I chewed my lip as I tried to work through my thoughts. “What if…what if she can’t forgive me for pushing her away?”
“Oh! I go this one!” Stolly said. He plunked his butt down on Cormac’s coffee table and put his hands on my shoulders. “You keep working at it. Like a drill. You give her your full focus, you make sure she knows she’s the priority. It’ll take time. You might have to sleep on a too-short couch?—”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Naese asked.
“I’m just saying, it might be hard or uncomfortable,” Stolly snapped. “But you don’t give up. You’re an NHL player, man. You know all about perseverance. So…persevere.” He punctuated his point with a nod.
“That’s very good advice,” Mom said.
Stolly ducked his head, but we all saw the smirk he tried to bury in his shoulder.
“I had to make Ida Jane love me,” Maxim rumbled. “She took time to trust that I was serious.”
“If that guy can do it, so can you,” Cormac said.
“Hey!” Maxim exclaimed.
“What? You’re a dick…erm, difficult personality,” Stolly said with a side-eye at my mother.
She turned her head away to show she was ignoring his potty mouth.
Maxim shrugged. “True.”
“So, as your friends were saying, you prove you’re trustworthy. If Vivian is smart, she won’t believe you,” Mom said. “So you’ll have to work for her, for your relationship.”
Cormac rubbed his hands together. “We have some suggestions.”
“You can discuss them over the enchiladas,” my mother said.
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Naese said, bolting to the kitchen.
Chapter 14
Chapter
Vivian
* * *
“I shouldn’t be in Houston.” I fidgeted in the back of the rideshare, staring out at the massive sprawl and thousands of cars on the huge highway.
I’d been at a low point the day before Lola Cruz had called me that first time two weeks ago. Over the span of the previous week, five of my patients had passed away, an alarming number, and I’d gone on a disastrous date with Dr. Dewan Kapoor. The man was kind, thoughtful, respectful of my limits—everything I should want in a partner. Yet the evening had been an epic bust that ended with me rage-eating an entire bag of caramel corn. Dewan wasn’t Lennon. Full stop.
I hated that I couldn’t get over him. I remained stalled, stuck in this stupid spot where my heart continued to yearn but my mind knew the relationship was over.
“Why not?” the driver asked, looking up at me in the rearview mirror.
I sighed. “It’s complicated.”
Perhaps that’s why I hadn’t been immune to the appeal from his mother. Perhaps. More, though, she reminded me of my mother, and because I was in a place where I needed guidance and love, I’d been more than happy to respond to the text she sent me the evening after that first call, then again the next morning, that afternoon, that evening, the next day and the next… We’d fallen into a pattern of communicating, and I’d mentioned that my mother’s family was from Oaxaca.
Lola had then told me stories from her trip there in her teens. She’d told me about meeting Lennon’s father, a traveling musician who had become a truck driver to support her and their oldest child, Ruben. They’d had Lennon and his two sisters nearly ten years later. She told me about losing her husband, then Ruben, and how that had affected young Lennon. She told me how she’ d had to work as a waitress, slowly moving up to better and better restaurants, until she now ran front-of-house in one of the nicest restaurants in the city.
Hers was a tale I understood, one that Lennon shared—perseverance, hard work, dogged determination to reach goals. I respected that story; I’d lived that story.
Lola told me how Lennon didn’t understand health benefits and hadn’t ever asked about her salary. He sent her an allowance, and Lola was a saver, especially now that her kids were out of the house, which was why she could hire me as a private nurse. That and because she had a grant. I was pretty sure that meant someone on Lennon’s hockey team knew about her diagnosis and was helping her pay my salary.
I’d suggested I take less, but Lola wouldn’t hear of that. She’d mentioned my Kryptonite—my own fault—that I’d only have to work with and for her, not a slew of other people, too.
