I WAS ABOUT
to cross over the Hawthorne Bridge when I saw hazard lights blinking on a car up ahead, the bright yellow flash jarring against the darkness of the night. The car had pulled into the cross section between the highway and the exit before it had stopped, which was the worst place to break down short of blocking a lane of traffic. This spot wasn’t really a shoulder, and it was directly over the bridge.
People used those spots to make ill-advised passes sometimes, almost causing wrecks in the process. Earlier tonight, while I was out exploring the city, I’d witnessed someone making a last-second exit by cutting across the exact spot where this car was stopped.
I tried not to worry too much because I didn’t know this person. At first I succeeded because it looked like whoever had been in the car was gone. I assumed the driver must have turned on the hazards, popped open the hood to see what the problem was, and then left the car like that. Maybe someone had stopped to give them a ride.
But as I got closer in my rental car, my heart stopped.
A woman came around from in front of the old Buick and opened the back door on the driver’s side. She kneeled down to the pavement, the free-flowing, flowery skirt of her dress and her unbound blonde hair flying from the wind of speeding traffic. Her bare feet and the open car door were actually in the lane closest to her while she searched for God only knew what.
Images of Livia flashed through my mind—my beautiful, sweet wife Liv, who had never wanted to leave our native Sweden but eventually did it for me. Thinking about her always brought a sharp ache to my chest. Then came the even more painful images of the wreckage, the ones they’d flashed across the news in the immediate aftermath and that the hockey media kept showing every time they talked about my inability to score since the accident.
I swallowed hard and blinked rapidly. Crying and driving would never be a good combination. Besides, it had been over a year and a half. I should be able to think about her without losing it now, shouldn’t I? I had to get it together.
Before I had grasped what I was doing, I’d slowed my car and pulled off onto the shoulder just as I passed the woman and her vehicle. As soon as I came to a stop, I put my rental in park, turned on the hazard lights, and got out, racing back to her with the headlights of the oncoming traffic nearly blinding me.
By the time I was close enough for her to hear my voice, she’d stood up again and closed the car door. She was returning to the front of the old Buick with a flashlight in one hand and what looked like a gallon jug of water in the other.
“Miss?” I shouted into the wind and noise.
Her head shot up, and she smiled at me. “I’m fine!” she called out. “My engine just got too hot. I’m going to add some water and let the radiator cool off for a few minutes.”
I didn’t stop jogging until I reached her. “Why don’t you come somewhere safe with me while you wait for it to cool?” I asked, cringing at the sense of desperation in my voice. You’d think that by the age of thirty-four I would have better control of myself. I bit down on the inside of my cheek, hoping that would help me to calm down. She would think I was a madman if I didn’t relax, and then there would be no way I could convince her to come with me. “You can’t stay here,” I said once I thought I had reined myself in again. “I can drive you away from the highway and we can call for someone to help with your car.”
She blinked at me a couple of times, and I was struck by the blue of her eyes. They were so bright and clear as to be startling. Her smile, though—that wasn’t just startling; it was striking.
This woman isn’t Liv
, I reminded myself, and her appearance ought to help me to remember that. This woman, for as beautiful as she was, looked nothing like Liv. I didn’t have the first clue who she was. There was no black ice on the roads; it had been a gorgeous spring day today, and there wasn’t a cloud blocking the moon or stars in the sky, even though a cool breeze was blowing. I had no way of knowing how many drivers out on the roads tonight had been drinking, but the fact remained that this was an entirely different situation.
It had to be. I was here, and I hadn’t been with Liv. I would never be with Liv again.
The woman gave me a wary look. Which she ought to do. What the fuck was I thinking? A young woman alone on the highway at night, and some strange guy races up to her and insists on taking her somewhere “safe”? For all she knew, I was a rapist or a murderer. God only knew what else might’ve been going through her mind.
“I’m really fine,” she said evasively but without any fear tinting her words. It was all very matter-of-fact. She smiled again, a bright enough smile to make my heart jolt back to life. “It happens sometimes, but I know how to deal with it. Once I add some water, it’ll be cool enough in another ten or fifteen minutes, and then I can go. Thank you for offering to help, though.”
She edged past me, her long skirt swirling around her ankles as she made her way to the front of the car. Without hesitation, she unscrewed the jug’s cap and started emptying the water into her engine. A hiss sounded as soon as the water made contact, and I could make out white steam trailing up into the chilly night air.
Ten or fifteen minutes? There were far too many possibilities of awful things that could happen to her in that much time, and my mind raced through each of them indiscriminately.
“Add the water and come with me then,” I urged. “I’ll bring you back in fifteen minutes. I swear I’m not a serial killer or anything. I just want you to be safe.”
She finished pouring the water into the hole and put the lid back on the jug, and then she turned to me. She smiled again, like she had when I’d first called out to her. It was all lightness and peace coming away from her, the complete opposite of me lately. Her blue eyes sparkled like the stars in the sky over us.
“I don’t think you’re a serial killer. You’re too perfect to be a serial killer. Aren’t they all supposed to be kind of strange?” She laughed, a tinkling sound that made me think of the wind chimes Liv had kept outside our house near Gothenburg.
We used to leave the windows open when I was home in the summers so the cool air could wash over us, and those chimes would play their music all night long while I held her. So many of those nights, I had lain awake watching her, praying for a way to convince her to come with me during the National Hockey League’s season. It had taken me years to get her to come. She’d wanted to stay in Gothenburg with her family and her work and her wind chimes. I should have let her stay. If I had, she would still be there when I went home each summer.
“I’m not,” I finally said. God, that sounded stupid.
But she smiled again before slipping past me to put the jug back in her car. She didn’t look at me as though I was behaving like an idiot. When she returned to the front of the Buick, she leaned back and rested her hip against the front bumper.
It seemed like she might never stop smiling, at least in these few short moments I’d been in her presence. Happiness and light billowed off her in waves, making me more determined than I already had been to be sure nothing happened to her. The good things in life—the really sweet and joyful and delightful—needed to be protected. They seemed to be in short supply, at least around me.
“So now you just have to wait?” I said.
She nodded.
I spun around, looking in all directions for somewhere safe I could take her. Not too far up ahead, just off the service road, there was an office building with a well-lit parking lot. A shopping center or a gas station would be better, with lots of people milling around, but right now I’d take anything. That lot was the best bet out of anything within sight.
I pointed to it. “Look, I’ll just take you right over there. We can sit there for a little while and then I’ll bring you back to your car and wait to see if you can get it running. If you can’t, I’ll call for a tow truck, take you home—whatever. I just can’t let you stay here.”
I had been on a road trip with my team when Liv had died. I hadn’t been there to do anything about it. I hadn’t been able to help her. But this woman… I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I went home and turned on the news to find out something had happened to her, not when I’d been right here and could have gotten her to safety.
She looked back over her shoulder at her car, her gaze lingering for a long time while she nibbled on her lower lip as if she couldn’t decide what to do. What was that about? The car wasn’t going anywhere. The engine block was still smoking and steaming, and the hood was still raised. It didn’t make any sense to me.
But then she turned to face me again, biting down hard on her lip. “All right,” she said hesitantly. “I suppose it’ll be okay if we leave it for a few minutes. We’re just going over to that lot?” she asked, pointing.
Thank God she was finally starting to come to her senses on this. I didn’t want to have to haul her away kicking and screaming. Then someone
would
think I was trying to hurt her. “Yes. We won’t be far. I’ll bring you straight back here in a little while.”
After a moment, she nodded, but it didn’t seem all that decisive. “All right. Let me just get…get my purse…” She moved to the passenger side door and rummaged around in the front seat for a moment. It took a little longer than I’d expected for her to simply grab her purse, but eventually she came out with a light jacket draped over her arm, a small bag with the strap slung across her body, and a pair of shoes.
When she got back to me, I turned around and headed toward my rental car. Her legs were shorter than mine, and she wasn’t in anywhere near as much of a hurry to get out of there as I was, so I reached it well before she did. I opened the passenger-side door and waited for her to get in. The skirt of her dress kept trying to fly away in the wind, and it took her a minute to get it under control and pull it all inside the vehicle. As soon as she did, I closed her door and raced around to the driver’s side. I pulled my seat belt on and checked all my mirrors to see when it was safe to pull out. Once the traffic cleared enough, I put the car into drive and accelerated.
“I’m Noelle, by the way,” she said once we were moving. “Noelle Payne.”
“Liam Kallen,” I replied, checking my rearview mirror again. We’d barely merged before we were essentially on top of the exit.
“It’s really nice of you to stop and help me. Not many people around here would do that. But then you’re not from around here.”
I shot a glance over at her as I flipped on my turn signal. “Most people don’t pick up on my accent anymore.” As with most students in Sweden, I’d studied English since early in my schooling. Living in New York for so many years had virtually eliminated my accent, or so I’d thought. Maybe people were just being nice to me, not mentioning it anymore.
Noelle shrugged. “It’s not heavy, but I hear it. Where are you from?”
“Sweden.”
She nodded with that now-familiar smile curling her lips, and I steered us to the access road. Two more turns in quick succession had us pulling into the parking lot. Seven or eight other cars were parked there, but the huge lot was almost empty. It was a Saturday night, and I was somewhat surprised that there were even that many cars here at all on the weekend, especially at night.
I pulled into a spot and put the car in park. I’d made sure we were facing the split on the highway where we’d left her Buick. We sat there in silence for a minute—long enough that it was starting to feel really awkward.
“Were you on your way to a date?” I asked to break the tension. She raised a brow in question, so I gestured toward her dress. “Or maybe coming home from one?” I added.
Noelle shook her head. “I had a job interview in Salem late this afternoon.”
“Do you think you got the job?” I asked. I couldn’t help but be insanely aware that she wasn’t looking at me at all; her focus was directed at her car. Maybe she had something in it that she didn’t want stolen? With it sitting where it was, though, I couldn’t imagine anyone but a police officer coming along. Not until sometime in the wee hours of the morning, at least, when there was no traffic on the roads to speak of, and by then we should have it moved—whether I called for someone to tow it or she was able to drive it away.
Her eyes flicked over to me for a moment, but then she returned to her vigil. “Nope. I don’t have the right experience, they said.” She fidgeted with her bag, shifting it on her lap and fingering it in a way that made me think she was reassuring herself that it was in her possession. “Why’d you move here from Sweden?” she asked a moment later.
“I’m a hockey player. I play in the National Hockey League.” And that was why my wife was dead. Liv had given up her whole life to be with me, and now I’d lost everything important in mine. Everything except hockey, and I might lose that before too much longer if I couldn’t get myself together.
“Hockey?”
Noelle smiled at me again, just long enough to make me think about how her smile and her laugh and her voice all matched so perfectly. They worked together to become something musical in a thoroughly distracting way. It seemed as though she had to be from somewhere else, not from this earth. I’d never met anyone like her.
She faced forward again, staring out at the highway and her car. “My brothers are big fans of the Portland Storm,” she said.
“That’s the team I play for now.” I’d spent almost twelve full seasons playing for the New York Islanders, right up until a couple of weeks ago. They’d finally given up on me. I’d only scored three goals in the year and a half since Liv had died. Who knew how long I’d be in Portland? If I couldn’t figure out how to score again, it wouldn’t be for very long, no matter how much time was left on my contract.