Page 46

"You'd really?"

"Heck yeah!" He's at the door when he grins back at us, pure chaos.

And then he's gone.

Margot doesn't go back to the laptop. She drifts, the way she did the first night, over to the mantle, and she stops in front of it, and I watch her find the photo. The graduation one. The plain black frame.

She touches the frame, barely, with one finger.

"I told myself." Her voice is low, and she doesn't turn around. "That you printed it as a joke. I stood in this exact spot and made myself believe it meant nothing, because believing it meant something, was too dangerous to survive."

I come up behind her, put my hands on her shoulders, rest my chin on the top of her head.

"You mean everything to me." I turn her around to face me.

She looks up at me. Just so beautiful and mine.

I kiss her and when she pulls back to breathe she's smiling against my lips.

"We still have work to do." Her breath is warm on my mouth.

"It'll keep. Everything keeps now. We've got the rest of our lives."

I kiss her again, slow.

Chapter 25: Margot

"Okay, I have to ask." Harper leans into me as the anthem singer holds the last note, dark blonde ponytail swinging, an Aiden Cross jersey swallowing her whole.

A beer in each hand because she came prepared for war. "Your brother's out there in black and gold, and your boyfriend's out there, and they're about to spend sixty minutes trying to put each other through the glass on national TV. How are you so calm right now?"

"I'm not. Internally I am flat on the floor."

"Okay. I’m feeling anxious too. Solidarity." She hands me one of the beers.

"That's genuinely comforting."

The Blizzards clawed back from that four-game skid, one ugly win at a time, ran off a streak nobody saw coming, and now it all comes down to the last night of the season. Win and they're in, lose and they watch the playoffs on TV.

And the one game that decides it lands against my brother's team, my brother's line, Cade squared up across the dot from the man I love. The schedule has a sick sense of humor.

But something's different from the last time these two shared the ice. There's no secret left on it.

When they skated out for warmups they knocked gloves at center, brothers again, mostly, healing the slow stubborn way men heal, and the fans lost it, because most of them have seen the airport video.

The puck drops.

Boston strikes first. Six minutes in, a bullet from the point that beats Mason clean, and my own brother set it up with a pass so pretty it makes me proud.

"That's a beauty," Harper says.

“But that’s the other team.”

"I'm always on the side of good hockey, and so is your brother, apparently."

The Blizzards claw one back before the horn, Ryker banking it in off a defenseman's skate, and the barn comes roaring back.

Second period is a war, hit for hit, save for save, Mason standing on his head while Boston's tendy matches him glove for glove.