“Hi.”
“Still terrifying?”
“Little bit,” I say.
She laughs.
I pull her in.
Nova is asleep against my shoulder again.
Dina and the kittens sleep in the morning light. Brick stays on the counter beside the Cup, tail wrapped around his feet like he has a job to do.
The room is quiet in the specific way of something that has just become permanent.
Her hand open over my heart, even asleep.
Still there.
Still here.
I’m not going anywhere.
Ever.
EPILOGUE
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
Ourcoffeetablehasa scratch on the left corner from when we moved it in.
Jax said the old one was too small. He was right. I told him so eventually, and he said, “I know,” then went back to his coffee.
That’s him. That’s exactly him.
My notebooks are on it. His Cup ring is on it too — just sitting there like a set of keys, like it isn’t the thing he spent four seasons building toward. I look at it every morning and still can’t believe it’s just there.
The plant on the windowsill is still alive — still overwatered, still somehow refusing to die — and Brick’s blanket is in the corner, the soft gray one I picked out while he pretended not to care and then immediately claimed with great authority.
My camera bag is by the door where it always lands.
Sixteen months in Canyon Bay. I stopped counting.
I’m writing a book. I’m writing it as Nova Shaw.
V. North still exists in archives and old bylines I can’t unpublish. I used to think that name protected me. Maybe it did, for a while.
Mostly, it gave me somewhere to hide.
I don’t need it anymore.
It’s about goalies. About standing between something precious and everything trying to destroy it — what it costs, what it builds, what happens when someone finally names the thing you’ve been carrying. My editor says it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. She’s right. I know what it’s really about.
Dina is in the window. Inside, in the sun, tail around her feet, watching the street. She still won’t let anyone touch her. But she’s here. She stayed.
Griffin Novak was traded in February.
I didn’t write about it.
