Yours to Keep (Man of the Year)

by Lauren Layne

  “Of course. It’s Haven’s most epic love story.”

  Kelly and Mark had been best friends forever, and Kelly had been just about the only person who didn’t know he was in love with her. It had taken a psychic, a parade of her ex-boyfriends, and a little Christmas magic to get Kelly to see what was right in front of her.

  Though if Carter and Felicity made good on their marriage pact and lived happily ever after, Kelly and Mark would have to make room for a tie as the town’s most legendary fairy tale.

  “Exactly my point,” Kelly said. “Mark and I are a love story that started out as ‘just friends,’ so I know a little something about the line you’re trying to feed me right now.”

  “Carter and I aren’t you and Mark,” Olive protested. “For starters, we barely knew each other in high school. We’re friends now, sure, but we’ve really only known each other for a couple weeks. We’re just neighbors. We help each other out—”

  “You kiss,” Kelly interjected.

  “It wasn’t like a Twilight kiss, more like a playful smack.”

  “Liv, if your bar for epic kisses is a teen movie about vampires, we really need to find you a man.”

  I think I’ve found one.

  The thought was ridiculous. She didn’t want Carter Ramsey. Or rather she did, but in a fleeting, impractical kind of way. There was no room for a pro-athlete, magazine-cover pretty boy in her life. They lived in two different universes, and their paths were crossing for only the briefest period of time, and only because he was back in town for Felicity.

  She picked up her phone again. No new messages.

  “They’re not together,” Kelly said gently. “Felicity and Carter.”

  Olive spun her head around to look at her friend. “How do you know?”

  “Mark and I saw Carter drive away. Alone.”

  The relief that flooded through her was so intense she didn’t know what to do with it. With a groan, Olive stacked her palms on the table and leaned over until her forehead rested on the backs of her hands.

  “Oh, honey,” Kelly said quietly, stroking Olive’s ponytail. “You really like him.”

  “Maybe,” Olive said, her voice muffled. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  Olive lifted her head. “No. I don’t. I’ve never really done this before. My relationships, even the long-term ones, have been super blah. I’ve never felt that thing.”

  “And you feel it for Carter?” Kelly asked, keeping her voice low.

  “I don’t know,” Olive said honestly. “It’s nothing . . . It’s not at all what I thought it would feel like.”

  “How so?” Kelly sipped her beer.

  “Shouldn’t it feel . . . nice when you think about the other person?” Olive asked.

  “What’s it feel like?”

  “Sort of like a roller coaster,” Olive said. “The kind where you feel like you’re going to puke, but then for some stupid reason, you still want to do it all over again. And I don’t even like roller coasters.”

  “You don’t?” Kelly looked surprised. “For some reason I definitely see you as a roller-coaster person.”

  Olive shook her head. “No control. Now if I got to drive the roller coaster . . .”

  Kelly looked like she wanted to say something, but instead pressed her lips together and took another sip of beer. “How does Carter feel about you?”

  “Well, I think the fact that he literally dropped me in the dirt to chase after Felicity pretty much says it all.”

  “Hmm.” Kelly tapped her nails on the table. “So, I hate to play the as someone who’s been married for four years card, but as someone who’s been married for four years, one thing I’ve learned is that you definitely can’t predict what men are thinking. The only way to get inside their head is to sit them down and pry it out of them.”

  “Ah, but see,” Olive said lightly. “What if I don’t really want to know what’s going on in Carter’s head?”

  What if I don’t like what I find?

  “But—”

  “New plan,” Olive interrupted, picking up her glass and clinking it to Kelly’s. “We forget all about him. Or at the very least, remember that in just a couple weeks, he’ll be gone. And I won’t see him for another ten years, by which time, he’ll be thrice divorced, his model ex-wives having taken all of his money. He’ll be in denial that he’s gained weight, so his jeans will be too small, and he’ll forever be hiking them up to try and cover the beer belly that’s spilling over. It’ll be like his thing—his tic. Oh, and his hair will have begun to thin in a very strange pattern, and he’ll wear it in a weird, creepy ponytail.”

  Kelly wrinkled her nose skeptically. “I kind of don’t think—”

  “Shh, shh, shh,” Olive said, putting a finger over her friend’s mouth. “We’re all allowed our fantasies, and that is mine. Now. Let’s have another beer, eat some nachos, and not think about Carter Ramsey for the rest of the night.”

  And Olive succeeded, by sheer force of will. Sort of. She definitely didn’t check the door every five minutes to see if he’d come to join in the victory party. She definitely didn’t check her phone for a message that never came.

  And when the Haven High volleyball coach and self-appointed designated driver dropped Olive off at home a couple of hours later, she didn’t care that Carter’s truck wasn’t in his driveway.

  She definitely didn’t wonder where he was. Or who he was with.

  She definitely didn’t stay up all night wondering.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Monday, August 24

  The doctor’s prognosis had been shit. Not completely unexpected, but still shit.

  And though it had been almost three weeks since he’d last been home, and he’d have thought that’s where he’d want to go to wallow in the news . . .

  Nope.

  The penthouse he’d lived in for the better part of five years didn’t feel like home. It didn’t matter that he’d slept in the place after every home game for nearly half a decade, or that all of his stuff was here, or that the doormen greeted him by name. It was familiar, yes, but the familiarity provided no comfort, no relief in returning to one’s place of residence after a long trip.

  Worst of all, the swanky apartment did nothing to clear his head and had done nothing to the pensive restlessness he’d felt ever since the softball game on Saturday.

  Carter told himself he just needed time to readjust to life in the city, to remember that this was his life. An enormous big screen, a state-of-the-art home gym, a brilliant, vibrant city where he could have anything he wanted delivered in a matter of minutes.

  He didn’t want any of that. He wanted his dumpy, impersonal rental home, the warmth of Cedar & Salt or his mother’s kitchen. He wanted the stupid red truck he’d become rather attached to. He wanted the noisy high school biology teacher he’d become very attached to.

  Not forever, he knew that. He and Olive didn’t just live in different cities; they lived in different worlds. When he got off the Injured List and returned to his old routine, he didn’t know how he’d even be able to see her, much less be with her.

  But just because they couldn’t have forever didn’t mean they couldn’t have right now. Right? Carter had no idea. But he knew someone who gave some pretty good advice and was only a short drive away.

  Following his doctor’s appointment, Mike dropped Carter off at his apartment, and instead of pulling out the key fob to let him in his front door, he pulled a different key out of his pocket.

  Ten minutes later, he was in his red truck, on his way back to Haven.

  The two-hour drive gave him a chance to make a phone call he was dreading, but also eager to get over with. Using Jody’s Bluetooth (he’d somehow found himself following Billy’s and Olive’s lead in calling the car by her given name), he called his agent to deliver the news, followed by another, even more difficult, conversation with the team manager and a couple of his closest teammates.

 
Nobody was happy. Nobody was particularly surprised, either. He was nearly twenty-nine, not twenty-three. When it came to injuries, that made a difference.

  Luckily, most of the morning-commute traffic had dissipated by the time Carter was on the road, and he made it back to the Hudson Valley in record time. Carter pulled into his parents’ driveway and prayed his mom would be home.

  His parents, like Olive, rarely locked their front door, but not wanting to startle his mother if she was home, he knocked. She opened the door moments later, blinking only once in surprise, and then, with a mother’s intuition that everything was not okay, ushered him inside and gave him a long, warm hug that was exactly what he needed.

  “Come,” she said, speaking for the first time, already heading into the kitchen. “I’m making you your favorite lunch.”

  “Which is?” he asked, not realizing he had a favorite lunch.

  “Grilled cheese and tomato soup,” she said, opening the fridge. She pointed a commanding finger at the kitchen table. “Sit.”

  He smiled as he obeyed. He hadn’t had grilled cheese and tomato soup in years, but he’d loved it as a kid. And if he was ever in need of a sodium-heavy, carb-and-fat-focused comfort meal, it was now.

  “Cheddar or swiss?” she asked, her head buried in the fridge.

  “You choose.”

  “Both,” she said, straightening with grilled-cheese supplies in hand. “When someone looks like you look, two cheeses is always the answer.”

  “How do I look?” he asked, pretty sure he didn’t want to know.

  “Like you didn’t sleep at all. I told you renting a house was risky. You never know what kind of mattress they purchase, the linens aren’t your own . . .”

  “Actually, I slept at my place last night.”

  She turned around in surprise, two bread slices in hand. “You’ve already been to the city and back? It’s barely noon!”

  “I headed down Saturday night. Had an early doctor’s appointment this morning.”

  “The doctor?” Her gaze dropped to his sling. “Oh. Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  She set the bread on the cutting board and came to sit at the table beside him. “Was it not good news?”

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  “Oh, Carter.” His mom’s face crumpled. “It’s not healing like they thought?”

  “It’s healing fine. The X-ray showed all good things,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “In fact, they said the cast’ll come off next week.”

  His mom gave a reassuring smile. “That’s good. Right?”

  Carter exhaled. “They scheduled surgery.”

  “But if the X-ray was good—”

  “My shoulder’s busted, Mom. It was even before the fall, we just didn’t know until this.” He lifted his cast.

  “And this shoulder injury. It’s serious?”

  “Yeah. Well, not debilitating. For anyone else, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. Surgery. Let it heal. Go back to normal life.”

  “But it’s not that way for you?”

  Carter stared blindly at the cheerful yellow flowers in the center of the table. “Depends. Sometimes it heals on its own, and you’ve got a decent chance of returning to normal play. Sometimes it requires surgery, and you’ve got a less-than-decent chance of returning to normal play. I fall in the latter category.”

  He dragged his hand over his face. “I don’t want to just play. I want to be as good as I was.”

  That’s who Carter Ramsey is. The best. Without that label . . .

  “Who’s to say you won’t be?” Tracy said with a mother’s optimistic confidence that her son could do anything. “It may take time, but you’ve always been the hardest-working person I know.”

  “Well, that’s another part of the problem,” he said, forcing a smile. “Time wasn’t exactly on my side even before the accident.”

  “What do you mean? You’re only in your twenties!”

  “I turn twenty-nine next month,” he reminded her needlessly, since moms tended to know that sort of detail. “It’s not ancient by MLB standards, but I’m no longer one of the young guys, either. Even with nonstop therapy in the off-season, I won’t be able to start next season, at least not in the majors. By the time I return—if I return—I’ll be thirty.”

  “Thirty is the new twenty,” she said, patting his good arm.

  “Not in pro sports.”

  Her smile dimmed. “Oh, Carter. How long have you known about this shoulder thing?”

  “A while.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to anyone?”

  I did.

  Carter thought of Olive—the one person he had told—then pushed the thought aside. One problem at a time.

  “I guess I’ve been trying to sort out how I feel about it.”

  “And? How do you feel?”

  He blew out a breath. “Conflicted. I hate the thought of not getting that World Series ring before my career’s up. And yet . . .”

  For the first time in my life, I think I can catch a glimpse of life after baseball.

  Trouble was, the vision flitted away before he could get a really good look at what he was doing, where he was. Who he was with.

  Not that it was an easy concept to reconcile. He loved baseball more than just about anything.

  But every ballplayer has their prime. Some peak early. Some are average. A rare few are late bloomers in their thirties. Carter was highly aware that he was in the “peaked early” category. Not that he resented his stint as Rookie of the Year and American League MVP, or all of his other accolades. But in his gut, he knew that thirtysomething Carter Ramsey would be very different from twentysomething Carter Ramsey on the field.

  “I guess I’m still sorting it out,” he told his mom.

  She nodded, seeming to sense he wasn’t quite ready to talk about it. “All right. How about a subject change?” she said brightly.

  He groaned, already guessing what she wanted to change the subject to.

  “Sooooo, Felicity’s back,” she said in a chipper tone.

  He’d guessed correctly. “Yeah. I saw her.”

  “Oh, I know. What I don’t know—what nobody knows—is why Felicity saw you kissing Olive Dunn.”

  The vividness of the memory—the sheer sweetness of the moment—washed over him and pushed back against the doom and gloom of his impending surgery. Still he kept his face carefully neutral and merely smiled at his mother.

  “Are you and Olive . . .” His mom lifted her eyebrows.

  “We’re friends.”

  “I see. And you and Felicity?” his mom asked, returning to the stove to resume making the grilled cheese.

  “We’re former high school sweethearts with fond memories, and that’s all we’ll ever be,” he said, finally voicing aloud what he’d known for a while now.

  “Does she know that?”

  “We still need to talk. I don’t know that it’ll be an easy conversation, but I think Felicity will agree.” He hoped.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it, but Felicity’s not the she I was referring to,” his mother said without turning around.

  Olive.

  No, Olive didn’t know what Felicity was to him.

  She would. But there was something he needed to do first.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tuesday, August 25

  “I could have sworn Carter’s supposed to be helping you with this nonsense,” Caitlyn said, scowling down at the sheet of name tags in her lap, then rubbing at the Sharpie ink on the side of her hand.

  “Your brother and I are taking some time apart right now,” Olive said casually from her chair next to Caitlyn’s bed, as she wrote Belinda Harmon’s name on a blank tag.

  “Huh,” Caitlyn said. “Does he know that?”

  “Does who know what?” Olive asked, blowing on the ink. She was already regretting recruiting Caitlyn to help her instead of Kelly. She’d thought the activity would distract the increasingly testy Caitlyn from her
bed rest boredom, but being around Carter’s twin made Olive think about Carter more than she wanted to.

  Caitlyn also had really crappy handwriting.

  “Does Carter know you’re taking some time apart?” Caitlyn pressed, not even pretending to help with the name tags anymore.

  “Well, he should. I’ve done a bang-up job of avoiding him, including keeping all the blinds closed in my house.”

  “Very mature approach, I like it. But what is going on with you two?” Caitlyn asked.

  “You heard about the kiss?” Olive asked, somewhat rhetorically. “And Felicity?”

  “From just about everyone I know, yeah. Apparently it was hot. And then immediately awkward when Felicity showed up.”

  “It wasn’t like we Frenched,” Olive grumbled. “The kiss lasted two seconds.”

  “Frenched?” Caitlyn said with a laugh. “How old are you? And sure, sure, it was quick and playful. And, oh yeah, your legs were wrapped around his waist, and his hands were on your butt.”

  Olive made an irritated noise. “You weren’t even there!”

  “Come on. You know the nature of this town more than anyone. I had no fewer than twenty people describe the kiss in very intriguing detail to poor bed rested, miss all the good stuff me. Which may have actually been a blessing, seeing as it’s my brother we’re talking about. But still, if you’re actively avoiding him, it must mean things are . . . complicated?”

  Caitlyn’s voice softened slightly, and Olive knew that though she was fiercely loyal to her brother, she was also her friend and would listen, if she needed to talk.

  Olive wished she could talk it out. She just wasn’t entirely sure what to say.

  “Complicated about sums it up,” Olive said, forcing a smile.

  Caitlyn sighed and set her palm on her stomach, rubbing absently for several seconds before speaking again. “Olive, I feel like I need to apologize.”

  “It better not be for the bed rest thing again.”

  “No, not that. But I shouldn’t have pushed you and Carter together for the reunion thing. It didn’t really occur to me that it would end up this way.”

  Olive couldn’t help it. She flinched at the reminder that nobody, not even one of her closest friends, could imagine a world where Carter might be into someone like her.