I nod against his skin. “More than anything.”
He strokes my hair, thumb tracing lazy lines across my temple. “Good. Because I don’t think I can let you go.”
I smile, eyes closed, and let sleep pull me down.
For the first time in my life, I’m not waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I’m just here.
With him.
And it’s perfect.
EPILOGUE
Asher
If you’d asked me five years ago if I’d ever willingly go back to Tacoma, I’d have said sure, right after I finish my pro career and/or invent a time machine to go murder my old self.
But here I am, the ink still drying on a championship ring and the scab on my chin only barely peeled off by Darius’s stubble, standing on the porch of my mother’s house with a bottle of cheap Manischewitz in my left hand and the best goalie on the planet in my right.
My palm is sweating so bad I think I might drop him.
“You nervous?” Darius says, low enough that the neighborhood raccoon probably can’t hear it, but loud enough that it bores through my skull and hits the part of me that still remembers being twelve and getting sent home from Hebrew school for fighting with a kid who said my nose was too big.
“Nah,” I say, because lying is the only way I know how to keep my organs from shutting down. “Just excited to see if my mom’s brisket can take you out faster than the Titans’ power play.”
He grins, and it’s the real one, the one that crinkles the edges of his eyes and makes my knees go a little soft.
He’s in a button-down shirt and actual slacks, and it’s so clean-cut I almost don’t recognize him, except the collar doesn’t quite fit and there’s a scar above his right eyebrow that never fully healed.
“Brisket’s got nothing on me,” he says. “But kugel, that’s a different story.”
He squeezes my hand, just once, and I remember every reason I’m doing this.
The door opens before we even knock. Maya is in the doorway, hair longer than I remember, one hand on her hip and the other already pulling me inside.
“You’re late,” she says, in the tone of someone who has been waiting exactly three minutes and is going to milk it for at least the rest of the night.
“Traffic,” I say. “Seattle’s a nightmare.”
“Bullshit,” she shoots back, then gives me a hug so intense my ribs click. She releases me, then turns to Darius.
“Hey, D,” she says, and she’s not faking it, she really is happy to see him. “Welcome to the House of Rosen. You want a drink? My mom made punch.”
He blinks, maybe thrown by the lack of ceremony, but recovers with a “Sure. Thanks, Maya.” He follows her inside, and for a second I watch him go, just to make sure he doesn’t bail.
My mom is at the table, already setting places, hair up in a bun, cardigan on over a faded “Washington Huskies” tee that I’m pretty sure belonged to my dad.
She looks up, and her face goes so soft it’s like someone let the air out of a balloon.
She gets up and, for a second, just stares at Darius, like she's confirming something she's known for a long time.
Then she closes the space and wraps him in a hug so fierce it looks like she's been saving it for years. She has.
She says, "I'm so glad you're here," and the words come out half-laugh, half-sob.
He hugs back, but careful, like he doesn’t want to break her. He’s six-three and she’s five-four on a good day, so it’s more like a bear hugging a pigeon, but she holds on until he actually laughs, and then lets go.
