Finish What You Started

by Alexandra Evans

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, Mom… He’s going to play another season after all.” She took a sip of her tea, but even that didn’t warm her up inside. “I was so afraid of this. But we’d been making plans. He said he was ready to retire. I thought he was serious.”

  “Would one more year kill you?” Her mother took a sip of her own tea and looked at Harper over the rim. “Just so he can get it out of his system?”

  “My father didn’t get it out of his system.” She set the cup down a little harder than she should have, grateful it didn’t crack on the granite kitchen counter. “Daddy left us. That damned game was more important to him than we were.”

  Harper saw the surprise in her mother’s eyes before she spoke. “Oh, honey, is that what you think?”

  “It’s the truth,” she said, pissed off as a tear rolled down her cheek. She was nearly thirty years old, for God’s sake. She shouldn’t still be hanging on to old hurts that couldn’t be healed.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “That’s not the reason Joe left. Oh my God, I can’t believe we’ve never talked about this in all this time. This is all my fault. I couldn’t deal with it at first, and after Sean came into our lives, you seemed so happy…”

  “What do you mean?” Harper sat up in her chair. Her mother’s forehead creased, and she looked at Harper with sympathetic eyes.

  “Sweetie, I asked your father to leave. It’s not that he wanted to.” She reached out and touched Harper’s hand. “I was tired of the life, moving around. And Joe…well, he could see that you weren’t making any friends with us moving all over creation all the time. You were still young, and he wanted you to have a real home. He left us, Harper, because he loved us. He loved you. He was doing what I asked him to do. He didn’t really choose baseball over us, it was just all he knew how to do.”

  “Why didn’t he ever come back?” Harper felt the hot tears tracking down her cheeks. She dashed at them before her mother handed her a napkin to dab her eyes. “Why did he let me believe he didn’t want us?”

  “He did come back, honey. Every year until he saw that I was happy with Sean and we were making a good home for you.” She squeezed Harper’s hand, then refilled their cups. “Yes, he couldn’t give up the game, and he had other personal demons as well. But Ty isn’t at all like him. Joe couldn’t even talk about doing anything but playing. He didn’t have an education, you see. He started playing straight out of high school, and it’s all he knew. He played so he could send some money to me. For you. How do you think we paid for college?”

  “Oh my God.” Harper sniffled. For the first time in her life, she was truly angry with her mother for keeping this from her. For making her resent her dad her whole life, even after he died. “Why didn’t you ever tell me this? Why did you let me go my entire life thinking he didn’t love us? Me?”

  “Sweetheart, I thought it was easier for you. You seemed happy.” Her mother’s face grew solemn, and she shook her head. “But I can’t help thinking sometimes if I’d just waited it out, he’d have come to the decision to quit all on his own, and he wouldn’t have driven himself in the ground the way he did. If he’d had someone there for him like Sean was there for me.”

  Harper stood. “It was never easy for me, Mom, thinking my dad loved a game more than he loved you and me. But you’re right. Maybe if you’d given him a chance…”

  “Oh, Harper, I’m—”

  “I’ve been such an idiot.” She grabbed her purse off the breakfast table and headed for the door. “I have to go.”

  “Harper!”

  “No, no. It’s not you, Mom.” She turned back and gave her mother a brief hug. “Although we are going to talk about this later. But I think I may have made a stupid mistake. I need to fix it. Like, now.”

  She had to get back to Ty, to tell him what was in her heart. Tell him how much she loved him. That she loved him enough to move to Atlanta, to wait for him to be ready to give up something he’d loved his entire life. For as long as it took.

  17

  Ty felt as if a hundred pounds had been pulled from his shoulders. The offer, Denny explained, was a good one. One year, they’d pay seventy-five percent of his contract salary and the Blues were picking up the rest. He’d be starting until their main guy was healthy, then backup, like Mackie had said.

  But as he’d mulled over his answer, he’d seen Harper’s fuzzy socks folded together at the end of the bed. That spicy orange-scented lotion she used in a tube on the bathroom counter. Yeah, he’d always loved the game of baseball. Always would. But baseball wasn’t the love of his life anymore. Harper was. He thought about what would make him happiest; being a backup catcher in Atlanta until he got sent somewhere else, or living in a tiny town in Texas with the woman he loved. The decision had been easy. The planning afterward had taken a bit.

  As he was leaving to find Harper, her car whipped into his driveway. She’d barely turned off the engine before she climbed out and barreled into him, hugging him and kissing his face. Ty couldn’t believe his eyes. She was here. The woman who meant more to him than baseball was back in his arms. He was the luckiest man on the face of the earth, and he needed to tell her his news, tell her how much he loved her. Then he felt her hot tears dropping onto his shirt.

  “Hang on,” he said, setting her back from him. “What’s wrong? You’ve been crying.”

  “Oh, Ty. I’m so stupid,” she said. “I don’t want to be the reason you choose. I want you to make your own decisions.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m the stupid one. I should have told you they were thinking of trading me. I just never thought it would really happen, or I wouldn’t have lined up that interview with Monarch High. I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Really?” she said. “You… This is all so silly. We need to talk.”

  He took her hand and led her inside. No point in giving the entire street a show.

  Once she was seated across his lap in the oversized reading chair in his living room, Harper took his face between her hands “If you want to play another year, if you want to play three more years, do it. I don’t want you to give up something you love for me. You deserve to finish your dream, Tyler, and if Atlanta is where you want to do that, then I’ll be there, right by your side.”

  Ty sat in stunned silence for a moment. Where had this come from? She’d always been adamant about him knowing when to call it a day. They’d made plans to move to Texas. “I was coming to tell you I talked to my brother, then the principal at the school, and the job is mine. The interview was just a formality.”

  “But you have an extra year to play.”

  “If I wanted to,” he told her. His heart was overflowing. She’d follow him. Something she said she’d never want to do, but she’d do it for him. God, he loved this woman, and her willingness to change told him how much she must love him too. “I’m not going to lie and say my decision wasn’t hard. It was one of the hardest I’ve ever made in my life. When you walked out that door, Harper, I thought we were through. I really wanted that last season. But…I don’t want it enough. Not like I want you. Us.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” she said, her beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Like you said, plans can change.”

  “Thing is, I don’t want them to change.” He kissed her. “I love the plans we made together, so I turned the Storm down.”

  “Don’t—”

  He placed a finger over her lips. “Hell, I knew I wouldn’t be happy being a backup catcher anyway. I’ve never been any good at being second.”

  Harper laughed, and the sound sent him over the moon. “I love you. You’ll always be first in my heart.”

  “I love you too, baby.” He pulled her to him. She smelled of oranges and bergamot and…home. “With all that I have and all that I am.”

  They sealed their vows with a kiss. Ty pulled back and said, “You make me want to be a better man.”

  Harper was silent for a moment, then, “Oh. My. God. T
hat is the dumbest line from the dumbest movie ever made.”

  “Oh, c’mon. You didn’t like As Good as It Gets?”

  “No, you did?” Harper shook her head. “You might as well have said ‘Love is never having to say you’re sorry.’”

  “Wait, is that a movie line?” She was always coming up with some vague quote from some old movie. “Or did you just make that up? You should use it in a book.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay, I can see your cinematic education is going to take a while.”

  “Seriously. Did you just make that up?”

  And just as in one of her old movies, they made their way to the bedroom and shut the door.

  Epilogue

  Seven months later

  Harper popped the back onto the frame and turned it over to reveal Ty’s diploma. A bachelor’s degree in history. After wrapping it in bubble wrap, she placed it carefully in the last box and taped the flaps shut.

  The movers would arrive tomorrow to take them on their new adventure to Texas, where Ty would start working on putting together a high school baseball team as well as a yearly baseball camp for disadvantaged kids all around the Dallas metro area.

  She heard the baby U-Haul truck pull into the driveway. They’d decided to make the eight-hour drive with just the basic household stuff and a few pieces of furniture and have the movers put the rest in storage until the new house they were building was finished. Ty’s whole family lived on the ranch, with their own sections so they could have their space but be close enough to each other to help out when needed. Harper kind of loved that. Nobody all up in their space until they wanted them to be.

  “Hey, babe.” Ty walked through the door, two six-packs of bottled root beer in his hands. “I talked Troy and J.J. into coming to help me load up the truck in the morning in exchange for pizza and root beer.”

  “How is J.J. doing?” She knew the younger player had been released from his rehab stint a few months ago, and challenges in daily life could be hard. She’d read up on it for the book she was writing. It would have a very different ending now. It’d still tell the truth, but she had a softer spot to draw on after talking with her mother. Her father had loved her enough to let go. Maybe it wasn’t the right decision, or maybe it was. She couldn’t second guess the past for him, but she could forgive him.

  “He seems like he took the whole thing seriously.” He placed the beers on a bubble-wrapped chair, picked up the box she’d just taped closed, and set it by the fireplace with a dozen others. “Troy and Jake are watching him for signs, and they say he’s still clean and sober.”

  “That’s good news,” she said. “And by the way, I can help you load the truck. I’m not going to break.”

  Ty pulled her into his arms, rubbing her ever-expanding belly. “You are not lifting anything heavier than a pillow when we pack up that van tomorrow. Promise me.”

  “I make no promises.” She grinned. He loved to rub her five-months-pregnant belly, and the baby loved it too, if the kicks in her side were any indication.

  “Harper…” He gave her what he considered a withering look, but one she just found adorable. “Hey, I think this kid is going to be a football player. We’ll have to work on that as soon as he’s out of the womb. Baseball is this branch of the Johansen family business.”

  “Of course we will. And tomorrow, I’ll just sit and be pretty and order you guys around.” She picked up the root beers and took them to the fridge. “And it’s a she, I keep telling you. Her name is Ellie, after your grandmother. And I hate to burst your bubble, but she’s a soccer player.”

  “No, not soccer!” Ty faked a heart attack, but they both laughed. “I love you. And I have a surprise for you. An outing.”

  “Oh, geez, your surprise outings usually end up getting us in some kind of trouble,” she teased, even though the one on the lake had turned out just the way it was supposed to.

  “No trouble this time, promise.” He did a Boy Scout salute. “But we have to wait until dark.”

  “Why dark?” A meteor shower maybe? A romantic full moon? A night at the planetarium?

  “You’ll see.”

  At seven thirty, Ty helped Harper into the Jeep, and they headed out. Before long, she knew where they were going, and his thoughtfulness made her smile. “You’re taking me to the drive-in! But I thought they were only open on the weekends.”

  “They are, unless you know some people. I happen to know some people, and after a little bribing”—he rubbed his thumb and finger together—“they were willing to open special for us tonight.”

  “Aww, Ty. This is really sweet.”

  They pulled into a space up front, and Ty tuned the radio station to pick up the right frequency for sound. Soon as dusk arrived, the film started.

  “Oh, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” She beamed. He’d remembered her all-time favorite move. Even if it was racist, and well, sad, she still loved Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard when they rescued that cat from the rain.

  The strains of “Moon River” began, and they watched as Audrey Hepburn strolled down Fifth Avenue, stopping to look at the beautiful jewelry in the small display window and eating her pastry. Before the song could even finish and Holly Golightly’s would-be boyfriend could utter his opening line, “Hey, baby, what’s going on here?” the video stopped.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Don’t they use DVDs now? Or digital?”

  Then something popped up on the screen, and Harper felt her eyes blur as she read the words: “You complete me, Harper Manning. Will you marry me?”

  “You complete me?” She looked at him. He’d purposely picked the corniest, most overused line in movie history, just for her. “Oh, Ty, you complete me too. Yes, of course I’ll marry you. I love you.”

  “I love you too.” He presented her with a huge diamond on a thin gold band. “Even though we started this family a little backwards”—he patted her belly—“we have the rest of our lives to do it right. And then maybe your stepfather will stop glaring at me every time he sees me?”

  “I’ll make sure he does.”

  Ty gave a thumbs-up in the direction of the projection room, and the movie once again began to play. Harper snuggled up to the man she loved and knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. At the risk of using corny movie quotes herself, he was her knight in shining armor, and she’d never let him forget it.

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for joining me in telling the story of Harper and Ty. I hope they touched your heart the way they touched mine.

  If you loved the book and have a minute to spare, I would really appreciate a short review on the page or site where you bought the book. Your help in spreading the word is greatly appreciated. Reviews from readers like you make a huge difference to helping new readers find stories like Finish What You Started. Please continue reading for an excerpt from my next release, the first book in a new series called Monarch, Texas. Take It to the Limit, with the understanding details may evolve as the book goes through the editing process. Planned release in December, 2019.

  Thank you!

  Alexandra Evans

  For news, contests, and future releases, join my newsletter at https://www.alexandraevansauthor.com or follow me on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

  Though we try to be, my editors and I aren’t perfect, so if you see any typos in this book, please feel free to contact me on my website so that they may be corrected.

  Take It to the Limit

  Monarch, Texas - Book 1

  A football camp. A safe one. That’s what J.T. wanted to do now that he was no longer a quarterback in the NFL. Work with kids. He’d loved the programs his team had participated in with Big Brothers of St. Louis. Those kids and their enthusiasm had inspired him. Almost as soon as he’d left the game, he’d started working toward a permanent, year round football camp. It’d taken him two years, but his dream was finally going to come true.

  “I told you,” he said to
Shayla, the business coordinator he’d hired to help put the thing together. “I want to make sure there’s zero tackling allowed. They can learn the fundamentals without tackling being a part of it. At least until they’re twelve or thirteen, and even then I want to make sure they have all the appropriate safety gear.”

  “But this is Texas, J.T.,” she replied. “They want rough and tumble, even for the younger kids. Football is like church to us Texans, you should know that.”

  “Look, this is my camp, and this is how it’s going to be.” If he’d learned one thing being a QB for the St. Louis Spirit, it was how to be a hard ass and make the calls.

  The doorbell rang. J.T. looked up to see a shadow through the glass panes. “Hey, someone’s at the door. Hang on a sec.”

  J.T. muted his phone and placed it on the table by the door. He opened his front door to find a blonde woman who looked to be about twenty-six, holding a little girl who at the most appeared to be two or three. The woman shoved the little girl into his arms and stood back, her hands settling on her hips. Tracks of mascara streaked down her cheeks, the tip of her nose a mottled red. Obviously she’d been crying.

  “She’s your problem now,” she said with a sniffle before turning away and stomping down the steps.

  “Hey, wait a second.” He followed her to the driveway, holding the little girl with a mop of blond curls at arm’s length as if she were a bomb ready to go off. She smelled like one had exploded in her pants, for sure.

  “No, I’m done,” she yelled over her shoulder. “I didn’t ask to be a mother, and I’m not taking her back. Your turn to deal. I’m going to L.A.”

  He stopped in front of her blue Honda SUV as she opened the driver’s side door. “Who are you, and what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m not surprised you don’t remember me.” The woman screwed up her face as if she were about to cry. Oh, God, not a crying woman. He’d never dealt well with tears. “I mean, you were pretty wasted, and I’d wanted you for so long… It’s not like we really dated or anything, and you sure as hell couldn’t be bothered to answer my calls when I tried to tell you I was pregnant.”