“Okay,” I tell the room, and him, and myself. “Let’s eat.”
Leo
The pancakes are gone. So is any chance of pretending I didn’t eat half the stack before Sage could photograph them. She’s leaned against the counter beside me, bare feet brushing mine, still in that soft gray tank that makes my brain short-circuit before coffee.
“Those were unfair,” I tell her, licking honey off my thumb. “Like, league-suspension-level unfair.”
She grins without looking up, scrolling through her footage on the camera. “Good thing you’re the comeback story of the year. I think you can survive one breakfast violation.”
“Bold of you to assume this is breakfast.” I reach for another pancake crumb, but she smacks my hand away with the spatula she still hasn’t put down. The tiny sting makes me laugh. “Okay, fine, brunch. Post-championship recovery fuel.”
Her head tilts, eyes softening. “You still can’t say it without grinning, can you?”
I don’t try to hide the smile. “Nope.”
The championship ring catches the sunlight when I move. Every time I catch the flash of it, it hits different—not just the win, but what it took to get here. The suspension. The noise. The fight back. The people who stood beside me when everything went to hell.
People like her.
Sage slides the camera aside and studies me. “You look lighter.”
“That’s because I am.” I reach for her hand, tracing my thumb along the inside of her wrist. “You have a lot to do with that.”
Her eyes flick up, smiling but quiet. “You give me too much credit.”
“Not possible.” I lean closer, pressing a kiss to her temple. “You built something out of chaos. And somehow, you made space for me inside it.”
She laughs softly, turning to face me fully. “You meanourspace.” She gestures around the kitchen, at the open shelving and the framed Surge photo tucked next to her recipe cards. “You built this, remember?”
I shrug, feigning nonchalance. “Maybe I just wanted an excuse to stay close to the best chef in the city.”
“You say that like I’d ever let you leave,” she says, stepping into me, eyes gleaming with that same quiet certainty she’s had since the first night I kissed her.
And just like that, the hum of the kitchen softens again. She leans her head on my chest, and for a while, we just stand there. No games. No noise. Just us.
The sun creeps higher, painting her skin gold, and I realize that peace doesn’t look like silence—it looks likethis.Herheartbeat against mine. Coffee cooling between us. A life we built from the wreckage and somehow made whole.
Sage
We eat at the counter, elbows bumping, knees finding that easy tangle under the stools like they’ve been memorizing the space between us. The plates are warm against my wrists; the honey has gone glossy in the light. I slide the last pancake onto Leo’s plate and he leans in, voice dropping like we’re conspirators.
"For the record," he murmurs, brushing a thumb along the edge of the pancake to steal a comet tail of syrup, "these still beat every pre-game meal I ever had."
"That’s because they’re made with love, not macros," I say, nudging his knee with mine. The line comes out teasing, but the truth of it softens the center of me. Love has its own nutrition label—quiet, stubborn, impossible to count until it’s everywhere.
Between us on the counter, my cookbook mockup sits open to a chapter calledComforts You Can Carry.The printer sent it yesterday—half real, half promise, the pages heavy with placeholder photos and my margins full of notes. Beside it, Leo’s tablet glows with his playbook: color-coded lines, angles and options, the language he speaks in motion. Our worlds side by side, ink and ice, feeding each other.
He reaches for the mockup, careful with his syrupy fingers. "This photo—" He taps a draft shot of biscuits nestled in a skillet. "—needs your lemon-honey trick. The one you said tastes like winning."
"Ittasteslike Sunday mornings without alarms," I say, stealing a piece from his plate before he can protest. "But I’ll workshop the copy."
He snorts, then lifts his playbook with his other hand like a scale. "I’ll trade you a two-on-one breakout for a better biscuit headline."
"Deal if the headline isDon’t Panic, Just Skate," I shoot back, and he groans, which makes me grin into my coffee.
A breeze slips through the cracked balcony door, bringing salt and the faint cry of gulls. The city’s low roar is a coastline hum beneath it all. Leo’s ring flashes when he gestures; the glint lands on my mockup like a tiny sun. It does something fizzy in my chest that still catches me off guard—how the pieces of our lives don’t just fit, they illuminate.
I thumb open a sticky note where I scribbled a recipe tweak at two a.m. "I might add a section on travel snacks for away games. Fuel that doesn’t feel like punishment."
