Page 130

I catch a glimpse of myself on television standing beside a table, talking about the boxes and the customers who walk through my door searching for something they don’t always have the words to describe.

But I can’t hear any of it.

Liam lifts me out of my chair, his face brighter than I have ever seen it. “You won!”

“I won.” I laugh, and it turns into something dangerously close to a sob. “You made me enter.”

“No. I asked you one question.” He sets me down but keeps both arms around me. “You did the hard work. You stood in front of that camera and made them understand why Side B matters. You did this.”

The words land inside me.

I did this.

“Just remember.” Liam touches his forehead to mine. “Why not you?”

The question that once felt too large now has the simplest answer in the world.

“Yeah.” I grin. “Why not.”

He kisses me while everyone cheers again. Someone whistles and all I can do is laugh against Liam’s mouth.

When I look around, every person I want to see is here.

Juliette is crying into Sawyer’s shoulder, and Vivian has her arms wrapped around Ty, both of them smiling at me. Lucy is wedged between Owen and Tripp, still cheering. Dakota, who met me less than an hour ago, lifts her coffee in a toast.

And, in the middle of all the chaos, Liam is holding me.

For so long, I thought putting down roots meant building something no one could take from me. A store. A home. A life that belonged entirely to me.

Side B is mine. This win is mine. I’m still standing on my own two feet.

I’m just not standing alone anymore.

Liam kisses me again as smoke drifts through the morning sunlight and the people I love celebrate around us.

This is what roots look like.

And I have never been happier to be home.

EPILOGUE ONE

EVA

“What the—seriously? What is he doing?”

From the top of the stepladder, Liam gestures with his drill toward the television in Side B’s back room, where a defenseman abandons the puck carrier and makes the same terrible decision he made twelve years ago.

“He should’ve stayed with him.”

The old playoff game has probably been replayed six hundred times by now, but apparently Liam is still holding out hope that this time the man will listen.

“You do understand that yelling at him won’t change the outcome.”

“I’m not yelling.”

“Then you’re using your coaching voice.”

“I don’t have one of those,” he retorts. “I’m a voice of reason.”