the dock vibrating. What’s the matter?”
Fair. She caught me. She always catches me.
I take a breath.
Then another.
My heart is pounding so loud and so hard against my ribs that I’m genuinely convinced the fish in the lake can hear it through the water.
“Come with me,” I say, standing up and offering her my hand.
“Where? Finn, it’s freezing out here.”
“Just shut up and trust the goalie for five minutes, Scottie.”
I lead her down the dirt path, past the high weeds near the tree line, until the silhouette of the orange van comes into view under the moonlight.
Scottie stops dead in her tracks. Her hand goes slack in mine. She stares at the boxy, rounded shape of the Goalie-Mobile like she’s looking at a ghost.
“No,” she whispers. “You didn’t.”
I pull the sliding side door open with a metallic rattle. Inside, the floor is clean, the small, fold-down bench seat covered in a brand-new wool blanket, and the little dashboard clock we bought in Nashville is sitting right where it belongs.
She lets out a shaky, breathless laugh, looking into the cramped space. She touches the faded paint on the exterior.
“You are insane. How did you even…”
“I had help,” I say, standing close to her in the cool night air.
The silence of the woods is heavy, leaving just the sound of our breathing near the orange metal.
This is it.
No crowd. No cameras. No Golden Boy persona.
Just us and the old tin box.
My fingers close around the velvet box in my pocket. I slide down onto one knee on the gravel beside the open door of the van.
My heart stutters so hard I think it might actually stop.
Her breath catches—a sharp, audible hitch. Her eyes flick down to my hand, then back to my face, wide and shimmering.
“Oh,” she says softly, her voice barely a thread. “Oh, Finny.”
I reach out and take her left hand, my thumb finding her wrist. My skin brushes right over the tiny dollar sign tattoo. I press my lips against the ink, a slow, lingering kiss against the warm skin of her pulse point, before I look up into her eyes.
“Scottie Elise Reed,” I start, and somehow, by some miracle, my voice doesn’t shake. “You came into my life like a controlled demolition and proceeded to rebuild everything I didn’t even know was broken. You make me braver. You make me softer. You are my home, Scottie-girl.”
A single tear tracks down her cheek, but she doesn’t move to wipe it away.
“I love you,” I continue, my thumb moving back to her wrist, resting over the tattoo. “I want to choose you every single day for the rest of my life. Scottie, will you—”
“Finn. Stop.”
I freeze. My brain starts scrolling through every worst-case scenario Dean has ever narrated during a legal brief.
Is she saying no? Is it too soon? Did I use the wrong middle name?
“Huh?” I ask, my stomach dropping.
“I need you to stop for a second,” she says, more tears spilling over and soaking into the collar of the hoodie.
“Okay. That feels… ominous,” I mutter. “Is the ring too small? I can get it resized. I can get a bigger diamond. I can buy a better van.”
She shakes her head quickly, reaching out to grab my free hand and squeezing it so hard her knuckles turn a stark, ghostly white. Her fingers are shaking just as much as mine are now.
“I was going to tell you later,” she says. “I swear. I just didn’t want to ruin the weekend. I didn’t plan for this to happen now. I had a whole strategy, Finn. A plan. But I can’t let you finish that sentence without telling you what’s actually happening.”
“Telling me what, Scottie? You’re scaring the goalie here.”
She looks at me—really looks at me—with eyes that are bright and overwhelmed and fiercer than I’ve ever seen them.
“I’m pregnant.”
The world stops.
Literally.
The wind outside dies. The lake goes silent.
My ears start ringing with a high-pitched hum. My lungs completely forget the basic mechanics of breathing.
I’m pretty sure I’ve stepped out of linear time.
“You’re—” I swallow hard. “Pregnant?”
She nods, laughing and crying at the same time, the most human I have ever seen the Shark.
“Thirteen weeks, according to the math. I took the test this morning in the cabin. Well, I took nine tests. Because apparently, I don’t trust plastic sticks with life-altering information unless they’re in a majority consensus.”
She clears her throat, a little smirk flashing through her tears. “Oh, and for the record? Sorry, Finny, but Ivy knew first.”
I blink, completely thrown. “You told Ivy before me? Scottie, I helped make this baby!”
“Priorities, O’Connell.”
I laugh. I think I sob. I’m reasonably sure I might be having a minor cardiovascular event, but I don’t care.
“You’re serious,” I whisper, my hand moving instinctively toward her stomach, hovering just over the thick, dark fabric of the Reign hoodie.
“Yes,” she says, her voice breaking. “Finny, I’m serious. We’re… we’re going to be parents.”
I stand up so fast I nearly lose my balance, then I pull her into my arms, cradling her face in both of my hands like she’s something miraculous. Which she is.
“We’re having a baby?” My voice cracks like I’m a twelve-year-old kid again. “A tiny, loud, probably highly litigious and impossible version of us?”
She nods again, her forehead coming to rest against mine. “If you’re still okay with that. If you still want the ring-and-vows part of the deal knowing that your sleep schedule is about to be professionally dismantled.”
I laugh helplessly, pulling her in and kissing her with every bit of love and relief I have stored in my body.
“Scottie-girl, I have never been more okay with anything in my entire life. You just hijacked my proposal with the best news of my existence.”
I pull back just an inch, already dropping right back down to one knee on the gravel. I’m not letting this moment go.
“You’re not the only one with a life-altering announcement tonight, Sharky.”
Her laugh turns into a sob, her hands resting on my shoulders.
“Scottie Elise Reed,” I say again, “will you marry me? Will you let me be the guy who wakes up with you at 3:00 AM for feedings and goalie-guards this family forever? Will you let me stay?”
She doesn’t hesitate for a single microsecond.
“Yes,” she says fiercely, pulling me up. “A thousand times, yes. To the ring, to the baby, to the whole chaotic, noisy mess.”
I slide the ring onto her finger.
It fits perfectly.
***
Telling the family back at the cabin an hour later is pure madness.
Ivy is the first to cry. It’s not a polite, single tear; it’s a full-body, gasping, silent sob that requires Callahan to basically hold her upright by the elbows.
When Scottie reminds her that she already knew, she just shrugs and says, “Yeah, but now it feels real,” and continues sobbing.
Callahan, for his part, goes still when I tell him. His eyes widen, and he looks at me like I’ve just told him I’m retiring to become a monk. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, then he walks over and pulls me into a crushing, ribs-cracking hug.
Jenna screams so loudly that I’m fairly certain birds actually took flight from the trees three miles away.
She immediately grabs Scottie’s hand to inspect the diamond with the eye of a jeweler, then starts aggressively Googling designer baby onesies before we’ve even finished the second sentence of the announcement.
Dean stares at Scottie like he is currently recalibrating the very laws of physics and human biology in his mind. He walks over with his usual measured gait, places a steady hand on her shoulder, and looks her dead in the eye.