Outside, the snow continued to fall.
Inside, Edie finally stopped running.
EPILOGUE
Six months later…
The roarof the crowd was deafening.
Edie stood pressed against the glass behind the team bench, her voice raw from screaming, her palms stinging from clapping, and her heart doing somersaults in her chest. On the ice, the Emerald Enforcers were destroying the opposition. The scoreboard glowed 4-1 with six minutes left in the third period. The playoff championship was within reach, close enough to taste, and the energy in the arena had reached a fever pitch that made the air itself feel electric.
And at the center of it all, leading the charge like he'd been born for this exact moment, was Tarmek.
My Tarmek.
The thought still sent a little thrill through her, even now. Even after months of sharing his condo, his bed, and his meticulously organized life. Her Tarmek, who was currently bodychecking anopposing player into the boards with enough force to rattle the glass.
"That's my man!" she screamed, not caring that the players' wives and girlfriends around her were giving her amused looks. "Crush him, babe!"
Jensen's wife, Clara, laughed and elbowed her gently. "You know he can't hear you, right?"
"Doesn't matter. The universe can hear me. The universe knows."
"The universe is terrified of you."
"Good."
On the ice, Tarmek intercepted a pass and fired the puck up to Makron with surgical precision. The play unfolded like choreography, like art—because that's what it was, she had realized. Hockey wasn't just athletics. It was movement and timing and creativity executed at impossible speeds.
She understood now why he loved it so much.
The buzzer sounded for a line change, and he skated towards the bench. As he passed her section of the glass, his eyes found hers with the unerring accuracy that still startled her sometimes. He didn't smile or wave or break character. But his gloved hand came up to touch the glass, just for a second, right where her palm was pressed.
Then he was gone, replaced by fresh legs and sharp blades.
He does that every time now,she thought, her throat unexpectedly tight.Every single time.
I disrupted him,she thought, watching him take the ice again.I crashed into his perfect little world and left glitter everywhere and drove him absolutely insane.
And he loves me for it.
The final minutes of the game passed in a blur of adrenaline.
The Enforcers held their lead. The crowd counted down the final seconds. The buzzer sounded, and the arena erupted into the kind of chaos that came from joy. Green and silver confetti rained from the ceiling. Music blasted from the speakers. Players mobbed each other on the ice, tossing gloves and helmets and generally losing their collective minds.
Tarmek was at the center of it, hoisting the championship trophy above his head while his teammates screamed around him.
But even as the cameras flashed and the crowd chanted his name, his eyes found her in the stands.
Come here,his expression said.
She didn't need to be asked twice. She pushed through the crowd towards the ice-level access door, where a bemused security guard checked her credentials and let her through. The tunnel was chaos—staff members running in every direction, reporters jostling for position, equipment being hauled away in rolling carts.
She emerged at the edge of the ice just as Tarmek skated towards her.
"You won," she breathed.
"We won." He dropped his stick and pulled her onto the ice, not caring that she was wearing sneakers on the slick surface, notcaring that cameras were probably capturing every second. "We did it."
