Five years later.
I was standing on the ice. Around me were people who were already watching us warm up for the playoffs.
Next to me was Carter.
We made it.
Carter and I got an eight-year contract with the New Jersey Devils, which went into effect right after we graduated college. My heart was racing, and my palms were sweaty because it was our first game in the playoffs.
‘I’m going to make my lady so proud,’ Carter said, standing next to me as he kicked a puck to one of our teammates.
I have never seen my best friend so happy next to a girl.
He really found his home in her.
I looked to Luna, who was turning her dream into a career and standing in front of the camera with a microphone, reporting on the upcoming game. Luna had gotten a job offer from NHL as a sports reporter after she graduated a year after me.
The year I started playing for the New Jersey Devils, and Luna was in college for another year, we had a long-distance relationship.
Despite the distance, we never left each other’s side, and I thought love had a limit at some point, but she convinced me otherwise.
Carter and I moved away from our girls and lived together in an apartment until they both graduated, and they could finally move in with us.
A lot has happened in the last five years.
Luna had overcome her fear of deep water and had taken the vacant spot with the Eastburgh Sharks until graduation two years ago.
Now she was standing there living her dream for which she had worked so hard.
‘I’m going to make my girls proud, too,’ I grinned at Carter.
Luna turned to the side, and the bulge on her belly appeared. Her pregnancy was pretty unexpected, but it was the most incredible thing that could have happened to us.
‘How do you know you’re both having a girl?’
‘I don’t. Somehow I have a feeling it’s going to be a girl.’
Luna was so in love with that baby bump, and I was bursting with pride to see her standing there with our little baby inside her belly.
It was everything I had always wished for.
‘Did you kind of get that sixth Daddy sense or what?’ laughed Carter.
‘I bet your sixth sense as a godfather that Luna and I having a boy is wrong.’
‘Bet not?’ Carter slapped my hand, and we grinned.
I was sure that Luna and I would have a girl, and tonight after the game, I would ask Luna to marry me.
I hoped so much that she didn’t suspect anything.
I wanted to make her my wife and let everyone know that this beautiful woman was mine with with a golden ring and a heart-shaped crystal.
Luna Sinclair.
God, that sounded better than any song I’ve ever heard.
Carter kept the little box with him because I was pretty clumsy at keeping things, and I lost things pretty quickly.
Carter also looked after the little box with the bracelet and necklace I gave her on her twentieth birthday.
‘You know what?’
‘What?’
‘Ethan would be so proud of you and Luna,’ he grinned at the phrase.
His sentence reminded me of my last conversation with Ethan before we had the car accident, and it was all over.
He asked me if I loved Luna.
My answer was simple.
I knew it before he could quite bring the question to his lips.
‘I really do,’ I answered then.
I wish I could have answered him more to that question, but fate had other plans. I never told Luna before, but before Ethan took his last breath as we were both trapped in the car, he said, ‘Please take good care of my Luni.’
I will.
I promised.
I’ll take care of her and love her in every universe, in every city, in every lunar eclipse, in every second, in every moment of joy or sadness.
Forever.
PS: We got a baby girl and called her Evie Sinclair.
I AM A GIRLS DAD!!!!!!
Now I have my two girls, both wearing my last name and who I will protect with everything I have. I can’t wait to see Evie grow up and give this tiny little human so many forehead kisses.
