Light the Lamp (38 page)

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 for 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.

The next night, the Storm played the Oilers. I scored a goal and an assist, and my line pretty much dominated all night long. Scotty couldn’t even find a reason to yell at us after that game, which was a rarity since I’d joined the team. That seemed like the primary way he communicated. We’d won again, and those two points from the win kept us in the same position we’d been in, but it provided a bit more of a buffer between us and the teams fighting for the wild card spots in the Western Conference.