Light the Lamp (14 page)

“
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 still 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.

“
Yeah?” she said, tossing the towel back on the counter. “That could be fun.” Her easy agreement didn’t surprise me. It was always the simple things that she enjoyed.

“
Yeah. Why don’t you go get a sweater?”

She scurried off to do that, and I went into my bedroom to get my wallet.

We got to the dealership as soon as they opened, and a salesman rushed out to meet us when we started walking among the cars. “Can I hel— Hey! Liam Kallen, right? Nice goal last night, man. The Storm are going to get back in the playoffs this year if you keep playing like that.”

“
Thanks. I hope we do.” I instinctively put my arm around Noelle’s waist, drawing her closer to me. She didn’t seem to mind. I pointed at an SUV nearby. “We want to test-drive that one. And some others, too, but let’s start with that.”

“
You don’t want that one,” he said, automatically heading off in another direction and assuming we would follow him. “You’re going to be sticking around Portland for a while. Let me show you a much better option. Same model, but with all the bells and whistles.”

The guy went through his spiel as he walked, detailing all the many things this vehicle could do and why it mattered, even though I didn’t really care. I would probably buy a car for myself, not an SUV. I liked to have something sporty that could zip in and out. Not flashy, per se, but not an SUV.

I thought an SUV would be good for Noelle, though. It’d be big, up off the ground. I’d feel better about her being in something like that when I had to head out on a road trip.

The salesman finally stopped talking and opened the little box on the car’s window that housed the key. “Ready to drive it?”

I nodded my head toward Noelle. “You first.”

“
Me?” She shook her head. “Why?”

“
I just want to see how you handle it,” I hedged.