“I don’t think it’s any secret if you’ve followed my career that my whole world changed that day. Losing Liv felt like I was losing the only good part of me, and I didn’t know how to keep going. But the truth was, I could keep going. I was still here, and alive, and there were more things I had to accomplish. She would never have wanted me to stop living.”
I pressed the button to move to the next slide—an image of a broken man, crying so hard he couldn’t focus on the camera. It was his mug shot on the night that he’d killed Liv. It was the image that had given me direction.
“And she would never have wanted him to stop living, either. This is Artie Davis, taken only a few hours after he killed my wife. He’d been out drinking with some friends when the ice storm blew in, but he knew he had to get home. Artie was a trucker and an alcoholic, and he’d had an argument with his wife in front of their three kids before he had to head out with his next load. He wanted to be a better husband and father to them despite his addiction, and he wanted to find some sort of career where he could make the kind of money he made trucking but that would let him be at home more. But he hadn’t found it yet and his wife was frustrated with essentially being a single parent. Their argument got so intense that even though normally he would never drink and drive—and especially not in his diesel—that night, he did. He’s regretted it every day of his life since then. He doesn’t want to be that man anymore. Artie served some time in prison for driving under the influence and involuntary manslaughter. He lost his trucking license and will never be able to work in that field again. Now he’s out on parole, and he wants to find a way to make up for all of his mistakes. He can’t bring Liv back to life, and he can’t give me my unborn baby. There’s nothing Artie can do for me. But he can get back on his feet again. He can shake off the stigma associated with being an addict and a convicted criminal. He can find a new career and be a better husband and father. He can give back to the world as a whole, and that’s what the Light the Lamp Foundation is all about. We take people like Artie, who have made mistakes in the course of their addictions, and help them find the way to make the world a better place.”
I flipped to the final slide—a picture of me and Artie together this past New Year’s Eve in Times Square, where we were providing rides home to anyone who’d been out drinking.
“He’s turning his life around now, and he’s making the world a better place. And there are a lot more Arties in this world, people with addictions who’ve made mistakes but want to find a way out of it. That’s what we’re here to do.” I paused a moment, taking a breath to gather my thoughts. “I hope you’re all enjoying your dinners. When dessert is being served, Jessica Lynch will be back to explain how the silent auction will work. There are a lot of amazing things to bid on—signed hockey pucks, jerseys, and sticks from not only the Portland Storm players who are attending tonight but also from other players from around the league. The Storm has donated some incredible prize packages, as well, like two tickets to travel with the team next year on a road trip or four tickets plus hotel and airfare to a game during the Stanley Cup Finals. Hopefully the Storm will be one of the teams playing, but even if we aren’t, that will be an amazing experience for whoever wins it. Businesses around the city have also donated for those of you who might not be interested in hockey—spa packages, vacations, you name it. I think we have something for everyone. So enjoy the rest of the evening, bid on some great prizes, and afterward, we’ll have all of this cleared away for some dancing. Thank you again for coming. I can’t even begin to tell you how much it means to me to have you all here supporting the Light the Lamp Foundation.”
The room burst into applause, and another flash of blond hair streaked away from the corner table and out of the ballroom. It wasn’t Noelle. It couldn’t be. There was no reason I should imagine it was her other than wishful thinking, and what good would that do me? None. I started to make my way down from the stage and back to my seat, but Jonny intercepted me before I could get there. He grabbed hold of my arm. I turned to ask him what was going on, but the look in his eye stopped me short.
“Noelle’s here.”
My head turned to where I’d last seen that streak of light-blond hair, trying to find her. I hadn’t been crazy, then, and it wasn’t just the dim lighting in the ballroom playing tricks on me. I had seen her.
“She’s working the event. She just left with her cart to get the desserts for my table.”
Should I follow her? Would she want me to? She still hadn’t called me or answered my calls, and she’d hardly responded to my text messages. I should probably leave her alone and let her make a move if she wanted to, but every muscle in my body ached to be near her again. I couldn’t seem to make up my mind when Jonny said, “She was crying.”
That made up my mind for me.
Instead of going back to the kitchen to load my cart with dessert plates, I ducked into a quiet doorway in the middle of the hall and dropped to the floor, using the cart to provide a little privacy while I tried to dry up my tears.
This was the worst time in the world for me to break down like this, but I couldn’t seem to stop it. With every word that had come from Liam’s mouth, I’d been filled with emotion after emotion—love, loss, grief, anger, need, hope—all of it warring inside me at once until I felt like I would explode if I didn’t let it out. This was exactly what I’d known he had kept hidden from me, the same flood of feelings that had been dammed up behind his wall ever since Liv had died, and now it was finally out there, along with some other things I’d never expected. None of it was between us anymore, keeping us apart. Instead, it was surrounding us…possibly drawing us together.
I hadn’t even come close to sorting myself out and stopping my tears when Molly ducked into my little alcove and bent to her knees.
“Are you all right? I saw you rush out just now…”
I really had to pull it together. I’d been doing such a good job for her in the few events I’d worked so far. I was hoping to make an impression so maybe she would find steadier work for me. I grabbed a cloth napkin off my cart and used it to dry my eyes. “I’ll be fine, really. I’m sorry. I just—”
“Noelle?”
The tortured sound of his voice was all it took to make the tears well up in my eyes again.
Molly looked from me to Liam and back again. “I didn’t know you knew Mr. Kallen.” She didn’t sound upset, just surprised.
She couldn’t be any more surprised than I had been when I learned he was the man behind this charity, let alone when I’d found out what had driven him to create it in the first place.
“Can we have a few minutes?” Liam asked Molly.
I wished she would tell him no, that I had to work, but only because I hadn’t had time to process everything I’d just learned yet. I hadn’t had time to let the fact that he’d lost not only his wife but his baby, settle in. I hadn’t come to terms with how, instead of looking for revenge against the man who had taken them from him, he looked for ways to help him and other people in similar circumstances.
Liam Kallen wasn’t just a man who was dead set on helping me; he was a man with a heart big enough that he wanted to help even the people who’d left him broken.
And whether I was ready to face him after learning all of that about him yet or not, I couldn’t deny any longer that I loved him. All of him. Even the parts that wanted to take care of me without letting me take care of him in return.
But Molly didn’t tell him no. She stood up, nodded, and backed away. “I’ll get someone else to take care of your table, Noelle,” she said, pushing my cart back toward the kitchen and leaving me without anything to hide behind but the silly cloth napkin in my hand.
He stood there, his hands in the pockets of his tuxedo, staring down at me. He’d gotten a haircut today, too. It was all neat and tidy, just like his jaw. You could hardly tell he was a hockey player, other than how fit he was and a little scar on his forehead that looked new, and a long, pink
line on his cheek. I wondered what had happened to cause it.
“You, uh…”
I’d never known him to be unsure of what he would say. He might not always say a lot, but when he spoke, it was with a certainty that few people possessed. I tried to blink back my tears before they fell, in case the fact that I was crying was making him uncomfortable.
Liam looked away for a second and then turned back to me. “You never answered me about the name for the puppy.”
The thought that he wanted to talk to me about a puppy when there were a thousand other things unsaid between us made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I somehow laughed through my tears. “Godzilla isn’t an awful name.”
“For a puppy? Did you look at the picture I sent? He’s tiny. And adorable. And God, I’ve missed your laugh.”
“He won’t be a puppy forever. Boxers get pretty big.” I shrugged. “Why does Babs need my help with that, anyway?”
“Because he adopted the dog for you.”
“Oh.” My lips stayed in that O shape for a long time. No one had ever done anything like that for me before. Liam had tried to give me all sorts of things, but a pet was in a different league. The warm, fuzzy sensation now had chill bumps and tingles on top of it.
“Can I…can I sit by you?”
“On the floor? You’ll wrinkle your tux.”
He looked down at it and gave a little shake of his head. “It’s already wrinkled. Besides, yours is, too.”
He had a point.
He raised his brows, and I nodded and scooted over to make room for him. When he sat, he stretched out one leg far in front of us, and he bent the other to rest his arm on the knee.
It felt amazing to have him next to me again. In all the time we’d been apart, the thing I’d missed the most was just his presence, the way he grounded me and made me feel secure.
“I used your credit card,” I blurted out. Even though I knew he’d left it for me with the expectation that I would use it, I still felt the need to explain. “After paying Cindy for letting me stay with her, I didn’t have enough money left to eat. She told me I could eat there, but I couldn’t do it. So I bought a meal with it—a cheap one—and I was going to pay you back after I got paid tonight.”
“I don’t want you to pay me back.”
“I know.”
“Cindy? The woman from Helping Hands?” he asked. “That’s whose couch you’ve been sleeping on?”
“Yeah. She’d offered to let me stay before, but I didn’t want to take advantage.”
“No, you never do,” he murmured.
“But after I spent a night on the streets and my brothers found out, they threatened to drop out of school and make me use the money for their education if I didn’t find somewhere else to go.”
“Ah. I see.”
“Do you?” Rarely did I feel that other people understood me. My family did, even if they didn’t like the way I thought about things, and a few others here and there like Cindy and Phil seemed to get the way my mind worked. The crazy thing was, I thought Liam might be one of them.
He reached down between us with his free hand, taking mine in his. That small amount of contact, after going so long without, left me trembling for more.
“Yes, älskling. I do.” With the pad of his thumb, he traced the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist. “You could have gone back to the apartment. I wish you would have done that instead of staying on the streets. Or gone to a hotel. Or any number of other things.”
“I know you just want to take care of me. I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” I might not have understood this part of him before, but after tonight I did. “Can I ask you something?”
Liam’s lips curled up in a smile. “You can ask me anything.”
“Your foundation… If I came back to live with you, would you let me help you with it? You wouldn’t have to pay me. I just want—”
“You just want your life to have some meaning. And you want to help me as much as I help you.”
He did understand. He wasn’t just saying he did to get me to bend to what he wanted.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Yes, älskling, if you want to help me with the foundation, you can. If I had known that was what you needed, I would have suggested it a long time ago. Or you can go volunteer with Helping Hands, if you’d rather. Or at the women’s shelter. Or you can do nothing but walk barefoot in the park picking flowers that make me sneeze, if that’s what you want. I just want you to be happy and to let me love you.”
“I am happy,” I said.
“You’re always happy.”
“No.” I tipped my chin up so I could look into his eyes, so he could see the truth in mine. “I’m not always happy. I was miserable without you. But I choose to look for the positive and to find the good in life. I think that’s how I found you again.”
“So are you being serious? Will you come home with me?”
I tried to hold it back, but it was impossible to stop my smile. “Yes, as long as we’re keeping the puppy.”
He laughed. “Jag älskar dig. We can keep him if you name him something other than Godzilla.”
I drew up to my knees and faced him, putting my hands on his shoulders. “I love you more, Liam.”
He kissed me, and I melted into him. It had been too long. When he finally pulled away, I pouted. “I like you better with some whiskers.”
“They’ll grow back. And I’ll drink a lot of black coffee.”
“That puts hair on your chest, not your face.”
He gave me a wicked grin. “I seem to recall you liking that, too.”
Again, he had a point. I decided not to say anything about that.
Liam looked down at his watch and sighed. “I have to get back in there. They need me to announce all of the auction winners. Will you come with me?”
“Yes.” I took his hand again, and together we got up and made our way back into the ballroom. They’d cleared the tables away, and now people were dancing where they’d been. Jessica Lynch caught Liam’s eye and waved him over to her near the stage.
We headed that way, still hand in hand.
“Liam?” I said when we were halfway across the dance floor.
“Yes, älskling?”
“I think I’ll name the puppy Prince Flugelhorn McSnazzy Pants.” I wasn’t really planning to name him that. I hadn’t even met this puppy yet, so I couldn’t very well name him. All animals had personalities, and a dog’s name should match his demeanor. I’d always believed that, and I doubted I’d change my mind on that anytime soon.
Liam stopped midstride and turned to stare at me. “Maybe we should go back to Godzilla.”
I winked and started walking again, pulling him along behind me. A moment later, he caught up to me and put his arm around my waist so we could walk side by side, just as we were meant to do.
We had a home stand after the silent auction, three games against divisional rivals, and sure enough, I started scoring again. I don’t know if I could say it was solely because Noelle was back in my life, though. Maybe she was right. Maybe she wasn’t my lucky charm, like the guys had said she was. It might have more to do with the fact that she brought a light into my life that had been missing, and it’s easier to do the things I’d always done before when the world didn’t look so dark.
I got a power play goal the night after Noelle came home with me in a game against the Sharks. We won, which moved us into the third seed in the Pacific Division, at least for the time being. There was still a week left in the season, and a lot could change in that amount of time. Nothing had been settled, other than a few teams clinching their spots in the show.
On the off-day between games, I took Noelle with me to meet with Jessica Lynch. The fundraiser had brought in more than a hundred thousand dollars in a single night, between tickets to the event and the various auction items. We set plans in motion for how to best put those funds to use in Portland and f
or more fundraisers for the upcoming season—preferably not right before the playoffs, though.
Later that afternoon, Noelle and I went out looking for places we could live. Living with Babs had been fine for the time between getting traded to the Storm and the end of the season. I wanted something more permanent, though. Something that could be home and not just home for now. I wanted to find somewhere that her brothers could come home to when they finished their semester at college. I wanted to buy her parents’ old house, but there was a nice couple living there with a toddler girl and twin baby boys, and neither Noelle nor I wanted to uproot a young family like that.
She’d finally agreed to take care of getting her passport, too. Sometime this summer, after the Storm were out of the playoffs and once she had her documents all settled, I wanted to take her back to Gothenburg. She wanted to come now, too. Noelle wanted to see Liv’s wind chimes and to meet our families. “I don’t have parents of my own anymore,” she’d told me. “Maybe it’s time for me to adopt new ones.” I couldn’t agree with her more.
Now that I’d opened up about Liv being pregnant when she died, Noelle and I talked more about it. I let her see all my hopes and fears and dreams. I let her be a part of them because I wanted her to be part of my life—all of it, the good, the bad, and everything in between.
She showed me the few things she’d had in her purse the night we first met, recounting stories relating to the pictures in her dad’s wallet-sized photo album and telling me all about her parents’ marriage when she showed me her mom’s wedding ring. Because I’d opened up and let her deeper into my life, now she was trusting me with those small pieces of herself that she’d held back.
It was starting to feel like the relationship I’d had with Liv, only so very, very different. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve two chances as a perfect love like this, but I knew I would do everything I could not to screw it up.
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