Twenty-five hours after leaving Houston, with six suitcases between the three of us and a promise from Peter that he would be flying out right after his next big fight, Grandpa Gus, Mo and myself went through immigration, baggage claim, and customs, half-delusional but happy.

With our brand-new, very special visas courtesy of Jonah’s rugby club’s connections.

The fear and the worry hadn’t left me totally in the three weeks leading up to our trip. Three weeks that had been a mad rush to expedite a passport for Mo, get our most important shit together, and train the assistant manager as best as we could. I was leaving almost everything behind, and I’d almost cried once on the flight right after we’d boarded. Almost.

But as I pushed the trolley with our luggage through those glass doors that led to Arrivals, with Grandpa trailing behind me with a Mo who was so over all of this travel bullshit, all it took was one look at the head towering over everyone else’s in the crowd of people waiting around for that fear and worry to ease away.

Because Jonah was there, surrounded by a large group, signing an autograph while also trying to duck into a selfie with another person, but the second he spotted us, the small, polite smile on his face exploded. The man I loved lit up. His mouth moved with what I could only imagine was an apology, and then he was coming for us with that bright, beaming face full of love and excitement and relief.

Jonah Collins was there for us, like he always would be.

Epilogue

I wasn’t going to cry.

I wasn’t going to cry.

The hand holding my right one gave it a squeeze a second before Jonah, knowing exactly what was going through my head like he always did, whispered, “You’re not going to cry.”

Damn it.

I pressed my lips together and stared out at the endless turquoise water in front of us, making my eyes go wide so that they wouldn’t backstab me and do something I had promised myself—and Grandpa Gus—I wouldn’t do.

I wasn’t going to cry, damn it. I wasn’t.

Curling my toes into the soft sand beneath my feet, I took a deep breath in and let it back out as I gave Jonah’s hand its own squeeze. In return, his thumb swept over the back of my hand, his fingertips even more callused now than they had been back when we’d first met. When he’d first started to hold my hand… twenty-two years ago.

Twenty-two years ago.

Goddamn time had flown by.

That’s what happens when you’re having fun, Grandpa Gus would have said.

And just thinking that made my throat close up, made a choke catch right at the base of my throat, and it made my eyes want to water again. My heart started beating faster, my fingertips tingled, and it took every single ounce of discipline in my body not to bring my hands up to my face and lose my shit. I had fucking promised, and I wasn’t going to go back on my word. Instead, I made myself keep my eyes forward on that blue water that hadn’t changed in the least bit since the last time we’d been to this beach so long ago.

I clung to that memory like it was a lifeline sent to save me. A lifeline to one of the best days in my life—and a reminder that I’d had so many best days over the course of it. A reminder of just how fucking lucky I was that maybe life hadn’t always been easy, but it had been—it was—amazing.

And that was what my grandpa had always wanted for me. For all of his loved ones.

Which was why I tied that memory to my wrist and let it lift me up like an oversized balloon.

This was the beach where Grandpa Gus and Peter had gotten married after nearly thirty-one years together. Right here. Well, close by. Under the Hawaiian sun, with enormous smiles over both of their faces, while my gramps cracked jokes at his groom and at the not-so-small party they’d invited to watch them each put a ring on it. A marriage thirty years and a lot of sacrifices and a lot of love in the making, that had only happened once Peter had retired and Grandpa Gus had decided to sell Maio House.

“You and Peter are Maio House to me, Len. And I’m tired of keeping it a secret. You have a life here, a career. You’re not giving that up for the gym,” he had reasoned with me a month after Jonah’s contract with the Kobe Chargers had ended, days after he had signed a new three-year contract with his old team in Auckland.

And sure enough, six months later, Maio House had been sold to a group of three former fighters who had pooled their money together. It had been a little bittersweet, but just a little. Because how the hell could I have been upset when the moment after we’d talked about his decision, he’d asked, “What do you think about a wedding on a beach in Kauai?”

I’d swear I could still hear the way the ordained minister had asked my creature of ancient evil if he took Peter as his lawfully wedded husband, and how he’d answered, “I guess so” with his trademark little smirk before his face had sobered and he’d added, “Yes. For the rest of my life.”

Another fucking choke appeared in my throat, and I decided maybe I shouldn’t have delved into that memory so deeply because that time, I couldn’t keep my shit totally under wraps. The choke sprang up and out of my throat, and one single tear escaped my eye at the same time Jonah’s hand slipped out from under mine, and he threw a heavy, still-muscular arm over the tops of my shoulders. He sidestepped into me, his cheek slotting over the top of my head, and he snuggled me even as his own throat bubbled with deep chokes he was trying to hold back and mostly failing at. My sweet, wonderful man. The same man who had never given me a single reason to doubt or regret any of the decisions I’d made for him—for us.

“Are you remembering the wedding?” Jonah asked in a voice just barely an inch tall, weary and about as soft as he was capable of as that still big body shook against mine with so much emotion it triggered another tear out of me.

“Yeah,” I answered him, taking a sniff and wrapping my free arm around his waist to hold him right back. My other hand gave the one I was holding a squeeze.

I wasn’t the only one mourning and trying hard not to, I remembered.

We had all lost Grandpa Gus two months ago.

My fucking watery nose betrayed me and made something wet that I wasn’t going to bother wiping off drip over the top of my lip and down the side of my mouth as I thought about the day that Peter had come into the kitchen, face pale and eyes stunned at first. How he had stood there for a moment while the rest of us looked at him expectantly. Not knowing what he was about to drop on us. Not knowing what had happened.

And then he’d smiled gently, his throat had bobbed, and he’d said the last words I would have ever imagined, “Gus is gone.”

He had left us at ninety-five years old, in what was probably the quietest moment of his life. In his sleep. Not fighting or arguing or being sarcastic or loving or anything like he was normally.

I had lost my grandfather.

Peter had lost his partner of half his life.

Jonah had lost the man who had helped him with conditioning during each of the four off-seasons he’d had left in his career. A man who had become not just his children’s nanny or his wife’s best friend/grandpa/business partner in sports management, but his friend. His confidant. His own Granddad Gus.

And Mo and Marcus had lost their Grandpa Gus. Their nanny/playmate/number one cheerleader. The best great-grandfather in the history of great-grandfathers.

The greatest man to ever own the title of grandfather.

A man I had missed every second of every day for the last two months. That we all had. Not just me.

A man buried in a natural cemetery in his adopted country of New Zealand per his wishes. Why would I want to be all the way in Houston when you’re all here? he’d asked when he’d given us his instructions after becoming a permanent resident.

The hand fitted against mine squeezed it for a moment before a lanky body turned into mine, threw his arms around my waist, tucked his head under my chin, and muttered in a choppy voice, “I miss him heaps, Mum. He made me promise him I wouldn’t cry, and it’s so… hard.”

“Me too, buddy,” I agreed, wrapping one arm around him and keeping my other around Jonah. “We all do. It’s okay if you cry. He’d know it was just because we love him so much.”

“He can be mad at both of us,” Jonah piped up as he turned his body toward his son too.

Marcus, our fifteen-year-old who was a perfect physical mix of both of us, nodded against me even as he sniffed again. He was loud, opinionated, energetic, and fiercely loyal. Not as olive-skinned as Mo, his eyes grayer than brown, and hair lighter and straighter like mine, he was lanky and growing. I had a feeling that one day, when I wasn’t fighting back the black hole in my chest that had only shrunk a fraction in size over the last few weeks, I’d look at him and see that he was a replica of Grandpa Gus.

One day.