Yours to Keep (Man of the Year)

by Lauren Layne

  “It was. I will.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, and before he realized what he was doing, he was dropping his other bomb on Olive Dunn. “I’ve got a SLAP tear. In my left shoulder.”

  “A what now?”

  “A superior labral tear from anterior to posterior.” Carter’s voice had a terse precision as he said the words he’d gotten all too familiar with. “Basically, a kiss-of-death injury for someone who has to throw for a living. It’s more detrimental for pitchers, but no peach for the rest of us, either.”

  “Is it from the same fall?”

  He shook his head. “It’d been bothering me for a couple weeks before my arm injury. I thought it was just some tightness, that I’d sprained it a bit. But when they were scanning my arm after the fall, they found the tear in my shoulder, too.”

  “What does it mean?” she asked calmly.

  “A broken forearm’s a for-sure return to play. A SLAP tear’s a probable return to play. Even the combination . . . I’ll get back on the field. But a return to elite performance? I’ll never be as good as I was.”

  “How come nobody’s talking about the shoulder, if that’s the worse one?”

  Carter gave a half smile. “Nobody knows. Just you, my agent, and the doctor. Not my teammates, not the press, not even my family.”

  Olive absorbed this information slowly, then nodded and stood. “I feel like I should warn you, I’ve never really hugged a man other than my dad before. Not in a platonic way.”

  “Um, okay,” he said, puzzled.

  “So this will very likely be awkward for both of us,” she said, walking toward him and unceremoniously winding her arms around his waist, careful not to jar his broken arm.

  She was wrong. Carter instinctively put his good arm around her and pulled her as close as he could. It wasn’t awkward.

  It was exactly what he needed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Wednesday, August 19

  “Why did you kidnap me again?”

  “It’s called carpooling,” Olive explained patiently. “We’re going to the same place, and because I know you love the planet as much as I do, we’re doing our part to limit fuel emissions. I’d have suggested riding bikes, but I don’t have one for you.”

  “Damn, too bad,” he said. “Would have been pretty great to break my other arm.”

  She shot him a look. “How’s that?”

  “Let’s just say it’s been a while since I’ve ridden a bike,” he said, turning his head to look out the window and seeming more pensive than usual.

  “You ride the stationary ones in the gym, and you had that fancy bike machine installed in the living room of your rental house like a weirdo.”

  “It’s a little different when it’s a machine that stays immobile on the floor versus tearing around town like I’m a twelve-year-old kid from The Goonies.”

  “You’re obviously not twelve years old if you’re making a Goonies reference. That movie is older than you are.”

  “Don’t mock the classics, Dunn,” he said with a quick grin. “But thanks for the reminder that I’m a young buck.”

  She smiled back, though she knew there was more to his comment than a casual quip. She knew it ate at him that his career had an expiration date. She wished she knew how to help. It had been several days since he’d told her the truth about the extent of his injuries, and Olive was a bit miffed to realize that no matter how much she thought about it, no matter how hard she brainstormed, this was one thing she couldn’t fix.

  But.

  While she may not be able to fix his arm, she could at least keep his brain distracted. From his shoulder. From his cast. From freaking Felicity George, who Olive had learned would be getting into town sometime over the weekend.

  Not that Olive had told Carter about Felicity’s impending arrival. If he wanted to reconnect with his old girlfriend, that was his business. If he wanted to follow through with their decade-old pact, that was lunacy, but also his business.

  She couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell him how to conduct his personal life, but Olive was going to at least do her part to make sure Carter Ramsey’s head was on as straight as it possibly could be before he made any sort of weird, hasty decisions influenced by his uncertain career future.

  A marriage pact.

  For God’s sake.

  It was as ridiculous now as when he’d first told her about it, but the more she thought about it, the more she understood why it had brought him back to Haven in the first place. For a guy who was facing the possible end of his career with no idea what came next, maybe it made sense to look backward for comfort. For Carter, comfort meant Felicity.

  Alarmingly, Olive was becoming increasingly worried that her source of comfort was Carter. Which would be all fine and dandy if he didn’t have plans to leave town the second he got his cast removed. Felicity very well might be willing to follow him when he left, but Olive belonged here, in Haven.

  “Here we are!” Olive said, forcing brightness into her tone as she pulled into the deserted Haven High faculty parking lot. “Ready to get inspired for our reunion theme? We’ve got less than three weeks to go and zero ideas.”

  “And being here will help us how?” Carter asked, climbing out of the car.

  “It probably won’t,” she admitted, shutting the car door behind her. “But I’ve got to take some measurements in the gym to figure out what size tables to rent, and I figured it’d give you a chance to bask in your old glory days.”

  She gestured for him to go frolic, but instead of moving, he glanced at her curiously. “Is it weird?”

  “Is what weird?” Olive asked.

  “Working in the same building where your teenage self suffered through puberty?”

  Olive’s tone was sharper than she meant it to be when she replied. “We can’t all rush off to the land of the rich and famous after graduation, and some of us don’t want to. There’s nothing wrong with staying in your hometown.”

  He blinked in surprise. “Of course there’s not. That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know,” she said quietly, not quite looking at him. “It’s just that I like my job. I don’t feel I should have to defend it just because I don’t make millions of dollars and get my face plastered on a magazine.”

  “Ouch.” He said it softly, and with a slight smile, but he looked stung and rightfully so. She knew she was one of the few people—maybe the only person—he’d trusted enough to share his Man of the Year secret with, and she was throwing it in his face.

  She winced. “I’m sorry. That was bitchy.”

  “Forgiven. Though will you bite my head off if I say you’re not exactly acting like yourself?”

  “No,” Olive said with a weary exhale. “You’re right.”

  “What’s up?” he asked, looking both curious and concerned.

  Olive wished she knew. Ever since finding out Carter had come back to Haven for Felicity, she’d felt off-balance. Here she’d thought they were building an actual friendship, and now she couldn’t shake the sense that she was just a placeholder to keep him entertained until the love of his life showed up.

  “Nothing,” she lied. “Just a good old-fashioned woke up on the wrong side of the bed situation. Don’t worry, I’ll snap out of it. Now, where were we? I believe you were busy judging my life decisions?”

  He made a sound of irritation. “Damn it, woman, I wasn’t judging you. I think it’s great that you like your job.”

  “I do,” she said, trying to shove away her cranky mood. “I really love it. Education’s so important, and yet so often people treat it as some sort of mundane, youthful obligation to be checked off before real life begins.”

  He turned in a wide circle as he walked, taking in their old high school campus. “Little do they know some of their best days will be here,” he said, shoving his hand in his pocket and looking up at the building.

  Olive sneaked a glance at him as she dug her keys out of her purse, wondering if he was thinking abo
ut Felicity, then shook her head. Of course he was. His baseball career had only exploded since he left high school. But his romantic life, from what Google had told her in her shameless online stalking over the past couple of days, had apparently peaked in high school.

  Perhaps not for long, though. Not if he and Felicity picked up where they’d left off.

  She pushed away the thought as she shoved open the door to the main administration building, then used the key once again, this time to turn on the master lights.

  They flickered on, noisy and fluorescent, and Carter grinned as he looked around. “Wow. It looks exactly the same.”

  “Not much has changed,” Olive agreed. “They repainted the walls a couple years ago, and the computer lab is state of the art. But there’s not much money left over to completely scrub the seventies off the place.”

  “Holy crap.” He halted and pointed to his left, at a bright blue locker that looked like every other bright blue locker. “That’s my locker. My exact locker.”

  “You sound upset. Were you expecting it to be turned into a shrine?”

  “Not upset. Just . . . It’s weird,” he murmured, setting a hand to it, a small smile on his lips, as though lost in memories.

  She looked away, because he had the same wistful look again, and she was completely certain he wasn’t reminiscing about time spent with his weird lab partner. Not when he had the pristine memory of Felicity George. Olive had no distinct memories of Carter and Felicity together in high school, just a vague recollection that they’d been a couple. She hadn’t given much thought to their relationship then, and she certainly hadn’t given much thought to it over the past decade, but . . . she was thinking about it now. Imagining a pretty, smiley Felicity leaning back against Carter’s locker. Imagining Carter leaning down to sneak a kiss when teachers weren’t around.

  Imagining that it was Olive who was smiling up at him, that she was the one he was kissing . . .

  Nope. Olive caught herself before the disastrous fantasy could go any further.

  “Shut it down,” she muttered to herself.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Come on. Which of your old classrooms do you want to see?”

  Olive showed him around the entire school, letting herself see Haven High through the eyes of someone who’d once ruled the school, and smiling a little at how genuinely happy he seemed.

  “So what’s next? The gym?”

  “In a sec. I just need to swing by the supply room and pick up a couple poster boards. I want to put up a few more posters around town. It’s cheesy, but it’s for a high school reunion. It’s supposed to be cheesy.”

  “More green glitter in your future?”

  “I don’t suppose you have any art skills? Then you could actually be useful in this reunion-planning thing,” she said, opening the supply room closet and grabbing what she needed.

  “Unfortunately, I’ve only got the one skill,” he replied, dutifully using his good hand to hold the poster boards she handed up. “And for what it’s worth, being famous is not all that it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Easier to say, probably, when you’ve had the luxury of experiencing it. Most people never even get the chance to reject fame, or muse about life before they were famous—” Olive broke off as inspiration hit hard.

  “What?” Carter asked curiously.

  “That’s it,” she said with a wide smile. “I’m a genius.”

  “There you go again, struggling with your confidence levels.”

  “Hush. Not everyone will get the opportunity to be famous, but everyone can pretend they turned out famous. Isn’t that the cliché? To go to your high school reunion a celebrity with stories to tell?”

  “Sure, I guess,” he said skeptically. “Maybe in a One Tree Hill episode.”

  “You watched One Tree Hill?”

  “I had a girlfriend who did, which, in high school, is sort of the same thing.”

  “Okay, whatever. We have our theme!” she said, clapping excitedly, her brain buzzing with ideas.

  “What, One Tree Hill?” he asked.

  “Ugh, no. Keep up. Our theme is ‘Before They Were Famous.’ Everyone can come dressed and in character of who they’d be if they were famous. We’ll make it all fancy, lifestyles of the rich and famous, plus a little nostalgic when-they-were-young thing.”

  “Who would you be if you were famous?” he asked, following her as she headed toward the gym.

  “Little old me? Why, I could never be famous,” she said in a faux-breathy voice. “I’d be happy just being by the side of my famous baby daddy! He plays baseball!” She set a hand to her chest as she said it, batting her eyes dramatically at him, fully expecting him to roll his eyes in return.

  Instead, he caught her gaze with his, and for one baffling moment, she could have sworn they were thinking the exact same thing: What if?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Wednesday, August 19

  Carter glanced around the gym as the lights slowly flickered on, illuminating the familiar space. If the main admin building had brought back a rush of memories, the gym held a healthy dose of straight-up nostalgia.

  Aside from the baseball field, which he hadn’t seen yet, some of his favorite memories from high school had taken place in this ugly, smelly gym: PE classes, which had always been his favorites; tryouts for every sport had started here, and the flyer for who made what team had been posted here as well; school assemblies, which had always been a welcome break from class; high school dances, where the game of avoiding the chaperones had been nearly as rewarding as anything they played on the ball field.

  It also smelled a bit like a gym bag that hadn’t been cleaned in a long, long time.

  “You sure this is the place?” he asked Olive, who was charging around with a tape measure.

  “Unless you have a better idea and want your bewitching of SherryLee Mullins to be in vain.”

  “Had I known the price, I might not have tried so hard to apply my B-level charm on her,” he said.

  She glanced over. “That was B-level? What’s your A-level?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” he said, giving her a slow grin.

  Olive, of course, looked unimpressed. “Was that it? I find myself distinctly uncharmed—zero chance of swooning.”

  “Have you ever swooned?”

  “Of course not,” she said, going back to her measuring.

  For several minutes, there was nothing but the sound of her tape measure, followed by the sound of her pencil scratching across her notebook as she took notes. He would have asked what he could do to help, but he’d gotten to know this woman well enough to predict that the answer would be a big fat nothing. Olive didn’t seem to need him—or anyone—for anything.

  She’d been right when she’d told Caitlyn she didn’t need a cochair. She was doing it just fine on her own. Still, he was strangely glad that he had agreed to help. If someone had told him that he’d be spending his August running around his hometown comparing the meatballs of two rival caterers and listening to his high school lab partner barter for a bulk discount on tulips, he’d have laughed in disbelief.

  Yet here he was. Enjoying himself.

  And not just because it was a distraction from his injury or from the fact that Felicity would be in town any day.

  He was enjoying himself because he was enjoying . . .

  Olive.

  Carter shoved his hand into the pocket of his jeans and watched as she sat back on her haunches, chewing on the end of her pen, a little line of concentration between her brows. He’d thought maybe being back at the school would jog some more specific memories of Olive, but they remained fuzzy at best. All he remembered was a loud, opinionated girl who’d never pretended to be even remotely impressed by his high school popularity or the rumors that he’d be among the top draft picks after graduation.

  His eyes drifted down over the utilitarian white shirt she was wearing that looked a lot like th
e shirts he had in his own closet. But he didn’t wear them like she wore them. Didn’t fill them out like that. His gaze drifted upward, over the long, no-nonsense ponytail pulled over one shoulder, the pink of her cheeks that he knew came from the sheer vitality of her, rather than makeup.

  Her blue gaze lifted and collided with his, and for a moment, Carter felt downright disoriented.

  “What?” she snapped.

  He smiled, because just like that, he was reoriented.

  And suddenly very curious.

  “Why don’t you have a boyfriend? Or girlfriend?” he asked, belatedly realizing just how little he knew about her romantic life.

  “Who says I don’t?” Olive looked back to her notebook and continued to scribble in it.

  “You would have told me. Or I would have met them.” He was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a her—he’d caught her checking out his butt more than a few times.

  “Well.” She stood and stuck her pen behind her ear, continuing to survey the gym. “It’s a small town. The pickings of men are a little slim for someone like me.”

  “Someone like you?” he asked, going to the lone set of bleachers not folded against the wall and sitting on the bottom bench.

  She gave him a searching look. “Are you trying to bond? Why are you being weird?”

  He merely grinned and patted the seat beside his. “Come. Don’t be an enigma.”

  “Maybe I like being an enigma.”

  “Maybe,” he agreed easily, though he knew it was crap. Olive Dunn was as what you see is what you get as they came.

  “I’m not dainty,” she said abruptly.

  Or maybe not, Carter realized, backpedaling on his assumptions that he knew Olive well. He certainly hadn’t seen that response coming.

  “Dainty?” he repeated, the word unfamiliar on his tongue. “What’s dainty got to do with anything?”

  She gave him a get real look out of the corner of her eye. “Men like dainty, and don’t pretend they don’t. Even the men who profess a love for curvy, more-to-love women go crazy over things like little hands and feet.”