My feet hit the ground and he tucks my hand in the crook of his arm. We walk up the porch steps to the group of people waiting for us.

“I’m Barbara Mitchell,” says the lady in a prim black suit and pearls who greets me without even an introduction from Mr. Winchester. She’s just as tall and hawkish as I recall, a woman who’s known grief and heartache. It’s apparent in the bend of her shoulders, in the unsteady set of her mouth, the way her eyes study me and then blink, looking away. “I’m glad you came.”

I murmur a reply. It’s not a huge welcome, but then what would she say? How must she be feeling, knowing that I’m the product of an affair her husband carried out for years?

I wonder what she thinks of me—and then I stop.

What they believe is unimportant. I know who I am, and my self-worth isn’t defined by an approval rating. She doesn’t know my journey or what it’s taken to get me back here.

Two adults step forward, twins about the same age as me, a young woman and man, both raven-haired and beautiful with an air of sophistication to their demeanor. The man is tall and slim, his clothes expensive. There’s a tentative smile on his face as he takes my hand. “Name’s Beau.” His eyes are the exact color of mine…and kind. It’s hard to take in all at once. I suck in a little internal breath. He’s my half-brother. Part of my blood is his.

“I’m Bianca.” The slender girl next to him gives me a once-over and gives Z a long look. I expect a hint of jealousy because Z is Z, but there’s zilch there but deep curiosity.

I nod.

Mr. Winchester says. “We’ll get started now.”

And we do.

I walk inside a house that, as a young girl, I dreamed of burning down.

And it’s a big step.

I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say as this day goes on, but I decided to take the money my father left me. Mr. Winchester is insistent that I do, that it was my father’s last dying wish. I’m going to accept it and try not to be bitter about how he treated Mama. I guess this is his way of making up for the past. Perhaps knowing he had cancer changed him. I don’t know, but maybe these three people do.

What I do know is I’ve come full circle. I’m embracing courage and I won’t be afraid of falling anymore—with anything. I’m here to discover more about them and maybe focus on being wise, judging less, and being kind. After all, I don’t know their journey and the weight it must have been to know I was out there in the world, part of them yet not.

In the end, these three people are not my father, just innocent bystanders with a fate they couldn’t control.

Z laces his hand with mine and I know that life is right. He is right. And no matter the obstacles ahead, he’s with me.

Epilogue

Zack

It must be a hundred degrees in this room, and I tug at the tight white collar around my neck. Shit, I hate these suits, but damn I look good. I catch my reflection in the oval mirror in the dressing room and check out my appearance, taking in the perfect fit of the tailored black suit, hoping it’s what it’s supposed to be. My hair is styled into a semblance of order and my beard is short and clipped. Luckily, I have all my teeth, which is not an easy feat considering the hard-won hockey season we just wrapped up. I adjust my cufflinks—diamond hockey sticks, a gift from my dad when I finished my first season with the Predators.

A lot has happened in the five years since I graduated from HU and went straight to summer training in Nashville. Yeah, that first year wasn’t easy. The coaches put me on the third line and just…let me be. In the meantime, I picked back up with therapy with a new doctor, and even though I don’t go three days a week anymore, I do check in once a month. Anxiety still eats at me, and maybe it always will, but it’s an enemy I’ve learned to cope with and handle. I haven’t had any freak-outs that took me out of a game, and this year, I was on the first line and helped bring the Stanley Cup to Nashville.

The door flies open.

“Dude, the florist is a whack job. Everything’s supposed to be lilies, man, fucking lilies, and we all got these stupid pink rosebuds,” says Eric when he pushes inside and nearly topples a chair. “Pink! It’s not part of Sugar’s color scheme. These people…”

“Easy now,” I say and bite back a grin at his “color scheme” comment.

He straightens himself in the mirror, brushing at his wild red hair, slicking it back. His suit is the same cut as mine, but it’s a pale grey with a soft gold tie. “On a side note, we look fucking good.” He looks down at his hand where he’s holding a small white flower that looks ridiculous in his big hands. “Anyway, the wedding lady said you had to wear this…lily…and not that thing her assistant put on you earlier.” He frowns. “Man, this wedding business is insane. I’m just keeping it on the down-low because no one wants Sugar to know about the screwup, and I don’t either.” He looks over his shoulder to the hallway of the church’s dressing rooms for the groomsmen. “I’m paranoid she’ll find out and it will ruin her day.”

I arch a brow. He adores Sugar, as does most everyone. She’s…perfect. But my gut knows a simple thing like flowers won’t ruin her day. She might be upset for a second, but we’ve been waiting on this day for a while. “Okay.” I work on unpinning the pink thing I’m apparently not supposed to have on my jacket.

Sugar came to Nashville with me after graduation, and we haven’t been apart since. I found a condo downtown near the stadium, and she moved right in. You’d think those early days of us living together would have been hard, me adjusting to the NHL and her going to law school, but just like everything with us, things fell into place and we developed a rhythm of us, just us. Plus Long John Silver.

The truth is I can’t fucking breathe without her next to me, and that isn’t anxiety. That’s just her and how she makes me feel, like I’m on top of the world and I can do anything. She’s earned her law degree and passed the Tennessee bar exam. Now she is doing a judicial clerkship downtown. She may join some high-priced law firm soon, or open her own practice; she’s still mulling it over. But whatever she wants, I’ll help make it happen. I’ll be her anchor when she needs it.

“Dude, why are you smiling? We have a flower situation!”

I laugh and shake my head. Nothing can get to me today. “Sorry.”

Eric rolls his eyes. “Do you ever stop thinking about her?”

“Nope.”

Eric grins. “Lucky bastard.”

I clap him on the back. “And you’re a stellar best man. Now, pin that tiny flower on me with your big-ass hands and let’s get out there.”

*

We’re inside a beautiful, quaint church right outside Nashville, in a revitalized area of town with towering old buildings. I straighten my shoulders and face the entrance of the sanctuary, waiting…waiting for her. I gave her a ring a year ago, a three-carat round diamond, on a ski trip at Christmas with Mara and Reece and my dad. She cried tears of happiness, and the memory still makes me feel warm. Of course, I’d asked her every year we were together to marry me, and she always put me off, saying she wanted to wrap up law school and wanted me to get comfortable in Nashville, but I’ve been ready to make us official since the night I showed up at her dorm room after winning the national championship. Even so, I listened to her, and maybe we were too young then, but when I know what I want, I go after it like a man obsessed.

The church is quiet and the guests are murmuring amongst themselves. I run my eyes over them, seeing Beau and Bianca and Mara in the family area on the bride’s side. Emotion pricks at my eyes. She went through so much as a kid with losing her mom and getting moved from her home to Sparrow Lake, and now she has a relationship with her half-siblings. It’s evolved over the years from tentative to deep, and we make sure to spend time with them when we can. It still blows my damn mind that she’s found something she never knew she could really have.

Reece, on the other side of Eric, clears his throat, leans over, and says, “Bro, have you ever smiled this much?” He grins. We dealt with our issues a long time ago and it’s all old news. I can’t let the past dictate my future, not when I have so much to be thankful for. He’s coming into his own now with a nice girlfriend and a job scouting for Hawthorne. And Veronica? Reece kicked her to the curb, and she never showed her face again. The thing is, I’m not even bitter about her. I can’t be, not when I have…so much.

The classic wedding march booms from the organ, and all heads swivel to the double wooden door entrance.

Fuck, she’s so…

My chest hitches.

Her dress is…shit, I don’t know—it’s white. The front of it is low cut with some kind of lace thing on top of it, the skirt poufy and soft and covered with sequins and lily cutouts along the hem, and with her height in those sexy heels, she’s a freaking angel come to life. I half expect white wings to pop out behind her.