My Stubborn Heart

by Becky Wade

  He stopped himself. Underneath his automatic denial, underneath his fear of failing, did he still love it? And if he did, did he have enough faith in himself and in God to try to get it back? It would take more than just a little faith to put himself out there and face the overwhelming odds that he’d humiliate himself.

  No, he didn’t have that much faith. He was new at this God thing and what had happened with Beth and Kate hadn’t exactly increased his ability to trust people. . . .

  Maybe that was the point, though. God wasn’t a person. He was God. And just like Kate had said to him, that made God way more worthy of trust.

  His brain staggered. He couldn’t believe he was even considering this.

  He wasn’t considering this.

  Was he?

  How much did it cost to have an enormous box delivered to someone on Christmas Eve? Kate wondered. Lots. Crazy money. Money that Matt had apparently paid.

  The UPS guy wheeled the package into her duplex on a dolly, had her sign her name on his handheld computer, and wished her a merry Christmas before leaving.

  She blinked at the rectangular cardboard box. It stood waist high and about four feet wide. Thank goodness she was running late for the family dinner her parents hosted every Christmas Eve. If she’d been on time, she’d have missed this.

  Quickly, Kate got her scissors and went to work unwrapping. Whatever it was had been professionally and carefully packed. It took her a few minutes to slice away the sides of the box and wrestle off the Styrofoam padding. Finally, she pulled off the last slab of bubble wrap and uncovered an antique table. A very particular Pembroke table with a satinwood top, cabriole legs, and paintings of green garlands and white ribbons. She recognized it instantly from the day she and Matt had gone antiquing together. She’d seen it in one of the shops on Main and loved it, but it had been so expensive. . . .

  Matt had remembered and bought it for her.

  A big red bow with a little white tag attached to it stretched around the top of the table. She angled the tag toward her.

  Merry Christmas, Kate.

  —Matt

  She pressed a hand to her mouth. Tears filled her eyes, ran down her cheeks. The delicate table gleamed in the light from the overhead fixture, every bit as gorgeous as she remembered.

  She loved him. And somehow, against all odds, he cared about her. What had she been thinking? She was going to call him this minute and tell him that if he’d have her, she was moving back to Redbud for him.

  Kate sniffed and wiped away tears as she dialed his cell phone number with shaking fingers.

  He picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “It’s me. I just got the table and I can’t believe it. Oh my gosh, thank you! Thank you so much. It’s beautiful! I’m just—I’m speechless.”

  “Are you crying?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m glad you like it.”

  “I love it. I really do. It’s the best present I’ve ever been given. I can’t believe you bought it for me.”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You did!” She breathed unevenly, crying with happiness, overwhelmed.

  “Are you heading over to your parents’?” he asked.

  “About to. Are you at your brother’s?”

  “I’m still in the car. Almost there.”

  She was ready to blurt out the rest, about moving back—

  “I’m glad you called,” he said. “I want to tell you something.”

  “Sure.”

  He paused, and she could hear his exhale. “I’ve decided to give hockey another try.”

  Oh. Her euphoria circled downward, crashing hard into reality. “That’s great!” she said, hoping she sounded like she meant it.

  “You think so?” He sounded doubtful.

  “Yes, of course I think so. What made you change your mind?”

  “You and everything you said before you left. Couldn’t get it out of my head.”

  Which meant that God had kept it in his head. “What’s the first step?”

  “Back when I was sixteen up until I started playing for the Barons, I was coached by this guy named Jim Gray. Best coach I ever had. I called him this morning. He’s retired now, but he said he’d work with me.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “New York.”

  “Wow, so you’re going to close up your house and move there?”

  “Yeah. I’ll find somewhere temporary to live while I train.”

  “That’s wonderful, Matt. Really wonderful.” And it was wonderful for him. It was exactly what she’d been hoping for and wanting and expecting, because it would make him happy, give him closure. “I don’t have a single doubt that you’ll succeed.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  She gave a soft laugh. “You’ll see.”

  “I don’t know, Kate. Like I told you before, it’s going to be tough.”

  “You’re tough. You can do it.”

  Quiet answered while he seemed to weigh her words.

  “I better go,” she said, needing to get herself together mentally and emotionally. “I’m going to be seriously late and I’m bringing an appetizer.”

  “You cooked?”

  “I know, scary, isn’t it? Did you remember to bring my gift with you?”

  “I have it.”

  “And you’ll open it tomorrow?”

  “Yes, but not in front of everybody. When they let me alone for a second I’ll open it and call you.”

  “Sounds good.” Before leaving Redbud, she’d taken a black-and-white photo of Chapel Bluff. She’d had it mounted and framed in the same way as the photographs he had hanging in his house. Not that she aspired to the level of those. Nor the level of his amazing gift to her. “Thank you for the table. I love it. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And I’m thrilled about the hockey. Merry Christmas until tomorrow.”

  “Merry Christmas until then.”

  She clicked the phone off and stood staring at the wall. The man she’d met when she arrived in Redbud—the injured, bitter, reclusive Matt—was gone. He was healing, growing stronger, and heading back into the limelight. He was, she was positive to the marrow of her bones, going to make it and make it big. Hockey had always been God’s plan for him. She’d known it. She’d left because she’d known it. God had used her to help him find his way out of his grief, back to his hockey…and maybe, in the process, back to Him. That was the sum total of her role. She wasn’t going to have a place in Matt’s future.

  She felt as if she were standing on a shoreline watching him become smaller and smaller as he swept out to sea on a boat she couldn’t board.

  Oh, she missed him. Wanted him.

  With tears stinging her eyes again—all the stupid tears!—she glanced at the Pembroke table. Foolishly, futilely, she wished she could marry Matt, keep him forever, and put the table in a house they shared. Instead, the table would have to live here, in the duplex of a woman who was on her way to celebrate Christmas Eve again this year as the family’s odd, only, and much-to-be-pitied single girl.

  December slid into January and Kate returned to work. It wasn’t awful to go back and it wasn’t great, either. She no longer found the pleasure in it that she once had, but at least it got her out of the house and gave her something worthwhile to do with her days. Also, the kids constantly recalibrated her perspective. It was hard to feel sorry for yourself when you worked day in and day out with kids so neglected or abused that they’d been removed from their homes.

  In the evenings she watched HGTV and Antiques Roadshow and read library book after library book about hockey.

  Church? She wasn’t going.

  January gave way to February and Matt spent his days pushing himself to his physical limits and beyond. He arrived at the gym by six in the morning, where he worked with the team of
trainers he’d hired. After two hours at the gym, he drove to the rink and logged four more on the ice with his coach. After lunch, he did physical therapy, consulted with a nutritionist, sometimes talked to his agent, and then headed back to the ice for the scrimmages his coach had arranged to return him to his previous form. At night he drove to the soulless furnished apartment he rented by the month.

  Through it all, he thought of Kate.

  In the early weeks it had been hard to suck at hockey. He’d been horrible and rusty and he’d wanted to throw in the towel. Kate had stopped him. Not because she encouraged him to continue every night when they talked on the phone, even though she did. What had stopped him wasn’t pretty, and he wasn’t proud of it. What had stopped him from quitting was a desire to make her sorry for leaving him. To show her how good he could be at something. To make her love him back.

  That motivation had kept him going when nothing else could have, when his body screamed at him to give up.

  And slowly, the tide turned. He began to improve. He started to regain his old form. His skills and instincts sharpened.

  Over time, he got good.

  February eased into March. Matt’s coach and trainers insisted that he rest and let his body recuperate on the weekends. So on Sundays, he started attending a church down the street from his apartment. He arrived a few minutes after the service started and left right when it ended, which allowed him the luxury of having to talk to almost no one.

  He liked church. The singing, praying, offering, and preaching filled him with quiet and stirred him at the same time.

  On his own during the week he discovered that prayer came easier with practice. Trusting God also came easier with practice. Every time he took a step forward with his hockey, putting himself out there to face disaster on nothing but blind hope, God calmly met him. And somehow, so far, it had been okay.

  He’d told Kate about that day in the chapel when he’d decided to play hockey again, and he’d told her about going to church on Sundays. She was cool with it, excited for him, without making him feel awkward.

  In fact, she supported him in everything except coming to see her. Matt tried not to bring it up. Honestly, he tried. But in weak moments, when he missed her so much that he couldn’t stand it, he’d cave and he’d ask her if he could come.

  She kept saying no. The reasons why kept piling up. Twice after she’d turned him down, his confusion and hurt had boiled over and he’d gotten seriously mad at her. He hadn’t called for two days after the first time. The second time he hadn’t called for a week. But every minute during those times when they weren’t talking, his gut had been tight with anxiety. Talking to her, having her in his life at least through their phone calls, meant too much to him to give up.

  So he pressed on with his hockey in the idiotic hope that once he’d succeeded, once he was back on a team playing in the NHL, that maybe then she’d agree to see him.

  In mid-March Matt returned to professional hockey and to the New York Barons as a mid-season signer. His comeback was big news.

  Kate started watching ESPN, reading the sports pages of local and national newspapers, and buying Sports Illustrated. Like a proud mother cutting clippings for a scrapbook, she didn’t want to miss a single mention of him. It proved difficult to hear and read everything because the story was so widely covered. Nonetheless, she tried.

  Gran was over the moon about Matt’s comeback. She’d been telling everyone she knew about it for weeks on end. To celebrate, she’d planned a game-watching party at her house. The rooms would be bursting at the seams with food, people, and black-and-red decorations. She’d assumed, of course, that Kate would attend and had been shocked when Kate turned her down. But Kate didn’t want to be surrounded by a crowd while she watched Matt play. She wanted to be alone with her TV so she could focus on every single second of action without distraction and without having to worry the whole time about what her face might be giving away.

  On her way home from work the night of the big game, Kate ran over a squirrel. Fitting, she thought. The darned thing would have been fine if it had continued across the street at a sprint. But it had paused, swiveled, and tried to run back to where it had started. Instead, it had run directly under her Explorer’s tire.

  Not the greatest of omens.

  Feeling bad about the squirrel and conflicted over Matt’s return to fame, she let herself into her duplex. She changed into jeans and the Barons’ jersey Matt had sent her, then microwaved and ate a single portion of Stouffer’s lasagna for dinner. She settled herself and a quarter bag of peppermint taffies on her sofa in front of the television with time to spare before even the pregame show began.

  Much later, when he finally skated onto the ice for warm-up, the sight of him literally took her breath away. She gazed at the TV screen, eyes wide. She’d seen him tersely answering questions this past week on news shows, but this was different. He was decked out in the full uniform, pads, skates, whirling across the ice, completely in his element. During the national anthem, they gave him a long close-up, and Kate’s heart pounded nearly out of her chest.

  For the next few hours she got up only once, for a furtive trip to the bathroom during a commercial break. Because of all the reading she’d done, she understood exactly what the commentators were talking about when they mentioned positions and strategy. She knew all the penalties and what they meant.

  Matt skated the way his mother had described. He wasn’t a bruiser out there, he was a surgeon. All focus, precision, and steely calm. Kate was completely in awe.

  Several times, they cut to shots of Matt’s family in the stands. His mother, father, brother, and sister-in-law were there, all of them grinning broadly and cheering wildly. He’d invited her to be there, too. And every time they showed his family, she wished she’d taken him up on his offer.

  The station also treated her to frequent shots of Matt’s female fans. Most had gorgeous faces, dangly earrings, long stylish hair, tight designer jeans, and jerseys branded with his number and Jarreau across the back. One foursome had even penned a poster that said WE’RE MAD FOR and then each one sported a letter spelling M- A- T- T across the fronts of their snug shirts.

  She should have expected the women. Stupidly, though, she hadn’t.

  Before the game tonight, her worst fear had been that Matt wouldn’t live up to the hype. So many of the experts had predicted that he wouldn’t be as good as he’d once been. That he was older, that the years away would have eroded his abilities.

  This performance was going to shut them all up. He wouldn’t top his best performances, but he was going to come close enough. He scored two of the team’s three goals, one in the waning minutes of the third period to edge ahead for the win. When the final buzzer sounded, Kate relaxed, unclenched her hands, and took some deep breaths. She hadn’t realized until then how tense and nervous she’d been for him, how desperately she’d wanted him to succeed.

  Reporters clamored to interview Matt in the tunnel that led to the locker rooms. Obliging them, he took off his helmet and paused to answer questions. His hair was fully wet with sweat, his face flushed, his eyes very dark. His pads made his shoulders look even more enormous than they were.

  “How was it to be back out there tonight wearing a Barons’ uniform?” the reporter asked.

  “It was good, it felt really good,” he answered, slightly out of breath.

  The reporter rattled off Matt’s game stats. Matt inclined his head downward to listen. “You’ve got to be pleased with those numbers,” the reporter said.

  “Yeah, I am. There’s room for improvement, and I’ll be working to get better. But this first game back, I just wanted to play solid so I could be an asset to the team.”

  “You scored the game-winning goal with just two minutes forty seconds on the clock. How’d you manage it?”

  “Barkov set me up with a great pass. I saw an opening and managed to angle it up into the top right corner of the goal.”

  �
��Congratulations on your first game back, and thanks for talking with us.”

  “Thank you.” Matt ducked out of the shot and disappeared.

  Kate watched the rest of the post-game coverage and then clicked off the TV. She could still go to Gran’s. There’d be people there for the next hour or two. If she went, she could at least have company, someone to talk to and laugh with. But honestly . . . she didn’t have the energy.

  She did her bedtime skin care and teeth care routine, then slipped on a tank top and pajama bottoms, which were baggier than they’d once been because she’d lost weight. She frowned. Skinny girls couldn’t afford to lose weight! She didn’t even want to think about what was happening with her cup size.

  She toed off her pink UGGs, leaving them beside her bed in their usual spot, and nuzzled under the covers. She tried to read the latest nonfiction hockey book that she’d checked out from the library, but all she could see was Matt skating and all she could think was that he’d been hers for a little while. It seemed impossible, almost surreal, that he had been.

  She set the book aside, turned off the light, and tried to consider sleep. Sleep hadn’t come easily since she’d left Redbud.

  The house wrapped her in overwhelming and stifling silence. So empty. So painfully, heavily quiet.

  The phone rang, causing her to jolt with surprise. Squinting, she grabbed the handheld unit off her bedside table and read the digital letters on the tiny screen.

  JARREAU, MATT.

  “Oh my gosh!” She almost dropped the thing in her scramble to sit up, push the right button, and answer. “Hello?”

  “Kate.”

  “Matt,” she said. “Hi.” She’d just seen him on TV and now here he was, calling her—her!—tonight, when he must have a thousand people wanting his attention and time.

  “Did you see the game?”

  “Every second.” She turned on the bedside light, bathing the room with color. “You were amazing. You were really, really amazing. I was so nervous watching it that I probably shaved a year off my life, but it was worth it.”