“The man who saved me.”
“You not only got in a car and drove off with a man you’d never met before, but you went home with him?”
I’d never seen Phil so upset before. He was usually calm and collected. That was why he was so good with the dogs. Some of them had been abused or neglected by the time they got here. He helped them learn that sometimes, a human touch could be loving. He gave them a possibility for a good future.
Right now, though, he was livid.
“He’s a nice man,” I said. “No, he’s better than that. He’s a good man, and he’s gone out of his way to take care of me.” I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to defend Liam to my friends. The two of them might never meet him. Maybe it was better if they didn’t. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself from wanting to be sure Phil and Cindy didn’t think poorly of him.
“Yeah, I bet he’s taking care of you. In exchange for what?”
And that was the problem. Liam wasn’t getting anything in return. Nothing at all, not even what Phil was insinuating. He hadn’t kissed me last night, and I couldn’t tell if he had really wanted to kiss me or had been thinking about his dead wife, and I was so insanely confused about it all that I wanted to scream.
“It’s not like that,” I said. I got up and headed into the kennel. The dogs would understand, and they wouldn’t make assumptions about a man they’d never met.
“Baby girl…” Phil said on a sigh as I left.
There was a new pit bull at the back, well away from the other dogs. He was afraid, too. When I came in, he let out a low growl, trying to scare me as much as he was. I kept my distance from his cage, talking to the other dogs and taking a few of them out to play. That way, he could get to know my voice and start to figure out that I wasn’t here to harm him.
I understood dogs like this one. It was easy to figure out their motivations.
For that matter, I understood why Phil and Cindy were reacting like they were. They just wanted to be sure I was safe. They’d known me for years, since I’d started coming to help out with the dogs when I was fifteen.
The only one I couldn’t seem to understand—to really, truly understand—was Liam.
The Blue Jackets had beaten us in overtime, but at least we’d managed to squeak out the extra point in the standings for taking them beyond regulation. I’d scored twice more in that game—the only two goals we got. I’d almost gotten another in the overtime period, but my aim had been off by just a hair. The puck had hit the post and then the crossbar before it’d come back out, zipping into the neutral zone from the force I’d put behind it with my slapper.
Even though it was a loss, the one point we did get for the game left us in really good positioning for the home stretch of the regular season. Nothing was official until the last game of the season ended, but it looked like the Storm would be in the playoffs this year, barring a late collapse or something else of that nature. We weren’t even looking at filling one of the wild card slots right now. It seemed as though we would finish third in the Pacific Division, meaning we would face either the LA Kings or the Vancouver Canucks in the first round—whichever team finished in second.
Since I’d been the only guy on the team to score tonight, the media wanted to talk to me after the game. The fact that I now had a three-game point streak going might have played into their sudden interest in me, too. They hadn’t wanted to talk to me much until a couple of games ago, other than immediately after the trade deadline. Now I was intriguing, though—a hard-luck forward suddenly finding the back of the net again.
We had another game tomorrow night, so Scotty didn’t want to let the media in to wander from stall to stall. He let them pick three names—me, Zee, since he was the team’s captain, and Andrew Jensen, our top defenseman who’d had a miscue on the Blue Jackets’ overtime goal—and we went out to meet them while the rest of the guys showered and changed to head home.
When it was my turn, they asked me all the typical, boring questions you’d expect in the middle of a playoff chase: How important was this game? What do you have to do to prepare for the Coyotes tomorrow night? Tell us about that goal you scored in the first. I gave them the pat answers they were expecting, hoping I could get back into the locker room pretty quickly. I wanted to get out of there so I could get Noelle from the owner’s box.
Ever since I’d almost kissed her last night, I’d felt like shit. I wanted to explain myself better. My nonanswer when she’d asked if I was about to kiss her or Liv would be easy to misinterpret, and based on Noelle’s behavior around me each time I’d seen her today, I could only assume that she had jumped to conclusions—the wrong conclusions.
She was definitely avoiding me. She hadn’t gotten up to have breakfast with me and Babs before we had to leave for the morning skate. When we got home, she’d left a note that she had taken the Max to volunteer at the dog rescue and would be back in the afternoon. I’d texted her to get the address so I could come pick her up, but she hadn’t responded. I didn’t know whether she’d left her phone at home or if she simply didn’t want to talk to me. She hadn’t walked through the door until right about the time I had to go lie down for my pre-game nap, and even though she’d been smiling, it hadn’t reached her eyes. On our way to the arena, she had hardly said a word—the complete opposite of the behavior I typically expected of her. She still came with me—there was that—but it seemed like she’d put a wall up between us. Maybe like the wall she was always saying I had up.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that it was all because of what had happened last night. I needed to make it right because I couldn’t stand seeing her down. I needed to make sure she knew I hadn’t been thinking about anyone but her, and that had been what had bothered me—the fact that it had been so easy to forget about Liv. Even with giving her the truth, I’d still feel like an ass. But at least it would be for the right reasons.
I looked at the reporters surrounding me with their recorders and cell phones held up to catch my every word, waiting to see if they had any more questions. It seemed like no one was going to ask me anything else, so I was just about to excuse myself when Mike Polanski, the beat reporter for the Portland Tribune, caught me off guard.
“Six goals and an assist in your last three games,” he said. “That’s quite a point streak, Kally. You haven’t scored at a clip like that many times in your career, and you’ve had one heck of a career. Actually, you haven’t scored much at all lately until these past three games. What’s behind the sudden uptick in production?”
Noelle.
Her name nearly slipped off my tongue, but I bit it back just in time. That sort of honesty isn’t really acceptable in the hockey world. We are trained from a young age to give the expected answers, to put team before self when it comes to praise, to put self before team when it comes to placing blame, and to hide as much as possible so the opponent can’t pick up on something they can exploit.
I shook my head, trying to get my thoughts back on track. I was still on the job. I had to act like the pro I was. This wasn’t the time to let any more of my personal life creep into my professional life than it already had in recent years.
“Jim Sutter was right,” I said, allowing myself a grin. “A change of scenery was exactly what I needed to find my game again. Just finally settling in and getting comfortable here is all.”
“That’s all?” Polanski prodded. He lifted a brow, pushing his cell phone a little closer to me. “Nothing more exciting than that?”
Nothing I intended to give the media. “That’s all it is,” I lied.
Zee pushed past the reporters so he could get into position for his turn with them. He smirked at me, and I knew he was thinking about Noelle, too. I scowled at him in return but didn’t worry about it. He wouldn’t say anything until we were back in the locker room. I didn’t want to share Noelle with the world. Not yet. They’d made such a spectacle of everything surrounding Liv’s death, delving too deep into my personal life. I wante
d to protect Noelle from that. I wanted to protect her from a lot of things.
“Things are clicking with RJ and Eller now,” I said. “I’ve had enough time with the two of them that we are pretty comfortable on the ice together, that we know where the others will be. I’m just moving on.”
That part rang with more truth than I had expected. I was moving on. From the early part of my career when I’d played for the Islanders. From Liv. And maybe that was okay. She never would have wanted me to stop living after she was gone. She wouldn’t want me to never love again. I was the one who had put that on myself, not her. I didn’t even know if this was love, whatever was happening between me and Noelle, but I knew deep inside that even Liv would see it as a good thing. A positive. Something I should pursue, not push away.
She would never see it as me being unfaithful to her. The truth was, I couldn’t have Liv, and I would never be able to have her again. She would want me to find peace. She’d want me to look forward, not back.
Wouldn’t she?
It felt as though a switch had been flipped in my brain. If only it was as easy to flip a switch in my life so all those feelings of guilt that cropped up each time I looked at Noelle would disappear.
But then…they hadn’t come up last night. Not until Noelle had reminded me of Liv. Maybe I was looking to the future more successfully than even I knew.
Once I was sure the reporters were done asking their questions, I headed back into the locker room and cleaned up. I was still getting dressed when Babs was on his way out the door with Razor, presumably for dinner with some of the other young guys. Apparently, whatever Razor had said to piss off Babs last night hadn’t caused too much of a rift between them.
“I’ll see you back at home,” Babs said as he left.
“Yeah. See you.”
He wasn’t coming home right away. That meant I could take Noelle home and have some quiet time with her. At least for a little while. I doubted Babs would be out too late since we had another game tomorrow. Razor, on the other hand…
I hurried through finishing everything I needed to do so I could get up to her sooner. As soon as I walked out of the locker room, I felt lighter simply in the knowledge that I would see Noelle momentarily. That I could talk to her and make things right.
When I got up to the owner’s box, she was sitting with a group of the other players’ wives and girlfriends. They were all laughing and having a grand time. All except Noelle.
She was laughing along with them, all right, but it wasn’t the sort of laugh I’d come to expect from her—the sort that tinkled and made me think of Liv’s wind chimes. It was more the sort of laugh that made it clear she was anything but truly amused. She was just laughing because she didn’t want anyone to know something was wrong.
Maybe those other women didn’t realize it, but I did. They just didn’t know her well enough yet. They couldn’t read the lifelessness in her eyes, and they couldn’t feel the sag in her shoulders. I could. And I hated it. I wanted to take the person responsible for it to task, but the only one I knew of who had anything to do with her being so disheartened was me.
That only made me more determined to fix it. To apologize for how I’d reacted last night. To explain it so she would understand.
I headed over to stand near the women she was with—Rachel, Sara, and that whole group. “Noelle?”
They all turned to face me with big smiles and more laughter. Noelle’s smile was the only one that mattered to me at the moment, though, and hers was as fake as I’d ever seen.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“If you are,” she said, gathering up her sweater and blanket and purse.
“We’re stealing Noelle from you on Sunday,” Sara said, grinning at me without bothering to get up. “It’s going to be a girls’ day. Facials and pedicures and that sort of thing.”
“Okay.” I tried to catch Noelle’s eye, but she wouldn’t look at me. I didn’t know how she’d feel about all of that—if she wanted to go or not. I’d never try to stop her from doing anything she wanted, especially not something like this that would be good for her. But I also didn’t want her to feel like she had to do something she wasn’t interested in.
Rachel helped Noelle fold her blanket. “Brenden’s hopeful that you and Jamie will be home and won’t mind some company from him and the munchkins. He doesn’t have the kids by himself too often. I think he’s more nervous than anything. He’s kind of trusting that you two can give him some backup.”
“I don’t know about Babs, but I don’t mind.” In my time with the Islanders, when given the choice between hanging out with some of the guys with wives and kids or spending time with the young, single guys, I’d always taken the kid route. I hadn’t been in Portland very long yet, but I saw no reason to change that just because it was a new team with different teammates.
Rachel’s little girl grinned up at me. “Good. Tuck misses Mr. Jamie.”
“I’d hate for Tuck to miss him too much longer,” I said.
She gave me a sage nod, but then Noelle was ready to go. I took the blanket from her arms and held out a hand for her. She didn’t take it.
I’d fucked things up even worse than I thought I had, apparently.
She checked to be sure her purse was strapped across her body, and her hand rested over the outside of it, where it bounced against her hip. More and more, I wondered what she kept inside that bag. She walked alongside me in silence the whole way to the parking garage, but it wasn’t our usual, easy silence. It was tense and awkward and filled with hurt feelings. I opened the car door for her, and she gave me a slight nod of thanks as she sat down, tucking her skirt in around her legs.
I closed the door and took longer than necessary going around to the driver’s side, trying to figure out how to fix what I’d messed up. Nothing had come to mind by the time I sat behind the wheel.
I glanced over at her. Her gaze was fixed squarely on her hands. She’d linked her fingers together, almost in supplication.
There was nothing I could come up with that would be better than simply telling her how very sorry I was and begging her forgiveness. “Noelle, I’m—”
“You had a good game tonight,” she said, cutting me off before I could get my apology out. “It’s too bad the team lost.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t hide the confusion from my tone. Noelle never wanted to talk about trivial things. Granted, hockey wasn’t trivial to me, but it was just a game. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t important. Small talk always seemed to drive her crazy, or at the very least to turn her off.
I started the ignition and backed out of my spot, driving us to the street while I tried to figure out what was going on in her head.
“It was really nice of them to invite me to join them on Sunday. I can’t think of the last time I had a girls’ day like that.”
Something told me she hadn’t ever had a girl’s day quite like this one would be. “You don’t have to go with them if you don’t want to.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to?”
“I just… I just meant that you don’t need to feel like I expect you to do anything. You should do what you want, not what you think I would want you to do.”
“You would want me to do this, though. Wouldn’t you?”
We were halfway home, and she still wouldn’t look at me. I hated this. I hated every single moment of this.
“I want you to do what makes you happy, Noelle.”
“No, you don’t.”
She didn’t sound contentious about that. It was just a matter-of-fact statement, like there could be no argument because it was the cold, hard truth.
“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously. For the first time since I’d met her, I felt like I was on thin ice. Like one wrong move would send me back ten steps.
I pulled into the garage at the condo and found a spot. When I parked, we sat there for a minute with the engine running.
“I mean, you want me to do wha
t makes you happy, and you want that to make me happy. You’re always trying to take care of me, to give me things that you think I need whether I need them or not, and to do things for me even if I can do them myself.” Finally, she looked up, her eyes so filled with anguish that it made my chest ache. “I never know if you’re really doing all this for me or if it’s for Liv.”
I opened my mouth to interrupt, but she cut me off before I could.
“And it doesn’t really matter who you’re doing it for, because I am not Liv, and I can never be Liv. I’m me. Noelle. I’m right here, trying to be part of your life like you seem to want, but you won’t let me in. You won’t let me give back to you. I’m sitting around all the time, doing nothing other than being your so-called lucky charm. That’s not enough. I’m starting to really care about you, Liam, and it scares me because I don’t know where you are. Where your head is. I can feel where your heart is, and it’s all over the place and hurting and you won’t let me help.”
There were a thousand things I needed to tell her. How I wanted to let her in but didn’t know how. How I wanted to take care of her and give her all the things she needed and more because she deserved to be taken care of. How simply the fact that she existed and was in my life was enough to make me happy, and I just needed to learn to give her the things she needed. How I didn’t care if my luck all dried up today, as long as she was with me. How I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but I thought I was falling in love with her even though I’d been certain I would never love again after I’d lost Liv. But the only thing that came out of my mouth was, “I know you’re not Liv.”
“Do you?”
The doubt in her voice and the hurt in her eyes were enough to puncture my lungs, just like a broken rib had a few years ago. I didn’t know how to prove it to her, how to make her understand where I was coming from and what I wanted us to be. How could I make her understand when I still didn’t?
“I’ll see you upstairs, Liam.” She opened her door and got out, leaving me sitting in my running car, my forehead against the steering wheel.
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