Light the Lamp

by Catherine Gayle

  “You might not mind, but I mind them being around you.” He didn’t elaborate on that. He didn’t need to because his eyes told me far more than his words did. I shivered under the heat of his gaze.

  Yeah, it would be a heck of a lot easier to leave him in a few days if he would stop looking at me like that. Like he wanted me.

  Because I was starting to want an awful lot more from him than he was ready to give.

  I didn’t take Noelle home until after eight that evening, and even then the only reason was because it started to rain on us. We’d spent almost the entire day outside—going to the Japanese Garden and the Columbia River Gorge, and we’d even found a quiet hole-in-the-wall restaurant where we could sit out on the patio to eat.

  She seemed to be so at peace in nature, as if it was where she belonged. She didn’t even mind when it started raining and she got wet. She just laughed, twirling as the rain pelted her, drenching her clothes until they were plastered to her body.

  I would have happily stayed out there with her, watching her play in the rain, if not for the fact that she started shivering almost immediately. She’d put on a little bit of weight since she’d been with me, but not enough. Nowhere near enough. I didn’t want her to get sick, so I’d insisted that we leave. I ran the heat in the car the whole way back to the apartment, but as wet as we’d gotten, it didn’t really do much.

  Most of the guys were gone when we got back to the condo—all but Razor. He and Babs were on the couch and had turned on a movie. I didn’t recognize it, but there were lots of gunshots and explosions happening. I doubted that was the kind of movie Noelle would like. Violence didn’t fit with any part of her.

  “Hey,” Babs said when we came through the door. He turned the volume down on the TV. “Did you two have a good day?” His eyes got big when he saw us, and I knew it was because of how Noelle’s clothes were still clinging to every curve.

  Razor turned his head, and he took her in, too, and I felt a sudden urge to punch him in the throat. Mainly because he was looking at her a little too appreciatively. I didn’t want anyone looking at her like that. No one but me.

  “We did,” she said. She was still shaking so hard that I didn’t want her to hang out here too long. I wanted her warmed up and in dry clothes and wrapped in a blanket, or maybe in my arms.

  “Until the rain started,” I said, putting myself between her and the two guys and nudging her toward her bedroom. “Speaking of which, why don’t you go take a bath or a shower and warm up?”

  “Okay.” Noelle smiled at me, and before I could guess what she would do next, she threw her arms around me and pulled me close for a hug. “Today was wonderful.”

  It had been wonderful, but nothing that had happened all day long could come close to the sensation of having her body pressed against mine, every curve of hers settling in place next to my angles in a way that felt right. I could feel every bit of her through our clothes, from the hard nubs of her nipples practically cutting into my chest to the still-too-prominent ribs beneath my fingers as I held her. In no time, I was so hard it was painful.

  She stretched up on her tiptoes and kissed my chin like she’d done twice before, and it took all my self-restraint to keep from pushing her into her bedroom and shutting the door behind us, and then doing all sorts of things to warm her up myself.

  Just as quickly as she came into my arms, she left them again, scurrying into the bedroom and closing the door behind her.

  “She’s fucking hot,” Razor said.

  I turned a glare on him, but before I could tell him to watch his fucking mouth and keep his eyes to himself, Babs punched him in the arm. “Shut up. And stop looking at her like that.”

  “What? She is hot.”

  “You can be a real ass, you know that?”

  “Whatever, Babs.”

  I decided it wasn’t worth the energy trying to deal with Razor right now, especially not since Babs was already doing a much better job of it than I probably would have. Instead, I headed down the opposite hall and grabbed some dry clothes before going to take a shower myself. I wasn’t as cold as Noelle had been—especially not after having her body next to mine for those all-too-brief moments—but I would be before long if I didn’t do something about it now.

  By the time I returned to the living room, Razor was gone, Babs had turned the TV off, and Noelle was sitting on the couch talking to him. She had on some pajamas I hadn’t seen her in before, a matching tank and shorts set that looked like it was made of some soft material, something that was far too sheer to hide anything from my imagination. Not that I needed much imagination after having held her so close to me.

  Babs was studiously avoiding looking at her. That was just one of many reasons I liked him—and one of many reasons his friendship with Razor made no sense to me. They were complete opposites as far as I could tell. But then again, they had been road roommates for pretty much two full seasons now. Spending that much time together tended to turn you into either good friends or mortal enemies, and Babs didn’t seem like the type to ever make an enemy.

  Noelle looked up at me when I came into the living room. She grinned and tucked her feet up beside her, crossing her arms over her chest. A shiver stole over her.

  “Cold?” I asked. I picked up a throw blanket that was folded over the back of the recliner and carried it to her before she could answer. She let me cover her with it. I took special care in tucking it in around her feet.

  “Thank you.”

  I wanted to sit down next to her, but there wasn’t a lot of room for that with the way Babs was spread out. Then I thought briefly about picking her up and pulling her onto my lap—that would definitely help with warming her—but I’d just painstakingly covered her with that throw, and it would undo everything I’d just done if I picked her up. That would just be weird, anyway. Not to mention presumptuous. I’d held her when she’d cried, but that had been different.

  I settled for taking the recliner.

  “Did Razor go home?” I asked Babs.

  “Yeah. Game tomorrow.” He stretched his arms up over his head. “He figured he should get out of here before we started up another game or movie or something.”

  “He didn’t leave because of me, did he?” Noelle asked.

  “No.” Babs gave me an odd look, though, and let his gaze flicker over to Noelle and then back to me. “He just left because of the game tomorrow. Doesn’t want to be out too late.”

  Not only was Babs horrible in the kitchen, but he was quite possibly the world’s worst liar. I didn’t know what Razor had done or said about Noelle after I’d gone to take my shower, but apparently Babs hadn’t liked it and had told Razor to leave.

  That was good. I really wouldn’t have handled it well if Razor had still been here, leering at Noelle in her pajamas. I probably would have done something I might have regretted later.

  I just hoped Babs didn’t regret it, whatever he’d done. Those two were still good friends, after all.

  “Well,” Noelle said, turning herself so she was facing Babs on the sofa, “there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, anyway.”

  “There is?” He blushed and glanced at her for just a second before turning his eyes away again. “What do you need to talk to me about?”

  “Katie. Well, you and Katie. You took her to her prom?”

  “Yeah.” His voice cracked, and it was easy to see he was embarrassed as hell. I kind of felt sorry for him, but not really. Babs was as much of a goner where Katie Weber was concerned as I had been when it came to Liv when I’d been his age.

  “Because she lost her hair?”

  “No.”

  Babs shot a look in my direction, like he was desperate for help. There wasn’t any help I could give him, though. He just needed to come out with it—and my money was on Noelle being able to pull anything out of him that she wanted to. She’d almost gotten me to talk about the baby, and I didn’t even think she’d been trying. But with Babs, she was def
initely trying. He didn’t stand a chance.

  “Then why did you take her to her prom?”

  “Because she’s Katie.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Noelle leaned across the space between them and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek, and he turned as red as I’d ever seen him before. He was squirming as though he was trying to get away from her. “You’re a good man, Babs. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “Okay,” he said. He got up and took a few steps away. “Yeah. I’ve got to— I’ve gotta…go.” He took off down the hall before she could stop him. “Good night,” he called out just before he closed the door to his bedroom.

  Noelle looked at me, one eyebrow raised in question. “I think I freaked him out. Should I apologize?”

  I had to laugh—something she was always capable of making me do. “No. Not for that.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.” Now that Babs had cleared off the sofa, I got up and moved so I could be next to her. “I’m sure of something else, too.”

  “What’s that?” There was a smile in her eyes when she gazed up at me, all innocence.

  “I’ve never been jealous of Babs’s cheek until just then, when you kissed him,” I ground out. “Because I know the feel of your lips on my chin. And I want to feel them everywhere.”

  “Oh,” she said. She sucked in a breath as soon as that solitary word came out of her mouth.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off her lips—the perfect bow shape of them, and the way her tongue darted out to wet them because she was nervous. Her chest was rising and falling with each breath she took, and her lips were perfectly parted, just enough for me to gain easy entry. And I wanted that. I wanted to kiss her so badly I could almost taste her. My shower had done nothing to ease the ache that had built within me from the feel of her body against mine.

  I leaned in, and so did she. Her blue eyes were dark and hungry. My lips were only inches from her, and the clean scent of her soap tickled my nostrils.

  “Wait,” Noelle said just before our lips met. She put her hand on my chest, as though that could prevent me from moving any closer.

  But I had no intention of kissing her if it wasn’t what she wanted. I needed for her to want it as much as I did. I pulled back and shook my head. “What’s wrong? Do you not want—”

  “Are you about to kiss me or Liv?”

  Until she stopped me, the only thought in my head had been about Noelle. Now that she had mentioned Liv, though, I doubted I’d be able to get her out of my mind. She’d been my first girlfriend. She’d been my wife. I’d never kissed anyone else. Kissing Noelle would change everything. It would change me.

  I felt like the biggest ass in the world.

  Liam didn’t answer me. Not in words, at least, but his eyes told me everything I needed to know. They clouded over with that darkness that seemed to grab him every time he thought about Liv, turning from almost golden brown to nearly black in hue.

  He pulled away from me and collapsed against the back of the sofa, and I tried not to let it hurt my feelings. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t feel for me what I felt for him. Not really. I knew he cared for me, or else he wouldn’t always try to buy me things, but he just hadn’t finished grieving his wife yet. There wasn’t a timetable you could apply to mourning someone. You couldn’t work through it in a specified number of steps, and then be done so you could move on with your life. Even when you thought you were done grieving, sometimes the pain would crop back up and smack you in the face when you were least expecting it.

  I’d experienced that plenty of times in grieving for my parents. Ethan and Chris had, too. It would strike us all at different moments, and then we’d be lost in that haze of hurt again, that enormous, hollow, aching pit in the middle of our stomachs.

  Looking at Liam now, sitting beside him as he stared at his hands in his lap, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that his pit of grief was eating him from the inside. It started gnawing at me, too, building up until it threatened to crush me.

  I needed to comfort him. I needed to take some of his pain before it became so great that it overwhelmed him completely, but he always put this wall up between us when it came to his pain. He wouldn’t let me in. Each time he got so overcome by his grief that he couldn’t see the goodness of life, he retreated further into himself and pushed me away.

  I’d thought we had made some progress on that score this afternoon, when he’d told me more about losing Liv. I’d thought maybe he was getting to a point where he could trust me to take some of the hurt from him so he wouldn’t have to carry it all by himself.

  That’s a lot for any one person to try to carry. If he’d give me just a little of it, maybe he could start to move forward. I wanted to try again, to see if he would let me in just a little, so I reached for his hand.

  He pulled his away from me.

  “Liam?” I heard the hurt in my own voice. His hurt. My hurt. Our hurts. All rolled up together.

  “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t let you be swallowed up in all of this. I just can’t.”

  I recoiled as though he’d slapped me in the face. It hurt me as much as a physical blow would have. Maybe more. Being here for him, listening and trying to help him with his grief, was the one thing I felt like I could do for him. But he wouldn’t let me.

  “All right,” I said slowly. One thing I’d learned over the years was that I couldn’t force people to let me share their burdens. It had to be Liam’s choice. He had to choose to let me help, and that seemed unlikely at the moment.

  I leaned across the space between us and kissed his cheek, just like I’d done with Babs only a short while ago.

  He flinched.

  I took that as my signal that I should leave him with his demons. I got up and folded the blanket, setting it over the back of the recliner where he’d found it.

  “Good night, Liam,” I said.

  He didn’t respond. He didn’t even look at me.

  I went into my bedroom and closed the door.

  “Good night, Noelle,” he said, just loud enough for me to make out his muffled words through the wall.

  I collapsed on my bed, desperate to come up with some way I could help him. It wasn’t even about getting him to be able to care for me the way I was starting to care for him. That wasn’t important. I could guard my own heart.

  I would have to, just like always.

  But if he wouldn’t let me do anything, how could I possibly stay beyond the initial week I’d agreed to? I felt as if I was abusing the situation, taking advantage of his generosity, and that didn’t sit well with me. It pressed against my heart and created a whole new sort of unfamiliar ache, and I didn’t have the first clue how to get rid of this one.

  Apart from leaving him. If only the thought of leaving didn’t cause another ache of its own.

  I took the Max across town to Helping Hands the next day while Liam and Babs were at their morning skate.

  Cindy Wakefield, my former boss, looked up when I came through the door. She was smiling at first, but then she glanced out the window and frowned, a deep crease forming between her eyebrows. “Where’s your car? And why haven’t we seen you in forever? I’ve been worried.”

  “We’ve been worried,” Phil Tate corrected her as he came in from the kennels. He shoved his long, stringy blond hair over his shoulder and sat down behind his desk. “You haven’t been here to shower in a long time. No word from you. Nothing.”

  There was no alleviating the worried look in Cindy’s eyes. “You know you can come stay with me anytime, hon. Rob won’t mind if you’re on the couch for a while.”

  Phil and Cindy were the only two employees who worked here. They worked crazy hours because there was way too much work for only two people to do. That was why I’d worked here for so long. But there just wasn’t enough money to pay anyone else. Another employee’s salary could be spent on helping so many dogs instead, and that was the whole purpose of the orga
nization, after all.

  I gave them a sheepish smile. “I never meant to worry you! I’m sorry.” I took a seat behind my old desk. It was covered with the makings of a big mailing—asking for donations—and I automatically started stuffing envelopes. “There was a bit of a problem with my car—”

  “Did your radiator finally give out?” Phil interrupted. “I told you I could help you with that.”

  “Not exactly,” I hedged, but then I had to wonder why I was trying to hide anything from them. Cindy and Phil had been my two closest friends for years. They looked out for me. They deserved to know what had been going on in my life. I set the envelope in my hands down and met Phil’s concerned eyes. “It overheated when I was coming back from an interview in Salem. I pulled onto the shoulder to let it cool down, and a man stopped to help me. He didn’t want me to stay where I was because it was dangerous, so I went—”

  “You left with a man you didn’t know?” Cindy practically shouted at me. She pushed back from her desk so she could really look at me, whereas she had been continuing to work on her computer while we talked. “Noelle, that’s just not a good idea, hon…”

  “It was fine. He took me to a well-lit parking lot and would have called for a tow truck but a pickup truck hit my car.”

  “Pickup?” Phil stared at me, dumbfounded. “On the Hawthorne Bridge Saturday night? That was your car that burned up?”

  I shrugged, sheepish. “You know about that?”

  “It was all over the news!” he said. “Of course we know about it. How could we have missed it?”

  Cindy got up and came around her desk, sitting on the edge of it with her ankles crossed. “That’s been almost a week, Noelle. Where have you been all this time?”

  “Liam took me back to his place—”

  “Liam?” Phil interrupted again. “Do we know Liam?”