Everyone arrives in a wave after that—Zayden and Tori with Maisie swinging between them by both hands, a handful of teammates, their girlfriends, my parents, who arrive with a casserole nobody requested and everyone will absolutely demolish. Archer arrives last.
I hear them before I see them—a heated debate at the front door about who gets to ring the doorbell, resolved when both of them do it at the same time and then dissolve into giggles. Banks opens the door, and there’s Archer with a toddler on each hip, looking like a man who accepted his sleep deprivation a long time ago.
Luke and Lily. Dark-haired, bright-eyed, wearing matching sneakers and carrying completely opposing energy—Lily waves at Banks immediatelywith her whole arm, and Luke tucks his face into Archer’s neck like he’d rather hide than attend a party.
“Thanks for having us,” Archer says, and he means it, but there are circles under his eyes that I don’t remember being there at the start of the season, and he’s doing this alone on a Saturday night, which tells me more than anything he’s said out loud. Bree moved out recently, last I heard.
“You don’t have to thank us,” I tell him. “Come in.”
The twins absorb into the party immediately with the total social confidence of people who haven’t yet learned to be self-conscious. Maisie appoints herself their keeper within minutes, steering them away from the decorative items with the authority of a child who has spent considerable time around hockey players and knows how to manage a situation. It’s basically adorable.
Archer gets a beer. Talks to Zayden. Laughs at whatever Logan’s doing, which tonight involves trying to teach one of the rookies a card trick he clearly doesn’t know. He’s okay. He keeps finding his kids with his eyes every thirty seconds, this automatic sweep, just checking.
I’m refilling the pitcher in the kitchen when I see it.
Lily has detached from Maisie’s orbit and wandered across the living room with the unsteady determination of a toddler who has somewhere to be and hasn’t fully decided where. She stops at Banks’s legs. Looks up at him—he’s mid-conversation with Zayden, hasn’t noticed her yet—andthen wraps her hand around two of his fingers and just holds on, turning to look at something across the room like she’s just picked up an accessory she finds useful.
Banks looks down.
He goes still, looking at her hand around his fingers, and I watch him take it in—this tiny person who grabbed him without asking, without any hesitation at all, because she decided he was safe and that was enough for her. He crouches down to her level, says something I can’t hear, and she points at something across the room. He looks where she’s pointing and nods very seriously, like she’s raised a valid point he’ll need to consider.
Then he picks her up, settling her against his chest like he’s been doing it his whole life, and reaches over to the snack table and hands her a cracker. She takes it and leans her head on his shoulder and goes back to observing the party from her new vantage point, apparently satisfied.
I set the pitcher down.
I think about him showing me this house listing on his phone that morning. About the time he told me he wanted four or five kids. I understand it differently now, watching him stand there with Archer’s daughter on his hip like it’s nothing, like he was always talking about exactly this. A house full of noise and small hands reaching up without asking.
He’s been waiting his whole life for someone to reach up like that.
Across the room, Archer has gone quiet. He’s got Luke on his hip, and he’s stopped mid-conversation, watching Banks hold his daughter, and his expression is raw in a way he’d hate knowing I could see—grateful, and underneath it, a loneliness he’s keeping at arm’s length because he doesn’t know yet how to let anyone near it.
He glances over and catches me watching. We hold eye contact for a beat, and he nods once, barely, and looks away.
I pick the pitcher back up and go back to the party.
By ten o’clock, the house has mostly emptied. Logan leaves last, obviously, because he has FOMO worse than any person I’ve ever known. He hugs me, then Banks, and the Banks hug goes long enough that I look away to give them a second. When I look back, Logan is saying something quietly and Banks is listening with his eyes down and nodding, and then Logan pulls back and claps him on the shoulder, and his regular face reassembles itself.
“Also,” he says, pointing at me, “that cheese board was the best thing I’ve eaten this year. I need the name of whoever made it.”
“I made it, Logan.”
“Win.” He puts a hand to his chest. “Incredible. Truly. A gift.” He points at Banks. “Keep her.” And then he’s out the door.
Banks closes it behind him, and the house goes quiet.
We stand in the middle of the living room in the wreckage of a good party—empty glasses, crumbs, the doormat rolled against the wall waiting to be installed—and neither of us says anything, justtaking stock of the room, of the night, of this house that already feels like ours after exactly one evening of people in it.
Banks puts his arm around me, and I lean into him, and we just stand there for a minute in the quiet.
“Good day,” I say.
He looks around the room slowly—the walls, the windows, the hallway leading back to the studio—and I feel him breathe out, long and slow.
“Yeah,” he says. “Really good day.”
I tip my head back to look at him, and he looks down at me, and his expression is open in the way it took so long to earn and that I get to see every day now. He presses a kiss to my forehead and keeps his mouth there.
“I’m so glad you’re mine, Win.”
