Yours to Keep (Man of the Year)

by Lauren Layne

  What was it to Olive if the person Felicity likely most wanted to reconnect with was Olive’s temporary neighbor?

  What did it matter if that neighbor hadn’t mentioned Felicity to Olive?

  No big, said her brain.

  Wtf, said her heart.

  “So, have you seen him?” Sofia said, falling into step with Olive, pushing her cart beside hers.

  Olive didn’t pretend not to know who him was in reference to. “Actually, yeah. He’s helping me plan the reunion.”

  “What?” Sofia halted, then reached out to snag a finger in one of the holes of Olive’s cart, pulling her to a stop as well. “You and Carter Ramsey are friends?”

  “Well, no. I’m friends with Caitlyn, who’s supposed to be helping plan the reunion, but she’s on bed rest, and—anyway, it kind of became a whole thing.”

  “What kind of thing?” Sofia said, her eyes wide and fascinated.

  “Not the kind of thing you’re thinking,” Olive said, gently extracting her friend’s hand from her cart and pushing forward again. “We’re just neighbors.”

  “Neighbors!” Sofia squeaked. “How could you not have texted me all this? I leave for two weeks, and I come back to my work bestie shacking up with a celebrity. Did you know his contract with the Hawks is one of the largest in MLB history? Like, lots of zeros. Luis said the team could lose millions if he doesn’t get better after his injury—okay, whatever, who cares. Is he as hot as he seems on TV?”

  Olive pointed at the checkout stand as they neared the front of the store. “You done shopping? I’m ready to check out.”

  “Ugh, no, I’ve barely dented my list,” Sofia said. “But for real, before I go buy frozen pizza in bulk, you’ve got to give me something. Is Carter hot, or does his baseball cap just disguise his flaws on TV? Is he conceited? Short? I’ve always heard that celebs are shorter in real life than you think.”

  “He’s good-looking. Cocky, definitely, but not a jerk about it. And he’s got several inches on me.”

  “Ooh, so tall,” Sofia said reverently. “And hot.”

  “I said good-looking,” Olive pointed out.

  “Yes, but if you think someone is good-looking, it means he’s hot. Just like when you were dating that math teacher from Woodstock and said he was ‘interesting looking,’ you failed to mention the unfortunate way his huge nose emphasized his lack of chin.”

  “Kenneth was sweet,” Olive protested. “And smart. And kind.”

  “I know. And yet, you’re no longer seeing him because . . .”

  “Long distance,” Olive replied instantly.

  “Annnnnd?” Sofia prompted.

  “I never should have told you,” Olive muttered.

  “He refused to be on top during sex.” Sofia paired a dismissive ptttttthhd noise with a thumbs-down.

  Olive shrugged. Sex with Kenneth had been disappointing, but then, in Olive’s experience, sex in general was disappointing. Pleasant, definitely, but there was nothing earth-shattering about it.

  “I’ll bet Carter Ramsey doesn’t mind being on top,” Sofia said, slowly fanning herself. “Or on the bottom. Or standing up. Or—”

  “Stop.” Olive held up a hand. “He’s my neighbor and, weirdly, sort of my friend. I don’t want to think about him having sex.”

  And she certainly didn’t want to think about him having sex with Felicity George.

  “Admit it,” Carter said, finishing the rest of his sparkling water, then crumpling the can in his fist. “It was sort of satisfying.”

  Olive took her time responding, lifting the official MLB scoring sheet that she’d just completed. Carter had had one of the team’s PAs overnight him one, and he and Olive had spent the last three hours watching the Hawks play as she had gamely kept score with his instruction.

  “People do this with every game? For fun?”

  Carter shrugged. “Sure.”

  Olive continued to study her tidy score sheet, then gave a smug smile. “I’m putting this on my refrigerator.”

  He smiled. “So you did have fun.”

  “Don’t get riled up. I will never do it again,” she said, setting the scorecard on the table and picking up her mug of tea. “But as a onetime exercise in understanding baseball, it was quite useful.”

  “Thought you might appreciate the academic side of the sport.”

  “I do,” she admitted. “I didn’t even mind when it went into the tenth interval.”

  “Inning, Olive. Good God, was that a wasted three hours?”

  She grinned, and he rolled his eyes when he realized she’d been baiting him.

  “I wonder if Principal Mullins would let me be the official scorekeeper at the softball game next weekend rather than actually play,” she mused.

  “Oh right, Caitlyn mentioned something about that. There really is a softball game?”

  “Every August,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “I could sort of understand if it was just a ‘for fun’ way to hang out with teachers from other districts, but people get way into it. Last year, Principal Mullins tried to bribe us all into playing our best by saying whomever he named the MVP moved to the top of the list for a new laptop.”

  Carter hadn’t seen Olive’s laptop, but he’d seen her inability to catch a softball. It went without saying that she hadn’t been the MVP.

  “What’s the bribe this year?”

  “No clue. But there’s literally no carrot he could dangle in front of my nose that would get me excited about that game.”

  “Not even new microscopes for your class?”

  “Okay, that, yes,” Olive said, pointing at him. “I’d join a softball league for that. I’d become your ball girl for that—ooh, sex pun! But anyway, it’s not going to happen. That’s big money the district doesn’t have. Or at least, big money the softball-obsessed Mullins wouldn’t attach to a game.”

  Carter nodded, propping his feet up on Olive’s ottoman. He’d originally planned for them to watch the game at his rented place, but she’d pointed out that hers was more comfortable, and she was right. His had all the standard furniture pieces in all the right places, but everything had a generic, beige sort of feel, as though someone had called a furniture superstore and told them to send “whatever.”

  Her home was warm, one of a kind, and comfortable.

  Much like the woman herself.

  Though she hadn’t been herself tonight, at least not the Olive he’d come to know over the past week—strange, that it had been only that long when he felt as though this woman knew him as well as anyone, and he was coming to know her as well.

  It was how he knew that even though she smiled, laughed, and bossed, there was something on her mind. Her smile dropped just a little more quickly, and there’d been a slight frown on her face whenever she’d thought he wasn’t watching her. Strangely, he’d found Olive more interesting to watch than the game.

  She was simply so alive, even when she was sitting perfectly still.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked her.

  “’Bout what?” She looked at him over her mug, which she cupped with both hands.

  “You seem preoccupied, and I know it’s not because you’re still thinking about the fielder’s choice in the fourth inning.”

  “I still don’t get it. He hit the ball. He got to first base safely. So why wasn’t it a hit?”

  “Because,” Carter explained patiently, not for the first time, “he would have been out had there not been a runner on second, and had the shortstop not chosen to get the out at third instead.”

  “We can’t know that. What if the shortstop would have thrown it to first, and the first baseman would have missed it?”

  “Then he’d be on base by an error, which is still not a hit.”

  “I see.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to change it on the scorecard after I leave, aren’t you?”

  She gave him a wide smile, showing him all her teeth. Her eyes, though . . . they still didn’t
light all the way.

  “That’s not what’s bothering you,” he said.

  “Jeez, you have to be athletic, good-looking, and perceptive?” she said grumpily, setting her mug back on the table, then sitting back on the couch, leg tucked beneath her as she turned to face him. “You really want to know?”

  “Nope, just asked about it twice in hopes that you wouldn’t tell me,” Carter said.

  “All right then, here it is,” she said, gesturing with her hand as though to say, you asked for it. “Are you here in Haven because Felicity George is coming back to town?”

  Carter went still. He didn’t know precisely what had been bothering Olive, but he’d assumed it’d be related to her job, her boss, the reunion, or maybe something she’d heard around town, because as far as he could tell, she seemed to know everyone and everything.

  Which was why it should have occurred to him that the woman who knew everything would also know that.

  “I heard a few days before you got into town that Felicity was divorced and maybe coming back. But all this time, you’ve never mentioned it. Weren’t you like really serious with her?”

  Carter exhaled. “It’s not like it’s a big secret.” He deliberately didn’t answer the part about being serious with Felicity. He had been. But discussing it with Olive felt strange.

  Especially since in the past couple of days, he’d been thinking a lot more about Olive than he had Felicity.

  “Okay, so, she is coming to town,” Olive said slowly. “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She hasn’t booked her flight yet?”

  “I have no idea. I haven’t talked to her.”

  “Since—when?”

  “Since ten years ago,” he said with a tight smile.

  Olive’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously?”

  “Do you go around talking to a lot of your exes?” Suddenly, he was more than a little curious about her exes.

  “Well, no,” she admitted. “But I also don’t rent a house with the expectation of seeing them, and then not get in touch. What’s the big plan? You’re just going to bump into her at Cedar & Salt?”

  He winced.

  Olive rolled her eyes. “Oh good God. That was your plan?”

  It had been his plan. Now, he had to admit, he hadn’t thought about Felicity much at all, considering she was the primary reason he’d returned to Haven. He still wanted to see her. Eventually. But not in the urgent, hopeful way he had when he’d first decided to come into town. Now, it was more of a passive curiosity. There was still a whisper of what-if, but there was no burn to it.

  A week ago, the prospect of reuniting with Felicity had seemed far-fetched, but feasible. Desperate, yes, but also . . . practical. Now, he didn’t want practical.

  He sighed. “Look, between helping you plan the reunion, getting you to admit you were wrong about my job being hard, seeing my family, and staying in shape, there just hasn’t been much time to go chasing down my ex,” he told Olive.

  “Bullshit,” Olive said bluntly. “You’re terrified to see her.”

  “I dated her for a year. Why would I be terrified?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest. But I do know that if you want something, you go after it. You don’t become one of the highest-paid baseball players in history by sitting around and letting stuff come to you. If you wanted to get in touch with Felicity, you’d be in touch with Felicity. So, what’s up?”

  He glared at her. “You’re annoying.”

  “I’m right.”

  Yeah. Yeah, she was right.

  Irritably, he adjusted the strap of his sling, stalling for time as he marveled at the fact that he had never told his mother, his twin, or any of his friends what had gone down with Felicity a decade ago, and somehow he was considering telling Olive Dunn.

  No. He wanted to tell Olive Dunn.

  “All right,” he muttered. “But this stays between us.”

  “Oh, I don’t like secrets,” she said bluntly.

  “But you’ll keep one if I ask,” he said with confidence.

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. Absolutely I will.”

  He took a deep breath. “Felicity and I were good together. We only dated for a year, but it was a damn good year, and I loved her.”

  Olive nodded. “I know. Lab partner, remember? You wrote her gushy notes.”

  He winced. “You knew about that?”

  She gave him a look.

  “Right,” he said with a laugh. “Olive Dunn knows everything. But not this.”

  “Ooh!” Her eyes widened. “Intrigue.”

  “Sure. Okay, so, we cared about each other, but I was also eighteen. I’d spent the past couple months stressed about whether to play college ball at Florida State or go pro. Her parents had been counting the days until graduation so they could move to California to be near her grandparents, and she’d been accepted to—and enrolled in—a school out there.”

  “You guys had planned to do long distance?”

  “To be honest, I hadn’t planned much of anything,” Carter said, leaning forward and looking down at his feet. “I’d been sort of putting off the decision, figuring that what was meant to be would be. Then, in . . . July, I guess it was, she came over to my place all excited to tell me she wasn’t going to go to college in California after all.”

  “Where was she going to go?”

  Carter looked up. “With me, apparently. I’d been drafted by that point and was just waiting for my minor league assignment. She said us being together was the most important thing.”

  “You didn’t agree?”

  “I loved her,” Carter said. “But . . . I told her to go to college. As planned.”

  “Good,” Olive said emphatically.

  He exhaled out a laugh. “It didn’t feel that way at the time. But I knew it was the right thing—I didn’t want her giving her life up for me until she’d really had a chance to build her own life.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone cry that much,” he admitted. “So, it sucked. Especially when she stopped crying long enough to tell me that she didn’t want to do long distance. That she couldn’t stomach the thought of being on the other side of the country not knowing what I was doing, or who I was sleeping with . . .”

  “Oooh boy.”

  “Yeah. She left, pissed, and I thought we were done.”

  Olive was listening attentively. “Is this where the intriguing part comes in?”

  He nodded. “The next day, she showed up again. Calmer. Weirdly calm, I thought. She told me that she loved me, would always love me, but that she understood our lives were taking us in different directions.”

  Olive sighed and picked up her tea. “I don’t mean to be rude, but this isn’t all that interesting. I thought she was at least going to throw a baseball at you. Now that would make a good story.”

  “Well, maybe if you quit interrupting,” he grumbled. Then he gave her the part of the story he hadn’t told a soul: “Felicity suggested that we part ways, amicably. But if in ten years, neither of us were married, that we would . . .” He broke off and finished the rest on a mutter. “That we would marry each other.”

  He finally brought himself to look at Olive, whose eyes were comically wide. “Please tell me you didn’t agree to that.”

  He winced.

  “You did!” Olive said with a delighted laugh. “Oh my God. Oh my God! That is too good. I didn’t know that sort of thing happened outside of terrible movies! A marriage pact!”

  “I was eighteen,” he said under his breath. “And I’d already hurt her. I didn’t want her to start crying again, and—”

  “And?” she managed through a laugh, wiping her eyes.

  “Well, honestly, I thought I’d be married by now! And she married the Hollywood guy, so I chalked the whole thing up to childhood crap and forgot about it.”

  “Until you found out she was divorced,” Olive said. “And going t
o be a two-hour drive away from your place in the city.”

  He paused a moment, then gave a single nod.

  Olive’s laughter slowly died. “Wait. Carter. You aren’t seriously thinking . . . It’s one thing to make a stupid pact when you’re eighteen and don’t know any better. But you’re twenty-eight now.”

  “Exactly. It’s been ten years. I’m single. And she’s single.”

  “And you haven’t seen or talked to each other in all that time! You won’t even call her!”

  “You don’t get it,” he snapped, standing abruptly and pacing irritably around her living room.

  “No, I don’t. But explain it to me,” Olive said slowly.

  “The timing of it . . . rocked me, a little. I’ve been so preoccupied with my identity as a baseball player for so long. Then this happened.” He lifted his broken arm slightly. “And all of a sudden, I realized I don’t know who I am. Or what I am. And I guess I wanted to remember what it was like to be liked before I became what I am now.”

  “An über-famous multimillionaire?”

  He nodded. “And the girl who loved me before I was all of that seemed like a good person to help me figure it out.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” she said, leaning her elbows on her knees and studying him. “You’ve spent the past decade making oodles of money because you happen to have really good hand-eye coordination. Your face is about to be plastered all over a magazine cover because your features happen to be arranged in a semipleasing manner, and you’re saying you want to go back to . . . before all that?”

  He gave a half smile. “Semipleasing manner?”

  “We don’t have time for compliment fishing right now.”

  “We don’t?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “We’re in problem-solving mode.”

  His smile faded entirely. “Some problems you can’t fix.”

  Olive scowled. “All problems can be fixed.”

  He shook his head and was beyond annoyed to realize he had a frustrated lump in his throat.

  Olive’s face scrunched in concern; then her gaze dropped to his sling, and he saw the moment she understood. “I thought—I googled it. It was a clean break. You said you’d get the cast off in four to six weeks.”