by Vivian Lux
Jake’s hands on my throat. The red mist creeping in from the edges of my sight as he closed my airway. The terrible thudding of the blood in my ears that was still not loud enough to drown out the jingle of his belt buckle as he freed himself. Nor was it loud enough to mask the sound of stitches popping as he yanked my jeans down past my hips. I had stomped and squirmed, clawed and fought, but the harder I fought, the more quickly I lost oxygen…
And then the yell, the blur, the dizzy thumping as I sank suddenly to the floor, freed from Jake’s grasp by Ian, swooping in like an avenging angel.
The second time he’d rescued me.
First I had to find my breath again, and stop the world from spinning away. My sight cleared in increments, revealing the chaos around me. But all the while, Ian was at the very center of my vision, the only thing I could see through the blur.
Then I had to quiet my hysterical gasps. Then I had to wait for my heart rate to slow.
Only then could I stand up and go to him, and by that time, the ambulance had come and they were lifting him up on the stretcher while he gritted his teeth in pain.
Then the police came, with their questions and evidence collecting. I tried to give them the time they needed, but all the while I was thinking about this.
This moment, when I would finally see him again.
I burst into his room and stopped dead, my hands going to my mouth. “Oh Ian, no.”
He was lying on a hospital bed, his massive frame making it look like it was built for a child. The sheets were twisted into ropes around him, no doubt from him writhing in pain.
A cast covered his leg from the thigh all the way down to the ankle.
“How long?” I asked, barely able to contain my tears.
He swallowed and stared at the ceiling. I felt my heart sink. The finals were in ten days. There was no way…
“Six months,” he breathed. “Six months in the cast.”
“The Cup—” I choked.
He blinked and then chuckled. “They’re going to have to win the Cup without me.” The last word came out in a strangled whisper.
My heart broke in half. I went to him and brushed the dark hair off of his forehead. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Ian. I am so sorry. I know hockey is everything to you.”
His eyes snapped open and he turned, craning his neck to look me right in the eye. “No,” he said firmly. “You’re wrong.” He lifted my hand and kissed it fiercely. “You’re my everything.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ian
The nurse who came in pushing the wheelchair was as big as a house. And stronger looking, too. I briefly considered asking her to try out for the Blackhawks next season.
“Let’s get you home, Mr. Carter,” she said sweetly, in a soft, girlish voice that was completely at odds with her appearance.
“Yes, Mr. Carter,” Candace echoed, smiling. “Let’s get you home.”
I couldn’t keep the flutter of anger from my belly as we took the elevator down to the main floor. Waves of nausea coursed through my body, and I gritted my teeth, steeling myself as the elevator settled to a stop.
Then Candace’s small hands alighted on my shoulder, and I felt instantly calmer. “Every day,” she said, echoing the words the doctor had said just before my discharge. “It’s going to get better. Little by little, every day you will heal.”
I nodded, but when I caught my reflection in the mirrored glass, I could see the sullen look on my face, and I hated it.
“Wait here,” Candace said as we rolled on to the front entranceway. “I just need to run and grab my car.”
“I can get up now,” I told the nurse, once Candace had disappeared into the parking garage.
“No, I’m sorry sir, not yet,” the nurse said softly.
I gritted my teeth, and angrily closed my fingers around the armrest of the wheelchair. The five minutes it took for Candace to pull around the front felt like a lifetime.
But finally she did pull up, and got out of the driver’s seat with a huge grin on her face.
“What are you so happy about?” I asked. I genuinely wanted to know.
She winked at me. “Now it’s my turn to make you wait until I open the door!” she crowed triumphantly. Then she looked up at the sky. “I wish it was like twenty degrees colder.” Then she looked startled. “I cannot believe I just said that!”
I laughed out loud, some of the tension draining away from my shoulders. I couldn’t stay mad, not with Candace around. “I wish I had a tape recorder, so I could play that back for you,” I teased her.
She stuck her tongue out at me, and then opened the passenger door. I got up slowly, not wanting to get dizzy, and accepted the crutches that the nurse held out silently. The pain meds they had me on made me dizzy as all hell. I took one cautious step forward, and finding that I was still stable, took another, then another. “Look at you,” Candace said encouragingly. I bristled at being patronized, but then tamped it back down again.
“Yeah. Look at me walking. I’ll be skating again in no time,” I said.
I sounded unconvinced to my own ears, but Candace clapped her hands together. “That’s exactly right, Ian. This is just temporary.”
Temporary, I thought, as Candace pulled out of hospital parking lot. This is just temporary, except, so much was happening without me during this temporary time. Everything I worked for, everything I’d dreamed of in the past four years had been snatched away in an instant. Life was so Goddamned unpredictable.
This was temporary, I thought to myself. But there are some other things that I’d like to make permanent.
I directed Candace to my parents’ house in a series of grunts and gestures. Candace seemed to know that I needed quiet, and kept the conversation to a minimum.
“Is this it?” she asked, as we rolled up in front of the familiar tract house.
“This is it,” I echoed.
“You grew up here?” she asked. She was leaning forward, looking like she wanted to take it in all in one glance.
I shook my head. “Not grew up, no. My mom and me, we lived in an apartment in a shitty neighborhood up until I got a scholarship to join the youth hockey league. When Randall came and gave a talk to us about high school teams in one of the Blackhawks’ outreach programs, my mom caught his eye.” I shook my head. “I wonder sometimes if he knew what he was getting into, dating a single mom with a juvenile delinquent as a son.” Candace smiled softly. “But he stuck around, and he’s been there for me, and that’s more than I can say about the bastard whose last name is on my birth certificate.”
Candace pressed her lips together. “I think that’s probably the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.
“What, really?”
“That he stuck around.” She took my hand. “That’s kind of what it’s all about, isn’t it?”
She held my gaze for a very long time, the moment stretching out between us with so many things that I could say to fill the silence, so many things that I wanted to tell her and couldn’t find the words.
She closed her hand over mine. “I can’t wait to meet them,” she finally said.
I swallowed. The spell was broken, the moment had passed, but that lingering feeling, of words left unsaid, remained.
A thought I had been having, one that was being repeated with longer and louder insistence, took hold.
I smiled. There was no better time. And I knew the perfect place.
Having reached my decision, I leaned forward and grabbed for the handle of the car door. Candace leaned over and slapped my hand away. “That’s not how this works,” she barked menacingly, and I had to laugh.
I sat back in the seat, and allowed Candace get out, walk around, and then open the door for me. “You are just completely delighted that you can do this to me, aren’t you?” I asked her as she took my hand and steadied me while I rose from the passenger seat.
“Oh, absolutely.” Her wide eyes twinkled with mischief, and it wa
s all I could do not to bend her over the car right then and there.
But my parents were waiting, and most likely my mom was already watching through the window. With Candace’s help, I made it to the front door without stumbling once.
I lifted my hand to knock, but the door flew open before my hand could even connect.
I was right. My mother had been waiting. She stood in the doorway with her hands folded in the prayer position, her fingertips pressed to her mouth like they always were when she was trying her hardest not to cry. “Baby,” she said, opening the door and folding me into her embrace.
I had to nearly bend in half for her to get her arms around my body, but I allowed her to pull me down to her. I knew this was as much for her as it was for me.
“You look good, son,” Randall called, rounding the corner out of the kitchen and into the front hallway. “How are you feeling?”
“A little ridiculous.” I laughed, my voice muffled by my mother’s blouse.
“Helen, you’re suffocating the boy,” Randall chided gently.
My mother eased her grip on me, and stepped back. Her eyes were bright with tears, but she held her head high. “And thank you for bringing him,” she said, peering around my shoulder.
“You really do suck at introductions,” Candace chided me, socking me gently in the arm. “Mrs. Randall, I’m Candace,” she said, extending her hand.
“Oh please, call me Helen,” my mother insisted, batting Candace’s hand away and pulling her in for an immediate hug. “I’d say Ian has told me so much about you, but my son doesn’t know how to pick up the phone and call his own mother.”
“I told her,” Randall piped up. “I said you’re the reason he’s been so distracted at practice. It’s very nice to finally meet you.”
He said it so fondly that Candace had to laugh. “I—I’m sorry about that,” she said, blushing.
“I’m sorry that it’s under these circumstances that I’m finally getting to meet you.”
I swallowed. “Me, too,” I said, rubbing her back. There were so many things I wished I could do over again when it came to Candace. How we met, how I acted, how we fought and chewed each other out. But she kept staying by my side, and giving me a reason to try over and over again to make everything perfect. I bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “I love you,” I said softly.
Her eyes widened. Then she smiled and slid her hand into mine. “I love you, too,” she said firmly, squeezing my hand so hard I had no choice but to know she was mine.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Candace
No giant, grand gestures. No tearful confessions. Just my man and me, hand in hand, saying ‘I love you’ like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Because it was.
The romance I dreamed of was nothing compared to the reality I lived.
It was better.
Ian held my hand firmly, and I let him lead me slowly into his parents’ house. “Aren’t you going to give me the grand tour?” I asked him, smirking.
He caught the gist of my meaning, and gave me a wolfish smile. “I know how much you like tours,” he said. “But there’s something I wanted to show you first.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yup, just, uh—give me one second. Stay here.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but he ignored me. “Hey Mom, can I ask you something in the kitchen?”
“Whatever you need, baby,” she cooed, her eyes still bright.
Coach Randall and I both stared at their backs as they disappeared slowly around the corner. “Any idea what this is about?” Coach asked me.
I shook my head. “No clue.”
“He sort of just does what he wants, doesn’t he?”
I nodded and tried not to betray just how much I loved that about him.
I heard a drawer open, and a few more soft voices, and then Ian emerged with his mother, looking calm and collected. His mother, on the other hand, was wiping her eyes.
“Hey, Candy, come out back with me a sec.” He reached out his hand, and I immediately went to stand by him, acting as his other crutch. We negotiated the cluttered living room carefully and emerged out onto a back deck and into the weak sunshine of an early April day.
“What are we looking at?” I asked.
“We’re not quite there yet. Follow me.” I handed him his other crutch and he took off, loping across the yard with big, swinging strides. I rushed behind him, certain he was going to fall over and break his knee all over again.
“The woods?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s not far!” Ian bellowed. He had that single-minded focus thing of his going on. When all that mattered to him was his goal.
He was a beautiful, stubborn, ass.
“If you fall over a root and kill yourself, I’ll never speak to you again,” I huffed, shoving my hands in my pockets. Supposedly it was spring, but you’d never know it. My breath puffed out in little white clouds.
Ian stopped just on the top of a rise and leaned his crutches against a tree. I went to him and helped him hop around to a sitting position.
That’s when I realized we were overlooking a small pond.
“What’s this?” I asked, delighted. There was the smell of earth and moss in the air, letting me know that in spite of the cold, things were starting to thaw. I took in a deep lungful.
Ian looked out, his face full of too many feelings at once. “When Coach Randall moved us out here, I found this place by accident. I used to skate out here.” He cleared his throat. “Remember the night we met?”
I laughed. “Of course I do.”
“Remember when I said I’d teach you how to skate?”
“I do. I couldn’t believe you knew how.”
He smiled. “Well, I’m going to have to learn again.” He cleared his throat and shifted, reaching into his back pocket. “But once I do, I want to take you here. Teach you like I said I would.” He looked out over the pond as the wind blew a silent ripple across the surface. “It’s not frozen now, though, so we’ll have to wait until it is.” He was toying with something in his fingers. “That’s what I want, more than anything, is to teach you to skate next winter, ah—so what I’m asking is—will you stick with me ‘til next winter?”
I laughed out loud. “Sure, Ian.”
He took my left hand in his. “Will you stick with me afterwards, too?”
I looked down and gasped as he slid the ring onto my finger.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” he explained hastily. “And honestly, this wasn’t how I was planning on doing it. I wanted to win the Cup, call you out on the ice, and have everyone watch as I proposed. With the confetti coming down all around us when you said yes. But—it didn’t work out that way, and I can’t exactly get down on one knee these days.” He said, looking down, his lashes, shadowing his cheekbones. “And for a moment just now, I was really pissed about that. But I remembered that none of that mattered, really. What mattered was me asking, and you saying yes.”
I stared at him, openmouthed. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
“I am.”
“Where did you get this ring?”
He smiled. “From my mom. Just now, in the kitchen. I’ll buy you a real one, I swear, it’s just—I just really want you to wear my ring, Candace.”
“Oh my God, Ian.”
“Candace?”
“What?”
He took my face in his hands. “Will you fucking answer the question, please?”
I laughed out loud. “I’m sorry, what was the question again?”
He sighed through gritted teeth. “Will—you—marry—me?”
“You always tell me to say what I want.”
Disappointment fluttered across his face. “Okay,” he exhaled.
“Yes, Ian. Yes, I want to marry you.”
“Oh thank God,” he breathed, and kissed me so hard, it took my breath away.
Epilogue
Candace
&nbs
p; (Seven months later)
I wove through the crowd, ducking the flying arms and lifted glasses, and grinning at the drunken cries of congratulations.
Being the only sober person at a wedding is both highly annoying and highly amusing.
Ian was still sitting at our table, right where I had left him. “Nice toast, baby.” He smiled at me once I made it unscathed to his side. He grinned, sliding his hand up my thigh. “How’re you feeling?”
“Hot as hell,” I complained, grabbing the wedding program and fanning myself. “This humidity is killing me.”
“Me, too,” Ian grinned. “I think that’s going to be what I’ll miss most when this is over,” he said, rubbing his hand over my round, taut belly. “We finally agree on the thermostat.”
“I guess pregnancy does have some perks, then!” I said. “For you anyway!” I sat down with a heavy grunt and stretched my puffy legs out. “How about you? How are you feeling?”
His lips pursed. The cast has only come off last month, but Ian had already thrown himself into a rigorous and, in my mind, completely insane regimen of physical therapy. I knew he wanted to be back on the rink as soon as he could, but this was utterly ridiculous.
He told me it was so he could chase our child when he or she was born, but there had to be something else driving him.
“I’m great,” he smiled. That smile was suspiciously smug.
“And now,” the deejay interrupted, “I’d like to invite all of the couples here today to surround Tim and Donna, as they have their first dance as man and wife.”
I leaned my head on Ian’s shoulder and smiled as I watched my radiant sister step out into the center of the dance floor with her brand-new husband.
“Well?” Ian said, nudging me.
“Well what?”
“You heard the man,” he said, taking my hand. “It’s time to get our asses out on the dance floor.”
“But—” I stammered, as he reached for his cane, “your knee.”
He stood up slowly and looked at me. “You want what I want, right, baby?”
