My Stubborn Heart

by Becky Wade

  “You can go watch football if you want,” she murmured to him. “Gran and I are okay here.”

  “No, I’m good.”

  He stayed and played with them, even though she could tell he thought Rummikub was a slow-moving, sissy game.

  When dinnertime rolled around everyone declared themselves still half full from the enormous meal they’d eaten earlier. But saying it was a Thanksgiving night tradition, Matt’s mom, grandmother, and aunt assembled sandwiches for everyone on paper plates. Toasted white bread with mayonnaise, iceberg lettuce, and slabs of leftover turkey liberally sprinkled with salt and pepper. They cut Kate’s sandwich on the diagonal and served it to her with potato chips. Kate hadn’t had much of an appetite before she started on the food, but the sandwich tasted absolutely delicious and she ended up eating everything on her plate, then chasing it with Gran’s pumpkin pie and coffee.

  “I feel like I should warn you,” Matt said to her. “Every Thanksgiving night they play Trivial Pursuit, men against women.”

  “Tell me it’s one of the newer versions.”

  “You wish. It’s the original version. The same one they’ve been playing for decades.”

  “Maybe Gran and I should make our exit.”

  “Nope, you’re staying till the bitter end.”

  “I’m going to embarrass myself.”

  He regarded her with amusement. “So? You embarrass me every week at poker.”

  “I wouldn’t have to embarrass you if you had an ounce of skill.”

  He laughed and Kate saw his mom, Elaine, look alertly toward the sound.

  “Kate,” Elaine said, “if you have a minute, I’d like to show you some portraits I had made.”

  “Sure.” Kate followed her to one of the guest bedrooms. Elaine opened her suitcase, took out a flat box, and motioned for Kate to sit near her on the edge of the bed. One by one, she showed Kate beautiful shots of her family on the beach surrounded by dunes, white sand, and clear water.

  “I convinced Matt to come and see us for a week this past August,” Elaine said. “These were taken then. I brought copies and gave them out to everyone earlier.”

  Kate nodded. “They’re gorgeous.” There were mostly group shots, then some of just Matt’s brother’s family, some of just the two grandchildren together, some of Matt’s mom and dad. The final picture was a candid of Matt. The photographer had captured him from the side, standing with his hands in his pockets.

  “Matt doesn’t know I had that one taken. He wouldn’t pose for it, of course, but I wanted . . .” Elaine’s voice trailed off. “I wanted one of him.”

  In the shot, Matt looked starkly handsome and achingly alone. He was staring moodily out at the ocean while the wind ruffled his hair and pressed his shirt against his chest.

  “It captures him well, and yet it makes me sad every time I look at it,” Elaine said.

  Kate could see why. It made her sad to look at it, too.

  “He’s been through an awful time.” Elaine’s kind, vividly bright brown eyes filled with a sheen of tears. Sniffing a little, she surveyed the portrait for a moment more, then put it back into its box with all the others and set it aside. She swiped beneath her eyes with her fingers. “I’m sorry to get emotional on you like this.”

  “It’s really okay,” Kate assured her.

  “It’s just that I’ve been worried about him for so long. This trip he seems better. For the first time in years, I see improvement in him and I’m just so relieved.”

  “I understand.”

  “You’ve known him for a few months.”

  “I have.”

  “Does he seem better to you, too?”

  “Yes.”

  She angled her head slightly. “What do you think’s helped him?”

  What could she say? She didn’t want to speculate, and she really didn’t want to betray his confidence. “I don’t know for sure.”

  “Are you a praying person?” Elaine asked.

  “I am.”

  “I knew it!” She reached over and gave Kate’s hand an impulsive squeeze. “I’m a praying person, too, and I’ve been praying like crazy for Matt for a long time. I’ve been praying that someone would be able to get through to him. None of us could seem to do it. We kept trying and trying, and he kept shutting us out.”

  “Yeah, he’s good at that.”

  “But you’ve managed to do it, I think. He must have looked out the window a dozen times while he was waiting for you to arrive. You’ve been able to get through to him.”

  Kate hesitated. “Maybe,” she allowed.

  “I want to thank you. I’m so grateful.”

  “No thanks needed.” She’d never had the ability or strength to heal Matt on her own. “God’s been working on him.”

  Elaine nodded. “Well, praise God. He really does answer prayers.”

  “Yes, He really does.”

  A pulse of understanding, agreement, and common belief passed between them. It was that recognition of a friend, of someone like-minded, that spurred Kate to ask Elaine what she’d been wanting to ask. “I have a question for you.”

  “Sure.”

  “What are your thoughts about Matt’s hockey?” She hadn’t said a word to Matt about it yet, but the career he’d walked away from hovered near her thoughts all the time. Nearer as the days passed.

  Elaine’s expression softened with memory. “Did you ever see him play?”

  “No.”

  “He was amazing to watch. This perfect combination of power and coordination and grace. He wasn’t one to throw off the gloves and fight. He was always very calm, cool, and collected. Absolutely lethal. You wouldn’t have believed it to see him. I didn’t.” She smiled. “He played on the American Olympic team, you know. And he was the Barons’ leading scorer the year they won the Cup. So you see, I’m not just another mother boasting about her child when I say that he was one of the world’s very best.”

  One of the world’s very best hockey players was currently laying tile in Kate’s grandmother’s bathroom. It no longer felt quite right. The work of restoring old homes was respectable work. For anyone else, it might have been perfectly in line with God’s plan. But not for Matt. God had bigger plans for him.

  “I try to talk to him about hockey now and then,” Elaine continued. “You’d think that would be healthy for him, right? To talk about something that was such a big part of his life? I mean, if you knew all the hours, the traveling, the practicing. But he won’t discuss it with me. Won’t watch it with his dad. Nothing.”

  “I’ve noticed that, too,” Kate said.

  “For it to have ended that way . . .” Elaine clucked her tongue. “For it to have been left so unfinished. I don’t know if it’s good for Matt to have to live with that.” She gave Kate a sad, confiding smile. “I know he’d never consider it, that it’s impossible, but I sometimes dream of him going back to it, being able to end his career the way that other athletes do.”

  Her words so echoed Kate’s own feelings on the subject that chills raced all the way down her arms. It wasn’t really Elaine who’d just confirmed it for her. It was God. His plan was for Matt to go back to his hockey.

  Just like with Matt’s emotional scars, she had no power in and of herself to make him return to hockey. But she was willing to let God use her.

  He needs to return to it, she could sense God saying. It was a refrain He’d been whispering to her repeatedly lately. He’s not done.

  Oh, heaven, she thought. Matt wasn’t going to be happy about it.

  chapter twenty

  On Sunday night, Kate finished her dinner of microwaved leftovers and curled up on the sofa in the den with her novel. Halfway through chapter three, a knock sounded at the front door. She jumped at the sound, startled, because she wasn’t expecting anyone.

  She padded to the door and peered through the peephole.

  Matt stood on the other side, framed by darkness. Her stomach did a euphoric flip. She unlocked and opened
the door, grinning at him.

  He had on the brown sweater she loved, the one with the short zipper at the front of the neck. His family had remained in town all weekend, and though he’d snuck away to call her often, she hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving.

  He smiled. “Rumor has it that the seniors are out of the house tonight.”

  “Rumor’s correct. They’re at a piano concert.”

  He came forward, so close he was almost on top of her. She gave a half yelp, half giggle and started backing up. He kept coming. She kept retreating.

  “Someone from Ireland, I think,” she said. “Playing the piano, that is.” You’re babbling, Kate! She couldn’t help it; his nearness made her head spin. Her rear hit the nearest wall. “The seniors have a more active social life than I do.”

  “Is your social life so bad?” he murmured. He trapped her body with his, then angled his head down for a wickedly good kiss.

  Kate’s heart thumped wildly. It didn’t take much of him to set her off. Just looking at his hands, or catching a whiff of his soap could make her body hum. Much less his kisses! Oh, his kisses. She’d experienced a few kisses from a few different boyfriends in her time, but never like this. His kisses blanked out her mind and flushed her with heat.

  “I missed you,” he whispered.

  “I missed you, too.”

  He held her face in his hands and gave her another gentle kiss. Pulling back, he gazed down at her with one side of his mouth curling upward.

  She led him to the sofa. William had started a fire in the room’s rock fireplace earlier. It flickered and popped sedately.

  Matt did his usual thing, scooping up her legs and depositing them in his lap. “You look beautiful.”

  “I do?” She glanced down at herself. She was wearing an ivory velour sweat suit, her pink UGGs, and her hair in a ponytail.

  His eyes sparked with humor. “You’re supposed to just say thanks.”

  “Thanks. You look beautiful, too.”

  “I do?” he asked, mimicking her, and they both smiled.

  “Your family’s all gone?”

  “Yes, thank God. I just dropped my parents off at the airport.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said, in response to his agonized expression. “The weekend wasn’t that painful, was it?”

  “It was painful, Kate.”

  “Well, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing.”

  He grunted and stretched his arm along the back of the sofa. Gently, he took hold of a tendril of hair that had fallen out of her ponytail. He rubbed it between his callused fingertips.

  Oh boy. She didn’t want to do anything to rock this boat, to jeopardize the easiness between them. But she was going to have to. The hockey thing had become a pressure inside her.

  While they talked, he continued to toy with her hair. When she got up to get them both bowls of Cherry Garcia ice cream, he stole more kisses from her in the kitchen. Back in the den, he poked at the fire and added a few pieces of wood to it. They ate their ice cream side by side on the sofa, admiring the new flames and laughing over the quirks his family members had displayed over the weekend.

  “What’s that about?” he asked her during a pause in the conversation when they set aside their empty bowls.

  “What?”

  “That frown thing. You keep doing it tonight. Like you’re distracted by something that’s worrying you.”

  That he’d noticed took her aback. “When did you get to be so observant?”

  “Where you’re concerned, Kate, I don’t miss much.”

  She bit the side of her lip.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

  “Just tell me,” he said quietly.

  “It’s . . .” She sighed. “It’s about you and your hockey.”

  “There is no me and hockey anymore.”

  “But there could be.”

  “No.”

  “Hear me out.” She sat up straighter, her brows knitting as she tried to order her words. “I think that anyone who loves their job, who’s amazingly good at it, always hopes to leave that job when they’re ready, on their own terms.”

  “I did leave it on my own terms.”

  “Yes, but that was then. If you had a second chance, would you do it differently?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I won’t have a second chance.”

  “Why not?”

  A log broke apart and fell with a cracking sound into the fire. “Why not? Because I quit it. I quit it years ago.”

  “But if you wanted, you could go back and finish.”

  He looked incredulous. “That’s impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I haven’t played hockey in years.”

  “But you’ve stayed in amazing shape. You could train to get yourself ready to play hockey again. What would a comeback take? I don’t know. Tell me.”

  He pushed to his feet and went to stand by the window. He braced one hand against the frame and stared out at the black sky. He didn’t answer.

  “You must know a coach who could help you, right? And a trainer. You must’ve had a sports agent. You could call him, too, see what he says.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.” Every word came out cold and hard.

  She rose to her feet, felt her limbs tremble. “I know you don’t.”

  “Then drop it.”

  “I can’t because I have this sense that you’re never going to be completely happy unless you go back and finish what you started the right way.”

  He faced her. “What exactly do you know about what would make me happy?”

  “Nothing,” she said, stung. “Because you haven’t told me. But you’re not the only one who’s observant. I’ve watched you, and I’ve seen how painful it is for you when anyone so much as mentions hockey. I’ve seen how your face looks when you see a hockey game on TV. It wouldn’t have the power to hurt you anymore unless you still loved it. Unless you regret how it ended.”

  “What more do you want from me, Kate?” His eyes blazed. “I’m already giving you all I’ve got.”

  She drew herself up, steel in her spine. “I want you to play professional hockey again.”

  A growl rumbled in his throat. “If you were anyone else I’d tell you exactly what you could do with that suggestion.”

  “But you won’t tell me that because you know I only want what’s best for you. Right?”

  He grabbed up his keys and stalked out the front door without once looking back.

  Congratulations, Kate. She sunk onto the sofa. That went well. She took deep breaths and willed herself not to cry.

  Kate spent a miserable hour trying to read, failing at that. Trying to watch TV in her room, failing at that. Trying to surf the Internet, failing at that. Finally, she went downstairs and cleaned everything that needed cleaning because at least it kept her hands busy. She’d unloaded the dishwasher and was turning out the kitchen light when she glanced out the window—

  And saw him.

  Matt, standing in the night air outside, leaning against the side of his truck, watching her through the window. Her emotions, already churning close to the surface, pushed against their thin barriers. Trying to stay calm, she reached for her jacket, buttoned it slowly, then let herself out.

  He pushed away from his truck and met her halfway. They stopped a few feet from each other.

  “I can’t stand for you to be mad at me,” he said. “It makes me sick to my stomach.”

  Her heart eased. She hadn’t driven him away irretrievably. “I feel the exact same way.”

  He frowned, gazing at her with troubled eyes.

  “Look,” she said, “I’m sorry I upset you. That was a lot to spring on you like that, and I’m sure I didn’t do it the best possible way.”

  A muscle ticked along his jaw. “I’m not going back to hockey.”

  She wasn’t going to be content with that. But she
knew he’d heard all he could stand for one night, and that she needed to back off. “At this point I just want you to promise me that you’ll think about it.”

  “There’s nothing to think about.”

  “For me?” she asked, “Can you agree just to think about it?”

  He groaned as he enfolded her ferociously tight in his arms. He buried his nose in her hair as if he wanted to inhale her, to take her into himself. “I’d do anything for you,” he said fervently against the top of her head. “I’d buy you anything, take you anywhere.”

  “So you’ll think about it,” she whispered into his jacket.

  He clasped her even tighter to him.

  She waited.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  By unspoken agreement, neither Kate nor Matt mentioned the fact that she would be leaving town soon. Matt thought about it constantly, though. He thought about hockey, too, just as he’d promised her he would.

  He’d even made himself sit through an entire game on TV. It had been strange and difficult to watch his sport again after so long. He’d looked at it with a critical, educated, and experienced eye. He wished cold analysis had been the only thing going on inside him. But the whole time he’d been sitting there alone in his house, the TV screen glowing in front of him, emotions had eaten at him, too. Bitterness. Jealousy. And worst of all, a lousy kind of longing.

  As usual, Kate was making him do and feel things he didn’t want to. But he’d told her he’d consider it, even though she was nuts to think he could go back to it now. Never going to happen.

  “So,” Beverly said. They were cooking dinner together. Chicken Cor Don something. “Kate and I have set a firm departure date.”

  Matt’s grip on the knife he was using tightened.

  “We’re going to start our drive back a week from Saturday,” she said. “That’s just ten days away, and oh my, am I ever going to miss you! What am I going to do without my cooking apprentice?”

  He couldn’t seem to breathe. His throat closed up, and he couldn’t swallow, either. He didn’t have enough time left with Kate.

  What was he going to do? He didn’t know—really didn’t know—if he could live without her. He’d been trying to act the way a normal boyfriend would act. To say and do normal things so he wouldn’t completely freak her out. But he knew he wasn’t normal. He needed her too much. During the months that he’d known her, she’d slowly but surely become everything to him.