Allison was speechless. No wonder he bristled at the idea of being heroic. He’d had more pressure put on him than any child could handle. It was a wonder he’d turned into the kind and decent man he was. She set her mug down and took his hands in hers, pouring her support into her touch. “You didn’t go pro, so what happened?”
He drew a slow breath. “That’s the part I need you to know. What happened was that I felt so trapped that I sabotaged myself and my future.”
“I thought you were going to say that you joined the army. But sabotaging yourself is so much more extreme. Did you start playing bad hockey on purpose or something?”
“Not that. For some reason, that felt over the line to my eighteen-year-old mind. No, what I did was such a more spectacular failure. I slept with a girl named Noelle, who was the daughter of our church’s most influential deacon. She’d been my groupie of sorts, for lack of a better word, for a while, waiting for me outside the locker room after games, watching practices, which was all against her parents’ wishes. They wanted her to be a nun. I think she saw me and my career as her escape ticket.”
“Even your groupies were hanging their futures on you.”
“Yes. Noelle clearly had an agenda, just like my parents had an agenda, as did her parents, and our church. I slept with her knowing that, but I was pissed off because her father had come to me the day before warning me away from Noelle and cautioning me that my every action was a reflection of the church.
“That’s what made me snap the first time. I felt like I couldn’t escape the agendas of everyone around me. Or the agenda of God. So I sabotaged my future by sleeping with Noelle. Two weeks later, almost to the day, she told me she was pregnant. We’d used protection, which was saying something because it was against the church and not immediately available, but she came on to me too strong and had a diaphragm with her.
“I should have known better than to trust her. When she told me she was pregnant, she admitted she’d lied about the diaphragm. Of course she had. She was desperate to escape the life her parents had laid out for her.”
Allison’s stomach lurched. It was unbearable, thinking of him as a young man, with no one to count on, and with everyone counting on him. He’d gotten a girl pregnant. Which meant that he was telling her he had a child. She forced her expression to stay neutral, determined for him to finish telling her his story on his terms. “What happened?”
“She told her parents immediately. Part of her agenda, I’m assuming, because the next thing I knew her parents and my parents were planning our wedding.”
It was all so horrific. Like a tidal wave that couldn’t be stopped—his parents’, Noelle’s parents’, and Noelle’s agendas had had the force of an ocean behind them. And she’d thought she was the only one of the two of them who’d nearly drowned.
“So you were supposed to marry Noelle, be a father at eighteen, and go on to have a career as a professional hockey player so the money you made could save your parents and your church?”
He released a harsh chuckle. “That’s it, exactly. When I learned of my impending wedding, I was enraged, beyond reasonable thought.” He looked up from their hands to her face, sadness etched on his features. “This is the part I need you to hear, Allison. I don’t tell this to people. I’ve never spoken a word of it to anyone after I left town and quit hockey and started over in the Canadian Royal Guard. I’m telling you because . . . because I need you to know all of me.”
She let go of his hands and wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled herself onto his lap. “I want to know all of you.”
“And I’m not trying to scare you off, but I’d understand if you are.”
She skimmed a hand over his hair, then his cheek. “I know the man that you are, Theoren. You can’t scare me away.”
He lifted her from his lap and set her back on the couch. “I was so outside myself, so angry at being forced into a corner, my future laid out for me. I snapped. I wanted Noelle to pay for manipulating me, so I told her I was leaving, that I wouldn’t support her in any way if she had that baby. I all but made her get an abortion.”
That wasn’t at all what she expected. She was bracing for him to tell her he was still married or had a child somewhere in Canada. She was already debating what to feel about that and wondering what his child looked like and when she’d get to meet him or her.
“What do you mean ‘you made her’?”
He looked past her, to the darkness beyond the window. “I let her believe she didn’t have any good choices left. She told me the night that we argued that an unwed mother would ruin her family’s standing in the church. She was afraid that her parents would disown her and I told her I didn’t care.” His voice was tight, his words whispered. “She begged me to take her with me when I left town, but I couldn’t hear her over my own anger.”
Allison’s heart broke for him and for Noelle, for the hell they’d each gone through. Even if his assessment of Noelle’s motives was correct, if she’d consciously tricked him into getting her pregnant and marrying her, she must have been so scared and desperate if she’d seen that as her only option.
“I found out that she’d gotten an abortion when her father arrived at my door, ready to kill me. It was the worst scandal the town had ever seen. My parents disowned me. I quit hockey and went into the military because I was so pissed off, every waking day. I wanted to see action. I wanted to kill or get killed. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the military is no different from my parents or their church. You can’t escape the agendas of others. It’s just that, in the military, you’re at the mercy of politicians.”
You can’t escape the agendas of others.
No wonder he’d been so threatened by Allison’s arrival at Cloud Nine. No wonder he held everyone at arm’s length. It was a minor miracle that he’d opened his heart to her. She crawled back onto his lap and kissed his cheek. “I’m not scared off.”
He stroked her back. “Good. I’d like you to know I realize now that I was wrong. I thought I was the one backed into the corner, out of options, but it was Noelle who truly was. She was underage, without skills beyond being a dutiful Catholic daughter. I had the freedom to leave, the freedom that came with excelling at a very profitable sport. She was using me, but looking back, I think I really was her best bet, her one good option. I can’t fault her for that any more than I can fault you for assuming ownership of Cloud Nine because it was your best and, really, only good option.”
Allison wasn’t crazy about being lumped into the same category as a poor, scared seventeen-year-old girl, but she saw the point Theo was making. She’d used Lowell for her own agenda, and she’d used Theo, too. The realization made her stomach lurch. “Have you seen her or talked to her in all the years since then?”
He shook his head. “I’ve thought a lot about that, but I decided a long time ago that I don’t have a right to contact her. What if me reasserting myself in her life dredged up a past she didn’t want to remember? What if I hurt her all over again? I couldn’t stand it. It helps me cope to imagine that the abortion and the fallout from it ended up being a catalyst for her to leave and build a better life on her own.”
“It’s very possible that’s what happened,” Allison said.
“The baby would be seventeen now. Isn’t that something? It would’ve been Noelle’s age when I got her pregnant.”
“So, then, you do wonder what would have happened if she’d had the baby?”
Theo took a sip of his chocolate, considering. “All the time. Being around Katie has been good, but at times it’s been hard. Before you and Katie arrived, I didn’t think about it except on certain dates throughout the year. But, being around Katie and you, I’ve been thinking about it almost every day now in some way or another. I like being around Katie. I think I would have grown into being a good father.”
“You would have. Katie l
oves you.”
“I don’t begrudge women the choice to have an abortion, not at all, and I still can’t decide if I regret her getting the abortion because I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to be trapped there in that town, in a loveless marriage. My life is better for having escaped all that. But I can’t stop wondering. It’s such a complicated issue. I don’t know where the line is between right and wrong.”
Allison reached for her mug only to discover it was already empty. She set it back on the coffee table. “What would you do about the baby if you were granted a do-over?”
“If I had it to do over again, I don’t know. I’d listen to Noelle more and try to help her the best I could instead of trying to control her with my own agenda.”
She liked that answer, and she liked that he acknowledged that he had his own agenda throughout all that, too. “What about your parents? Have you been in contact with them?”
He laughed, pained. “When I was in the army, they were on my paperwork as my emergency contacts, so when I was injured, a call was placed, but they weren’t living in the same house anymore, and their church wouldn’t release any information on its members. There was no way to reach them besides, perhaps, returning to the town and showing up at church. To this day, I have no idea where they are. For all I know, they left in the wake of the scandal. Maybe I ruined them, too.”
“They ruined themselves,” Allison said.
You can’t escape the agendas of others. Those words were haunting in their truth.
“I did that,” she said. “What Noelle did to you. I did that to Lowell. I used him for a baby.”
“I don’t think it’s the same by any stretch of the imagination.”
“But it is. I didn’t love him, never. I had a plan for myself since I was a kid, since after the near drowning, to be a mother and a homemaker. I saw Lowell, with his wealth and privilege and status as a congressman, as a means to an end. He used me, too, but it doesn’t take away my role in everything that happened.”
“I hope you’ve forgiven yourself for that. People have married for far flimsier reasons than you did.”
“I’m on my way to forgiving myself. Like you and your past, it’s hard for me to regret the choices I made because I love the outcome. I love Katie. I love living here in Destiny Falls.” And I think I’m falling in love with you. But she was not tempted to tell him that part. They were too new a couple for her to burden him with it yet.
“I used you, too,” she said. “You were right about that. I came to Destiny Falls with an agenda and made you feel like my future hinged on your help. I’m so sorry.”
“You did, yes, but I’m not an eighteen-year-old anymore. And I don’t do anything I don’t want to. Even though I lashed out at you the first few weeks—which I regret—I would never have thrown you out or stripped you of your livelihood. I was scared, and I resented you because I didn’t see the situation clearly, just like I hadn’t seen Noelle’s situation clearly, but I would never have hurt you.”
“I know you wouldn’t have, but I still wish I hadn’t tried so hard to push my agenda on you.”
He shifted beneath her and took her chin in his hand, then kissed her tenderly. “I decided that I wanted to help you. I decided that you and Katie and your future were worth it. I made your agenda my agenda, because I want to, but it’s just that I can’t work for you anymore. Whatever is happening between us, I want to meet you in the middle, as equals. You know I won’t let you fail with the business. I’ll get you set up with new employees and help you train them. Whatever you need. But as your lover, not your paid worker.”
She pulled back and met his gaze. “I have an alternative proposal.” It was an idea she’d been throwing around in her mind all evening, and a large part of the reason she’d felt so anxious. But she was determined to live boldly, which meant embracing what she wanted. Above all, she wanted to be a successful business owner—and she wanted Theo.
“Share ownership of Cloud Nine with me,” she said. “You don’t have to buy in. We’ll have a new contract drawn up making us fifty-fifty partners in the corporation.”
He scooted her off his lap again, stood, and walked to the window. “That’s not a good deal for you.”
“I think it is.”
“You’re just scared about running this place on your own, but I know you can do it. You have a terrific business sense and fresh ideas, and I’m not going to let you struggle.”
She stood and walked to his side. “Be partners with me, Theo.”
He turned to face her. “You realize what that would mean for you and me?”
“Yes. We’d be equals on paper, finally.”
He shook his head. “It would mean we’d be bound together in a permanent way.”
Hearing him say that gave her shivers. She wanted very much to be bound to Theoren Lacroix in a permanent way. She took his hand. “I’m willing to make that jump if you are.”
His expression changed, lightened. He gazed out the window again, then down at their joined hands. “I was wrong before. This is the jump,” he murmured. And then he smiled at her.
Chapter Nineteen
The weeks before the exhibition game passed in a blur of late night practices, early morning meetings at the football field, filling out paperwork for the change in corporate partnership filing with the help of Oscar and Presley, and preparing Cloud Nine for the upcoming tourist season, which was starting early, thanks to Allison’s terrific idea of opening up reservations for the week of the exhibition game.
Together, he and Allison prepped the boats, getting ready to send their first renters of the season on their week-long trip cruising the canal beginning a few days before the game.
The media arrived sooner than anyone in town expected, though the Wounded Veterans International publicists had prepped Bomb Squad that publicity was part of the deal. After all, what good was playing an exhibition game if there weren’t fans and spectators to exhibit it to? The whole reason for the game was to inspire other wounded veterans, those who were struggling with their worth and recovery after their tours of duty, so both teams owed it to veterans the world over to share their stories and set an example.
Despite his discomfort being in the spotlight, Theo approved of the media attention. After he was injured, it took him years before he felt like a whole man again and figured out his new normal, and then only because of Duke coming into his life and roping him in to playing on Bomb Squad. If them playing a high profile game helped gave hope to other vets who hadn’t been so lucky to find their own version of Duke or Bomb Squad, then that was great with him.
On the morning they first laid the base platform over the artificial turf, a van from a television news station in the Niagara Falls area met Duke’s crew, Theo, and the handful of volunteers at Destiny Falls High School’s football field.
The NHL’s director of facility operations had volunteered his time to oversee the rink and ice construction, but it was still a major project for Duke and his crew. Theo was on power duty, laying electrical lines for the mobile refrigeration unit that Wounded Veterans International had secured the donated use of and lines to the area of parking lot in which the gala tent would be erected during the week of the game.
The school grounds had plenty of power, but very little of it could be diverted to the stadium in the middle of the school year. The game corresponded with the first weekend of Spring Break, so he’d be able to divert most of the power to the rink on the day of the game, but the rink was going to require a lot of energy to maintain ice quality.
It wasn’t long before the news story garnered national attention. Theo had zero interest in politics, but heard from Brandon that the president was in the middle of negotiating something or other with the Russian prime minister, so there was much speculation among the media about the effect of the exhibition game on the negotiations.
Brandon wa
s eating it up. He loved the attention, and the journalists pounced on him. What better story was there than the star player being an amputee and decorated soldier?
One morning, a few days before the exhibition game, while Theo and Katie played and Allison paid the bills, she jumped up from her desk chair. “That’s you,” she said, rushing toward the wall-mounted television she’d taken to keeping on in the background with the hopes of catching the game’s news coverage.
He looked up in time to see a flash of his face before the news flipped to a new story. Theo wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to seeing himself on TV. It was an experience he would’ve gladly lived without, but those were the breaks.
She unmuted the volume, then backed up the local news noontime broadcast to replay the video footage of yesterday’s practice. As the video played, a journalist announced in a voice over, “There was one man missing from our interviews, the man that many New York locals are calling Bomb Squad’s secret weapon. Tonight on the news at five, you’ll meet the player who went from junior hockey star to war hero, and who many believe is the key to staging another Miracle on Ice.”
Wincing, Theo swiveled the desk chair away from the screen, a move that evoked a giggle from Katie. He wondered if anyone else who’d seen the broadcast had caught the irony in the idea that a Canadian might hold the key for a Miracle-on-Ice-type victory, since the first Miracle on Ice happened when the American hockey team beat the unbeatable Soviet Union team in the 1980 Winter Olympics.
Allison replayed the footage again, looking giddy. “That’s you, right? You’re a secret weapon now.”
He spun the chair again, smiling with satisfaction as Katie’s face lit up and she kicked her legs. He always thought having children wasn’t for him because the idea of a helpless being relying on him day in and day out seemed akin to a nightmare, but it wasn’t like that for him anymore. It amazed him, the discovery of the simple pleasure it was being able to make a baby smile and laugh, or cuddle close.
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