Light the Lamp

by Catherine Gayle

  “But the girls,” Annie-Claude argued feebly.

  Sara looked up from the floor. “Sylvie and Claire are fine here. They’ve got lots of people to look after them.”

  I glanced down at the ice. They’d already loaded Monty onto the stretcher and were starting to wheel him down the Zamboni tunnel.

  “Come on,” Dana said, drawing my attention again. She put her arm around Annie-Claude’s waist and started tugging her out the door. “Your husband needs you.” The two of them followed Rachel into the concourse.

  The mood in the owner’s box shifted. Where there had been fun and laughter, now there was worry and somberness. It had happened in the span of only a few moments. Laura turned around, her eyes scanning the women surrounding her, taking stock of the situation like a mother hen. “We’re going to need more wine.”

  Katie grinned at me. “My mom rocks.”

  Yes, I had seriously misjudged these women. I was glad I hadn’t voiced my thoughts aloud to anyone. It wasn’t like me to jump to conclusions about anyone, especially when it came to something as ridiculous as the clothes they were wearing.

  I turned to Katie and nodded. “Yeah, she does.”

  She leaned closer to me, dropping her voice. “Sneak me some wine?”

  I shook my head. “Not gonna happen.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed melodramatically. “I know. But I had to try.”

  The game started up again, and Laura passed wine glasses around to all the women of legal age in the owner’s box. I took a glass when she offered one to me. It was sweet and smooth on my tongue, and just enough to help to soothe my frayed nerves. I was still filled with the pain and fear from Monty’s injury and Annie-Claude’s panic—the wine wouldn’t be enough to clear that away—but I couldn’t do anything about that until I was home and alone.

  Only then could I fall to pieces. For now, I could just sip my wine, hold Katie’s hand, and try to watch the game.

  Liam scored another goal and had an assist in the game against the Senators, helping the team to win, four to one. After the game was over and we waited for the guys to finish up, the other women kept gushing about how much better he was playing now that I was around. They said he’d found his old scoring groove again. That it was because of me.

  I didn’t know much about all of that.

  I mean, I’d never really gotten into sports. My dad and brothers had watched when we were growing up, but I hadn’t. I knew they existed, and that was about the extent of my sports knowledge. But these women knew all about the game. Dana had apparently even played hockey for years. She, more than any of the rest, was confident that I was the cause of Liam rediscovering his game. She said that now that I was in his life, he’d gotten his confidence back.

  He didn’t seem to be lacking confidence to me.

  I was still worked up from witnessing Monty’s broken arm when someone’s cell phone started beeping. I didn’t realize it was mine, at first, since I hadn’t had a cell phone in quite a while, and so it had already gone off a few times with me being oblivious to the interruption when Katie turned to me and said, “Aren’t you going to see what that is?”

  I blinked at her a few times until she pointed at the beeping, vibrating purse on my lap. “Oh. I suppose so.” I undid the top zipper and fished through my bag for the phone. I still had the same four items in there as I’d had when I had left my car on the side of the highway. The only new things were this phone and a key to Liam’s condo.

  When I pulled the phone out, there was a text message from Liam.

  Yep. You’re definitely my lucky charm. I’ll be up to get you in a few minutes.

  A red heart emoticon adorned the end of the line of text. I locked the screen and shoved the phone back in my purse, but not before Katie saw what Liam had said. She grinned at me, like there was a secret that we were keeping just between the two of us.

  There was no secret, though. Liam and I weren’t dating.

  We’d talked about it, but he wasn’t ready and I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted. I was definitely attracted to him, and I knew he was attracted to me. But I felt so useless, being with him. He wanted to take care of everything all the time, and there wasn’t anything for me to do. I was going to go crazy before too much longer if I couldn’t find a way to do something—something that mattered. So far, I wasn’t seeing a way to be in his life the way he wanted me to be and to feel useful.

  Later, when Liam and I were on the sofa back at the condo, he tugged me close to his side. I laid my head on his shoulder and breathed in the scent of him, listening to the beat of his heart. It relaxed me, his warmth and strength and steady pulse and the spicy scent of his cologne, and all the emotions I’d held on to for hours started to ease. I tucked my feet up beside me, and his hand dropped down to rest against my hip.

  “I like this,” he said. “Holding you like this.”

  I liked it, too. A lot. I liked it so much I feared I would never want it to end. The steadiness and security of his arm around me, the power in his chest and his thigh next to me, the way he could sit with me in silence and not make it feel uncomfortable—it all combined to soothe the knots in my muscles from all the pain and anxiety I’d been carrying all night.

  His hand slid along my side, firm and secure, caressing me in such a way that all the emotion I’d been carrying for hours started to bubble out of me in tears and shallow breaths.

  This never happened. Not like this. I was always alone when I managed to purge the negativity, always completely by myself and free from having to explain it to anyone. My family had known this about me, my brothers. They understood my need to cry and release it all, that it didn’t mean anything was wrong and that they didn’t need to do anything to help me. No one else ever understood it, though.

  But I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t slow the rush of tears as the sobs built within my chest and exploded out of my mouth.

  “What?” Liam asked. He put his palm against my cheek and tried to lift my face to look at him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t see through my tears, and I couldn’t explain. Not right now. His thumb pushed up beneath my chin, tilting my head back so he could see my face. “What is it, Noelle? What’s wrong?”

  He sounded so concerned, almost terrified, but the torrent of emotion exiting my body happened so quickly and so completely that I could only bawl.

  His hand at my side moved to my back, and he slid his other hand beneath my knees. In a flash, he picked me up and set me on his lap. “All right,” he said quietly. He smoothed one hand over my head, his other down my back. “I’ve got you. It’s all right.”

  But it wasn’t all right. Not yet. I buried my face against his chest, wrapping both arms around him and holding on until the storm passed. After a few minutes, I had it all out of my system. My sobs slowed to a shudder here and there, a sniffle or two at a time, and I pulled myself back enough that I could look up at him.

  He looked as scared as he’d sounded when I’d started crying.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I smiled. But then I saw the snotty, tear-stained mess I’d left on his dress shirt. “Oh! I’m so sorry.” I tugged the edge of my cardigan and used it to blot at the evidence of my tears until he put one hand over mine and stopped me.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “It’s not. It’ll set. We’ll have to wash it or take it to the cleaners—”

  “It’s just a shirt. I’m worried about you and what brought this on.” His dark brown eyes were so filled with anguish I couldn’t bear to be in my own skin—because I had caused it. “Did I do something to upset you?”

  “Of course not.” I shook my head, still trying to blot away the mess I’d made on his shirt until he took my hand and tugged it down to my lap. I tried to smile again, sure he wouldn’t understand. “It’s just… I feel things. Whatever other people around me are feeling, I take some of it in. And then I have to get rid of it, you know?” Of course, he didn’t know, so it was silly of me to say it
like that. I’d never met anyone else like me.

  Liam wasn’t looking at me like I was crazy, though. He was nodding his head, humoring me. His eyes were so focused on me that it was unnerving.

  “When Monty got hurt and was screaming, I didn’t just hear his pain—I felt it. And then his wife was worried, and all the other women and kids in the owner’s box…and it all just kept building up inside me.”

  “And you had to let it out.” He set his lips in a line, and his eyebrows drew together in the middle of his forehead, forming a deep crease. I couldn’t tell if he was confused or trying to understand, which felt odd. Usually I could tell these things about people. Because I felt it.

  “Yes. I had to work it out of my system. It usually happens when I’m alone. No one but my family has seen me purging like that in a very long time.”

  He lifted his hand to my face and used his thumb and palm to dry one of my cheeks and then the other. “But you let me see it,” he murmured.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. You let me see it. This is a part of you that you usually keep to yourself or maybe allow your family to witness, but you let me see it. To be part of it. You let me hold you while you exposed this vulnerable, amazing piece of your soul.”

  That was the furthest thing from what I’d been expecting his reaction to be. My jaw went slack. “Most people don’t understand. Or they think I’m crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy. You’re beautiful, and you humble me with how big your heart is. I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it was to watch you go through that, though.” With the tips of his fingers, Liam moved the hair away from my face and tucked it behind my ears. “I want to protect your heart.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want to protect you from having to go through that any more than you have to.”

  There was no such thing as what he was describing, though. “You can’t do that.”

  “I know. Because then you wouldn’t be who you are. It would be like stifling your heart, the part of you that I’m—”

  He cut himself off so suddenly I would have fallen over if I wasn’t on his lap.

  “The part of me that you’re what?” As soon as I asked, I wished I could take the words back. If he didn’t want to say something, then he shouldn’t say it.

  He shook his head, his lips turning down in a frown. “The part of you I most want to protect,” he said finally.

  But I could see in his eyes there was something he was hiding. Something he didn’t want to say to me.

  I was pretty sure I knew what it was, too. But I was glad he didn’t say it, because it wouldn’t be the truth. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  He wasn’t ready for those words to leave his lips, and neither was I.

  Babs made coffee the next morning.

  He did it without any help, and nothing caught fire or exploded. There wasn’t a mess on the counter like the first time he’d tried to make coffee after I moved here. The brew was a little strong, but that was easy enough to fix by adding more water to your cup. I could live with that.

  I could only attribute his new coffee-making skills to Noelle’s efforts, because no one else had been able to help him learn. Not me. Not Soupy, in all the time the two had lived together in this apartment this season. Not Zee during the year that Babs had lived with him during Babs’s rookie season. No one but Noelle.

  She wasn’t just helping me with her presence. Not anymore. One of these days, she would realize how much good she was doing.

  After I fixed my cup of coffee—black, like I always drank it even though Noelle had warned me it would put more hair on my chest—I carried it over to the table and took a seat. Noelle and Babs were already eating.

  That was another thing Babs had done this morning: he’d fixed us breakfast. Granted, cold cereal, milk, and fresh fruit didn’t require any cooking skill, but he’d done it. Three different varieties of cereal were lined up in the middle of the table next to a jug of milk and a bowl of bananas, oranges, and apples. Each chair had a bowl and spoon waiting. Babs had even set up a fourth place for Ray Chambers.

  Razor was one of the young defensemen on the team, and the guy that Babs was probably closest to out of everyone. The two of them had plans to hold some sort of epic video game marathon here today, since we had the full day off. A few of the other young guys on the team were coming over, too—Jared Tucker, Henrik Markusson, Antoine Gagnon, and maybe some others I hadn’t heard about yet. Our apartment was going to be full of twenty-something guys who would be farting and scratching their balls and God only knew what else. Not something I wanted to expose Noelle to, but these plans had been in place since before I’d met her. I couldn’t expect them to change everything just because I’d gotten a wild hair and asked a homeless woman to live with us.

  Soupy and Zee were headed off to the golf course with Webs—pretty much all the guys on the team over the age of thirty—and they had invited me to join them. Monty had planned to be their fourth, until last night. He’d had emergency surgery after the game, putting screws and pins in his broken arm. He wasn’t going to doing anything like play golf for at least a few months. I didn’t really want to go golfing, though, and I sincerely doubted it was something Noelle would want to do. I’d much rather spend the day with her, doing something she would enjoy, so I had told Soupy they should go on without me.

  I’d just fixed my cereal and grabbed an orange out of the bowl when someone knocked on the door. Babs jumped up with his coffee cup in his hand. “I got it.”

  He let Razor in. The kid looked like death. I was pretty sure he and a few of the other guys had gone out drinking after dinner last night. That would catch up with him if he wasn’t careful. He headed straight for the coffee and poured a cup, downing it before anyone had a chance to warn him how strong it was.

  He spit it out in the sink. “Damn, that’s some intense fucking coffee.”

  Noelle instantly turned red, so I shot Razor a glare. She must not be used to hearing language like that all the time. Yet another reason for me to take her away for the day.

  “Add some water and it’s fine,” I grumbled at him. “And we have a lady here.”

  Razor shot his head over and looked at Noelle. “Sorry,” he mumbled, turning on the tap so he could do what I’d suggested.

  “It’s all right,” Noelle said. “I don’t mind.” She glanced at Razor when he sat down and gave him one of those smiles I loved so much. He poured himself a bowl of cereal so full it was a miracle it didn’t spill over the edges. Her voice was tinkling again, light and melodic and so fucking haunting it would keep me awake at night playing it over and over in my mind. Last night, it had been her tears that replayed while I tried to fall asleep.

  I still wasn’t entirely convinced that she was as fine as she claimed to be after how heartily she’d cried last night. And I wasn’t convinced it had been because of taking on other people’s emotions, either. At least not completely. There definitely seemed to be some truth to her claim, if I considered how easily she was able to tell what I was thinking and feeling. I had to add in the fact that I always felt lighter when I was with her. But after all she’d been through in the last several years, and in particular the last few months, I knew some of her emotional collapse had to be due to her own issues.

  And that meant I should be prepared for more of it.

  I wanted to be with her when she did break down again. She may think it was better for her to be alone, and she may be embarrassed to do it in front of me, but it didn’t bother me. I wanted to hold her through it, right up until the moment she found her smile again, the moment she remembered how to laugh.

  Those smiles, that laughter, and the tinkling sound of her voice when she was happy—those things were all worth the torment of watching her experience anguish like that. They were why I’d almost told her I loved her.

  I couldn’t love her though, could I? I sti
ll loved Liv, and I would always love Liv. Could a person love like that twice in a lifetime? That kind of deep love, where knowing the other person’s faults only made you love them more?

  I swallowed some of my coffee, letting the heat of it burn the roof of my mouth as I stared at Noelle. She had flaws. She wasn’t perfect, but none of that mattered. Not really.

  And that was exactly how things had been with Liv. There had been days where I hadn’t liked Liv all that much—like all the times she’d insisted she couldn’t leave her parents behind because they needed her more than I did—but I’d still loved her more than I knew how to handle. I might have even loved her more because she had that ability to infuriate me.

  Could it be the same with Noelle?

  As much as I didn’t think it was possible for me to love again, at least not with such intensity, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from falling deeply in like with her. Despite her flaws. Actually, I was starting to find those flaws endearing.

  Noelle glanced over at me and gave me an appraising sort of look, the kind of look that always made me feel as if she was seeing into my soul and discovering all my private thoughts. I turned my focus back to peeling my orange.

  After we finished eating breakfast and cleaned up, Babs and Razor headed into the living room to move furniture around and get things set up for their video game marathon. I turned to Noelle, who was drying her hands on a towel.

  “Want to go car shopping with me today?” I asked. “You can help me test-drive a few.”

  I’d been driving a rental car for more than long enough. I needed to get something more permanent. My contract didn’t run out for two more years after this season, and I doubted Jim Sutter would find another trade partner who’d want to take me on anytime soon if I didn’t keep scoring. And if I did keep scoring, chances were he would want to keep me on through the end of that contract.

  Plus I wanted to get Noelle a car. Yeah, I knew that was crazy—to give her such a big gift at this point in our relationship. But having a car would give her a little more freedom, make it easier for her to get around. I didn’t want to tell her my plan, though. I didn’t want to have an argument so early in the day, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she would feel the need to argue with me about that.