by Lauren Layne
She smiled, because while his tone was all cranky superstar, his arm slid farther around her waist, pulling her even closer.
Olive knew that rumors would be swirling nonstop about her and Carter after tonight, but she no longer cared. It didn’t matter that people would talk. It didn’t matter that after he left, everyone would know he’d also left her.
Olive cared only that she and Carter made the most of these last couple of weeks they had left.
“You might have warned me, you know,” Carter said.
“About what?”
“That I’d been dethroned as our graduating class’s golden boy. As far as I can tell, you’re the golden girl.”
She said nothing for a moment as they swayed, thinking it over. “I don’t know if it’s that so much. Maybe just that I’m here.”
Carter looked away without saying anything, and her stomach sank at the realization of how her comment had sounded.
“Carter, I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s fine,” he said stiffly. “You’re absolutely right. You stayed. You thrived. I can’t imagine Haven without you.”
“I—I don’t know that I’d say thrive, but . . .” She took a deep breath. “I have to say, I can’t wait for school to start on Tuesday. I feel like a kid before Christmas.”
He pulled back enough to meet her eyes, arms still locked around her waist, high school–dance style. “Yeah? You haven’t talked about it much.”
“No.” She gave a slight smile. “Partially because it’s pretty second nature for me now. I feel good about the curriculum I’ve developed, and it’s not like elementary school, where you have to decorate the classroom to be friendly. But I guess I haven’t really talked about it because the start of the school year also coincides with—”
“Me leaving,” he finished for her.
She met his eyes with a sad smile, and their gazes locked and held for a long, meaningful stretch. The bittersweetness of the moment almost took her breath away: two people who cared about each other enough to want the best for the other, even as it would drive them apart.
As though he’d heard her thoughts, Carter’s smile dimmed slightly, and he blew out a breath. “Olive, I need to tell you something.”
“Now?” she asked, the song coming to an end, replaced by some throwback dance hit she knew all the words to, but wouldn’t be able to name either in title or artist if her life depended on it.
“It can wait,” he hedged.
“No, no, it’ll just fester,” she said impatiently, grabbing his hand and dragging him out a side door of the gym, no longer caring that at least a dozen pairs of eyes tracked their movement.
The night was warm and muggy, just as the gym had been, and Olive delicately swiped at a trickle of sweat running a sparkly green river along her temple. “What’s up?”
“My manager called me this afternoon,” Carter said.
“And?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, just for a moment, looking tormented, before opening them and meeting her gaze with a tortured expression. “They want to reschedule the surgery.”
“Well. Yeah,” she said, puzzled. “Not exactly a news flash.”
He crossed his arms and looked down at his feet, then back at her. “They moved it up a couple weeks. It’s scheduled for Tuesday morning.”
“This Tuesday?” she repeated, pleased that her voice didn’t break, even though it was higher than she was used to hearing.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know until today. I didn’t—”
Her mind reeled, but she held up a hand. “No, Carter. Please. Don’t apologize. It’s fine. We’ve known it’s coming. What difference does a week or two make?”
He flinched as though she’d hurt him. “A lot, I’d say, when a week or two was all we had left.”
And whose fault is that? The thought ripped through her, pernicious and unfair, but intense and unavoidable.
Carter was leaving. This thing between them, whatever it was, would go with him. And it wasn’t coming back.
She prided herself on being a smart, reasonable woman. She knew that even if he came back for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or even for a week in his off-season, it wouldn’t be the same. They could have fling after fling, but that’s all it would ever be. It would never recapture the magic of this summer, where, for one tiny stretch of her life, everything had been . . . perfect.
He’d pushed her buttons, made her crazy, pissed her off. He’d been her challenger, her friend, her lover, her . . . everything. And he was leaving.
Tomorrow.
She stepped forward, right hand extended.
He stared down at her hand. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Olive scowled. “Don’t be unsportsmanlike. Shake my hand. It’s rude not to.”
“Oh, it’s rude?” he mocked. “You know what’s rude, Olive? Ending a pretty damn great affair with a handshake.”
“You know what’s even more rude?” she said, continuing the immature pattern, her voice colder now. “Telling a woman to her face that she was an affair.”
“How is that any different than you calling it a fling? And what do you want me to call it, Olive?” he said, practically shouting. “You don’t want to come with me!”
“And you don’t want to stay!” she yelled back, completely uncaring whether anyone heard them.
His jaw worked. “I can’t stay. You know that.”
She did know that.
Olive crossed her arms. “And I can’t go. You know that.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, his head tipping back in frustration. “Jesus.”
Her eyes watered, and she realized in irritation that for the second time in a week this man was about to make her cry. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want any of this hurt. But it was here, and she had to deal with it.
The best she could do for both of them was to end it as quickly as possible. There was a reason everyone knew ripping the Band-Aid off was the best approach. She’d also learned a few things growing up with a workaholic single dad and not much in the way of friends: you had to do the hard stuff yourself.
“I’m really happy for you, Carter—I mean, not that you have to have surgery, but that it’s the start of getting you back to where you want to be: the baseball field.” He opened his mouth, but she held up her hand. “Wait, let me finish. I’m happy for you, and your dreams. I know you’re happy for me, and mine. But they’re not compatible. We both know that. We’ve both known that. It’s better for both of us if we just . . . call it.”
Carter didn’t say anything or move for a long moment. Then finally, he nodded, the gesture jerky.
She managed a jerky nod of her own before turning to return to the gym, not entirely sure how she was supposed to force a happy face for the rest of the night but determined to try.
Carter grabbed her hand. “Olive. Wait.”
Her breath caught, and she turned back around.
“I’ve got to go,” he whispered, his eyes looking suspiciously shiny. “But know that I’ll always . . . My time here in Haven, with you, it’s been . . .” He blew out a frustrated breath. “Olive, I think I—”
“Don’t, Carter,” she whispered, feeling the tears threaten to create white stripes down her green-glitter face. “Don’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sunday, September 6
“Oh God. You must have looked awful.”
Kelly gave Caitlyn an exasperated look as she handed Olive a martini across the bed. “Yes, Cait, that’s definitely the most important part of the story.”
“I’m just saying, she covered herself in green glitter, got sweaty, and cried. It couldn’t have been pretty,” Caitlyn said sympathetically, patting Olive’s hand.
Caitlyn, grumpy over having had to miss the reunion because of her continued bed rest, had insisted on a girls’ night to rehash the evening. Needless to say, she and Kelly had gotten more than they’d bargained for when Olive had told them about her and Carter�
��s implosion.
“It wasn’t pretty,” Olive said, pulling the toothpick out of her martini and sliding an olive off with her teeth, munching despondently. “And it didn’t help that as chair, I had to put on a happy face the rest of the evening.”
“I don’t think you were all that successful,” Caitlyn said with a grimace as she pulled a cracker off the cheese tray. “Obviously nobody knew exactly what went down between you two, but everybody knows something did. The group text messages this morning were intense.”
“Caitlyn!” Kelly said, exasperated. “How is this helpful?”
“It’s fine,” Olive said with a tired sigh, courtesy of a really sore heart and a sleepless night. “She’s not saying anything that’s not true.”
Caitlyn squeezed her hand. “For what it’s worth, if I have to take sides, I’d take yours. At the moment, I’d much rather claim you as my sister instead of that stupid pighead brother I shared the womb with.”
“I appreciate it,” Olive said. “But it’s not like we actually thought this was going to end any differently. Did we?” She looked between the two of them.
“No,” Kelly admitted with a sigh, dropping down in the chair opposite Olive on the other side of Caitlyn’s bed, pulling her hair into a messy bun. “But I think I speak for the entire freaking town when I say we were really hoping for something different.”
Olive snorted. “What, that I’d become a baseball girlfriend? Start wearing hats on the third baseline?”
“Girlfriends more commonly sit on the first-base side. Or behind home plate,” Caitlyn said.
“See, exactly the type of thing Carter Ramsey’s ideal wife would know,” Olive said, making a double-decker sandwich out of the cheddar and Ritz crackers from the cheese plate on Caitlyn’s nightstand. “And exactly the kind of thing I don’t.”
“Whoa,” Kelly said.
“What?”
“You said wife,” Kelly said. “That’s an interesting step up from girlfriend.”
“I was just making a point,” Olive said, spraying crumbs.
“Okay, sweetie, let’s limit to no more than three pieces of cheese going into your mouth at the same time. Men aren’t worth losing all our dignity.”
“Oh yeah?” Olive said to Kelly, her words still muffled by the monster stack of cheese and crackers she’d stuffed into her mouth. “So you really kept it together when you and Mark were fumbling your way through love, huh?”
“Mark and I have nothing to do with you and—wait, love?” Kelly shot an alarmed look over Olive’s shoulder to Caitlyn. “Wife and love. Are you hearing this?”
“I am,” Caitlyn said, looking both intrigued and worried. “Is that what this is, Liv? You love him?”
“I don’t know,” Olive said with a sigh, washing down the cheese and crackers with a sip of the Grey Goose dirty martini Kelly had made. “What does that even feel like?”
Neither said anything for a long minute. Finally, Caitlyn took a stab at it. “It can feel like a lot of things. Like you can’t breathe when you’re with the person. Like you can only breathe with the person . . .”
“Or like they make you really crazy, but you’ll also go crazy if you’re not with him,” Kelly chimed in.
Olive bit her lip, because both of those descriptions exactly described how she felt about Carter Ramsey.
“Oh, hun,” Kelly said, apparently reading Olive’s expression. “I have to ask, if you even suspected it might be love, why did you—”
“I had to let him go,” Olive said. “Even if he’d wanted to stay, and he did not, he has two years left on a bazillion-dollar contract.”
“Okay, just tell me to back off if I’m pushing too hard, because I know I do that, but did you ever ask Carter to stay?” Caitlyn said. “I mean not to quit his contract, but to make it work somehow? Would it have been possible for you to stay here in Haven, but you somehow still be together?”
Olive stared glumly at her martini, not really wanting it. Not wanting anything. Cheese hadn’t helped. The ice cream she’d had for breakfast hadn’t helped. It didn’t matter how many dirty martinis Kelly made, she only felt . . . numb.
“No,” Olive answered finally. “I didn’t ask him. What would be the point?”
“Did he ever ask you to join him?” Kelly asked curiously.
Olive flinched. “No. He did not.”
“Did you want him to?” Caitlyn asked.
She continued to stare blindly into her drink. Stabbing at the bobbing olives, without really seeing them. “My life is here.”
A life that no longer felt full.
“What if he had asked?” Kelly pressed.
Olive shook her head. “He wouldn’t. His career is everything to him.”
“It was everything to him,” Caitlyn said. “But from everything you’ve described, I have to think he’s come to care about you, too.”
“Maybe. But I care about him too much to ask him to give anything up for me.”
“There,” Kelly said very softly. “That’s love.”
Olive merely closed her eyes, unable to deny any longer than she was completely in love with Carter Ramsey. And equally unsure about what to do about it.
“I do love him, but I also love my life here. I’m not the girl who gives it all up for some boy,” she whispered. “I won’t be that girl.”
Neither of her friends had a solution for that. Because there wasn’t one.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Monday, September 7
Most people in Haven spent Labor Day at barbecues, celebrating the last honorary day of summer before the start of the school year.
Olive appreciated that she was always invited to several, but she always declined. She had a beloved holiday tradition of her own. One that involved fluorescent lights, arranging lab desks, and lining up the chalk just so—she liked to do things the old-fashioned way—so everything was exactly where she wanted it to be.
Olive loved the first day of school, but she loved the day before the first day of school even more. It was a chance to celebrate everything she loved about her life, her job, the fact that she’d set out to shape young minds, and was doing exactly that.
But today, as she let herself into the science wing, she didn’t quite feel the usual spark. She hadn’t felt anything even remotely resembling a spark since Saturday night, when she and Carter had parted ways.
She’d spent last night on Caitlyn and AJ’s couch, not ready to face the prospect of going home to where Carter was so close physically, but a million miles away emotionally. She’d wanted to put off the moment where she’d have to go home and not see Carter’s red truck in the driveway.
She frowned a little, wondering what he’d done with Jody. When he’d first arrived he’d said he was planning to sell it when he left to go back to the city. But then, she supposed plenty had changed between now and then. Maybe he’d decided to keep the truck.
The truck. But not the girl.
Swallowing anything resembling pointless regret, she shoved her key into her classroom door. She’d been in once or twice over the summer, but she’d meant it when she’d told Carter there wasn’t much to do in the way of setup these days. She had her classroom as she liked it, and her Labor Day ritual was more a mental preparation for the school year than an actual necessary task.
The rest of the science wing was quiet as she opened the door to her classroom, most of the other teachers having done their setup last week, so that they could spend Labor Day with rosé and hot dogs in hand.
Olive was as familiar with the layout of her classroom as she was her own home, so she stepped into the room even before reaching for the light. Her shin rammed into something, and she let out a pained grunt, her hand fumbling for the light switch as she mentally cursed the idiot who had moved around furniture without her permission.
It wasn’t furniture, she realized as the lights flickered on. It was a really big shipping box. One of several.
Puzzled, she set her ba
g on one of the student desks and checked the label. They were all addressed to her, with the school’s address, but the return name was an acronym that told her nothing.
Using her keys as a box cutter, she opened the box she’d run into and was pretty sure would leave a bruise on her shin. Inside were four smaller cardboard boxes, equally unmarked. She pulled one out and carefully began opening it, the massive amounts of padding and Styrofoam telling her the contents were fragile or, at the very least, expensive.
A moment later, she tugged away the last bit of packaging and stared.
Fragile and expensive.
And very, very precious.
She let out an excited whoop that echoed through the empty classroom, the cell structure and periodic table of elements posters on the wall doing little to absorb the sound. Then, not wanting to get ahead of herself, she opened a second box, just to make sure it wasn’t some sort of sick practical joke where they’d sent just the one, and the rest were empty.
By the fourth, she knew it was no joke.
Someone had sent her a whole lot of microscopes. And not just any microscopes, but top-of-the-line, shockingly expensive microscopes.
Frowning, she put her hands on her hips, wondering when Principal Mullins had changed his mind. Wondering where he’d gotten the money. Wondering why a man who’d once asked if she couldn’t just give the students “some sort of complex plant coloring book” to help them understand photosynthesis would suddenly make such a huge financial investment in science.
Wondering, most of all, why her boss wouldn’t have told her.
Mullins wasn’t a bad man, and she believed that he really did mean well, even if she didn’t agree with most of his approach to education. But he was also a little bit of a blowhard. The type of guy who would make sure you knew it was him if he did you a favor. There was no way he wouldn’t find some way to take credit.
Olive carefully went through the boxes, unpacking each microscope carefully, but also inspecting each box for a note or receipt or indication of where they’d come from. On the outside of the final box, she found it.
Next to the shipping label was a plastic bag, the kind used to include shipping insurance documentation. There was that, as well as a receipt—the total took her breath away.
