The Tales of a Professional Hockey Player

Bonus Chapter: El's Epilogue

~2027~

We are not at our end. Ben and I are still at the beginning of our story, but we are far enough in it that I am able to imagine our end. We'll be old, like really old, and we'll still live in our house, close to our kids. Ben will have run his hockey career as far as he could, for as long as he could, but he'll still be a part of the hockey community. I cannot imagine a world in which Benjamin Johnson won't play hockey. He has it tattooed on his ribs, close to his heart. A scorpion, a spitfire, a tiger, an island, a crown, a CH, and a fish. The South Victoria Scorpions, the Windsor Spitfire, the Nuremberg Ice Tigers, the New York Islanders, the LA Kings, the Montreal Canadiens, the Seattle Sockeyes. On the right side of his ribs, he inked the numbers twelve, twenty, and forty-eight. I have been tattooed on his bicep for years now. Below the lightbulb, a small O and a small T are inked. We are a part of him forever just like he is a part of us forever. We healed our window. We built the frame back up, ordered a new glass, and painted the little flowers carefully. The difference between now and then is that now, we paint those flowers daily which means that we pay attention to our relationship every day. We make sure to be as strong as we can and not let our differences get the best of us. Because, yes, we are still different. We will always be different. And I wouldn't want us any other way. We are who we are as a couple because of those differences. Our children are who they are because Ben and I are different. We bring them different things, and it's beautiful to see our children grow as they take little pieces of both of us to create their own personality. Our window as never been stronger, and it keeps fortifying every day.

People often ask how we make it work between our schedules and the kids. But we just do. It's not even hard. We went through worse over the years. I think we're just happy to have found our way back to each other that everything we have to figure out is just easy. We moved a lot over the years, but we were always home. He was mine, I was his, and we were Ophelia's. Now, we just gave our kids a place to come back to, a place they know, a place they feel safe in. It's a gift we gave each other for them.

Seattle was the best choice for us. It gave our family the stability it needed, and it brought us closer to our hometown and our families. We can now be back in Victoria in less than an hour. It allowed us to reconnect with our parents, our siblings and our friends. Olive and Alex even moved to Seattle as well. Alex got a job as a physiotherapist on Ben's team after Ben pushed the GM to hire him. They live a few houses down from us, so we get to see them as often as when we went to school together. Their son, Hudson, is a year younger than Theo, and I can tell they'll be friends for a long time. It's many people's dream, right? To see your best friend's kid become friends with yours?

Will and Jo had a rough patch a few years ago when Will got a job offer in Vancouver that he really wanted to take. They ended up moving there after Jo got a job at Vancouver General Hospital. They had twin girls, Avery and Evelyn, who are now three years old. We still see Tracy and Nathan, but not as often as we should.

It took me a long time to find the courage to write this epilogue. The rest of the book was written directly after the first one, in 2018. I wasn't ready to think about how the rest of my life would turn out. Ben and I were still so young, so much could have happened. And since this book is somewhat of an autobiography, I find it fit to write the epilogue when we have acquired more experience, more baggage. When we got married, Ben told me he knew we were meant to be together the second he saw me, but I didn't. It took me a while to accept that I would go against everything I had promised myself. But maybe this is why we work so well. Maybe this is why our relationship is so beautiful. I saw the man I love succeed in the thing he loves most in the world and he saw me do the same. Now, it's time we watch as our children chose what they love. It's time we watch them succeed.

Ben and I have known each other for fifteen years now. That's half our life. The only man I ever loved, the only man I ever kissed, had sex with, is him. And I wouldn't want it any other way. I love you so much, Ben. Thank you for those fifteen years. Thank you for the wonderful life you've given me. Till the end of the world, baby. Till the end of the world.

This is really it now!! The last ever chapter of Ben and Eleanor's story! Thank you again for following me and I hope you'll still be here when I have another great idea for a book!
I love you all,
Alexandra