Consider Me (Playing For Keeps Book 1)

CARTER

FOREVER IS A FUNNY CONCEPT.

People talk about it all the time. It’s the only thing they want, a forever spent living the life they’ve always dreamed of, with the people they can’t imagine ever losing.

But nothing lasts forever, does it? We spend our days waiting for it to come, that moment we want to last, that person we never want to let go of, and when we have it, we grab hold. We grip it so tight, say this is it, my forever, and I’m never, ever giving it up.

The thing is, sometimes—most times—it’s not up to us. Moments are fleeting, and people are too. Sometimes these things run their course; they get up and leave willingly. And sometimes they’re stolen from you, forced to leave, torn from your grasp as you hold on with all your might.

Twelve hours ago, I had my forever, my perfect. I had every single thing I’d always dreamed of. Fuck, I’d even convinced myself I’d still had my dad, right there inside me where Olivia told me he’d always be.

And now, I have nothing.

Right now, I feel empty, broken, and lost, but the hardest pill to swallow is it’s all my fault.

The Stanley Cup sits on my table, taking up space. A reminder of something I don’t deserve, something meaningless. I spent my whole life working toward it, telling myself it was all I wanted. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?

Because Olivia’s my dream, and it all means nothing without her.

I haven’t looked at the pictures, the articles. I don’t need to. I was there when the cameras were in our faces, lighting up the night around us. I know what it looks like, what it was meant to look like. And I know I just stood there in front of the woman I love and didn’t put her fears to rest. Didn’t give her the truth she begged for, which is that I’d smash my reputation into the ground before I’d hurt her that way. The words wouldn’t come, stuck on my tongue, caught in my throat, because the last thing I ever wanted to be was the person who disappointed her, hurt her.

But I don’t know how to solve this, this clusterfuck of a shitstorm, and therein lies the problem. How can I open my mouth and be honest with her when I don’t have all the answers?

I wish I could blame alcohol, but I’m perfectly sober. Something’s not working inside me, a connection that’s been severed at the mere thought of a life without my best friend. My hands won’t stop shaking, my heart racing, and with every moment spent staring down at my phone, the influx of messages, phone calls from everyone except the only person I want to hear from, it gets worse.

Because this phone. This fucking phone is the bane of my damn existence right now, and I hate it.

I stare at my screen, the background on my phone. Her smiling face, the Oreo in her hand. She’s everything, my girl, and there isn’t a way I could love her more than I do. My thumb hovers over the folder affectionately labeled My pumpkin, but I can’t do it.

Why was I so stupid?

I don’t fucking know why, and that frustrates me beyond belief. Maybe that’s why when I get the only message that matters, the one from Emmett that lets me know Olivia is safe, my phone goes flying across the room. The shattered screen shines in the refracted rays of sun that shine through the break in the curtains, and I wonder if I’ll ever feel it again, the sunshine Olivia brought.

It hasn’t always been perfect, but it’s always been worth it. We’ve grown so much together, learned what the other needed, so maybe we weren’t perfect, but the way she’s loved me has always been perfect. And that’s how I’ve always known: my forever is a person. It’s wide chocolate eyes that peer up at mine, and dark, silky curls that slip through my fingers. It’s a small hand in mine that warms my entire body, a smile that gets my heart thudding a little bit harder, a little bit faster. It’s the ears that hear all my dreams and the arms that hold me up when I’m tired, when I forget how to stand. It’s the lips on my jaw, my cheek, my hand, the ones that whisper my favorite I love you, that promise me a lifetime against my skin.

I don’t know everything. All I know is I just chased my forever down the driveway.

I’m not surprised that Olivia ran to the same place I did after leaving home. I don’t have a doubt that she’s been here. I can smell her hair, that intrinsic scent that reminds me of home and Sunday mornings cuddled together on the couch while the coffee brews and the muffins bake.

“Carter,” Hank calls from his spot, staring out his balcony door. How he knows it’s me standing silently in his doorway is beyond me. “You gonna come in or just stand there?”

I don’t say a word as I cross the room to take a seat beside him. He unfolds his hands, tapping a single finger for a moment of silence that stretches way too long. When he sighs, shame makes my neck damp, makes my skin prickle and sting as I wait for him to tell him how disappointed he is in me.

But he doesn’t.

He sits in silence, a deep crease set between his brows as he keeps his gaze trained ahead, for ten minutes, and then twenty. It’s not until the first half hour comes to a close that he finally opens his mouth.

“I’m gonna tell you the same thing I told Olivia. You are not a man who would intentionally betray someone’s trust, someone who loves him, who he loves without a shadow of a doubt.” He twists in my direction. “You wouldn’t hurt that girl if your life depended on it. She’s your whole world. Not hockey. Not that cup sitting pretty in your house right now, the one you’ve been working toward your whole life. Olivia. That girl. She’s your world and she has been right from the beginning. If you took your last breath right now, your final words would be—”

“A declaration of how much I love her.” The words leave my mouth without thought because I don’t need to think about it. Olivia’s my first thought when my eyes open in the morning and the last one before I fall asleep. She occupies about 99 percent of the space in between too.

“Exactly.” Hank points across the room toward the general vicinity of the Nespresso machine Olivia and I bought him when he moved in. “So, you’re gonna make me a damn cappuccino, strap on your boots, and tell me what actually happened so we can figure out how the hell you can make this right.”

He waves a hand around my face. “I don’t need to be able to see to know you look like a damn mess, son, and I won’t sit by and let you throw your happiness away because you didn’t know how best to keep her safe without breaking her heart.”

My driveway is half-full when I get home, which is both a blessing and a curse. I want to be alone, but I probably shouldn’t be. My mind is a dangerous place to be right now.

I note the pile of shoes in the doorway and my naïve heart is desperate enough to think Olivia might be here too.

Emmett, Garrett, and Adam poke their heads into the hallway. Garrett’s got a bag of chips out of the cupboard. He stops when he sees me, midcrunch, and slowly drops the bag.

My head swivels, following the movement I hear upstairs.

“Carter,” Emmett cautions, but it’s too late; I’m already halfway up the staircase.

“Olivia?” Heart racing, I halt in the bedroom doorway, watching Cara pack Olivia’s clothes in a suitcase. I tear the clothes from her hands, ripping them from the suitcase, head wagging back and forth. “No. No. It’s not—she’s not—you can’t! She’s coming back! She’s coming back, Cara. She has to.”

I don’t know what I expect from Cara. To yell at me, shake me, maybe detach my balls from my body like she’s so often threatened if I ever break her best friend. What I don’t expect is the tears pooling in her eyes, the grief reflected in her gaze, the sympathy.

“She’s coming back,” I whisper, but the words are fractured, broken, like the expression Cara wears. When I blink, when a single tear rolls down my right cheek, she flings herself into my arms.

“You have to fix this,” she cries. “Carter, fix this!”

“I-I-I…I don’t know how!” Hank told me how. He told me what I need to do. But it feels stupid, pointless. Then again, I don’t have many other options, do I? “Help me,” I beg softly.

The floor creaks behind us and Cara releases me, wiping at her eyes. The boys trickle into the room, quiet and careful, like they aren’t sure what to do or say.

“I would never cheat on her.” My eyes fall on Adam, though he’s looking at the ground. He may be done with Courtney but that doesn’t mean that what’s happened, or what everyone thinks happened, hasn’t hurt him. “Adam, I promise, I didn’t—”

His arms come around me, a hug I didn’t know I needed. “I know, Carter. I know.”

“We all know.” Cara sinks to the edge of the bed, a small velvet box in her hand. She pops the lid, examining the sparkly diamond inside, the ring she helped me design for Olivia back in May. I picked it up last week, and I spent hours hiding it while Olivia was at work, choosing one spot then changing my mind five minutes later, picking another I thought might be better. That Cara’s somehow managed to find it is not surprising, and I don’t have it in me to be mad that she went snooping.

She brushes Olivia’s clothes aside and pats the spot next to her. When I take it, she squeezes my hand. “We’re going to help you figure this out, but you have to tell us what happened.”

“I don’t know where to start,” I admit. I’m in way over my head and I knew that from the second Courtney approached me last night.

“Start from the beginning.”

My chest inflates with an inhale meant to bring strength. “Ollie, she…she let me take pictures.” Too many pictures. Months and months of pictures of my favorite girl in my favorite positions.

“What kind of pictures?”

My throat squeezes as I keep my gaze trained on my hands in my lap. This was our secret and I thought it’d always remain that way. “Pictures of her. Of…us…”

“Oh fuck.” Emmett drops his face to his hands as Cara gasps.

“Tell me you didn’t keep them on your phone,” Adam pleads with me.

My defeated expression tells them everything they need to know.

I kept the photos on my phone. The password I chose to lock the folder was fucking stupid. 1022. Olivia’s birthday. Too predictable, and a simple Google search tells you that answer. It wouldn’t be for an average person, but being with me put her in the limelight, which meant the world knew more about her than they needed to. My fault.

These are all the things Courtney reminded me of when she dangled my phone in front of my face, a picture of my beautiful girlfriend peering up at me from the screen, when I knew I’d do whatever it took to protect Olivia.

I make it one hour on Monday.

One hour until I know she’s alone in that house after she gets home from work.

One hour longer than my body tells me it can wait, but it does, somehow.

One hour until my feet are pounding up that staircase, opening every spare bedroom, stopping when I get to the last door on the left.

I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here. I don’t have the words, and I sure as fuck still don’t have the answers. All I know is I have nothing without her, not a damn thing, not even my heart, and I won’t survive this without her.

The bag she packed this morning sits on the floor, the bed a rumpled mess, the bedside table littered with tissues. The adjoining bathroom door is cracked, light seeping through the opening, the sound of the shower running.

Blood drums in my ear and my heart tries to leap up my throat when the water stops, engulfing the room in silence.

For only the briefest moment.

Olivia’s soft, quiet cries pierce the air, the sound painful and beautiful all at once. I fucking hate it.

All logic leaves me as I move toward the sound, toward my girl. I can’t remember what I came here to say, only that I love her, so fucking much, that I’m sorry, that I can’t be without her.

That I need her to come home.

I push into the bathroom and my heart shatters at the sight before me: Olivia, wrapped in a towel, her hair drenched and nearly black from the shower, splattered across her shoulders as she sits on the bathroom floor with her face in her hands and cries.

I sink to my knees in front of her, my fingers wrapping around her forearms, and her head whips up with a choked gasp. She leaps to her feet, clutching her towel to her chest, and slaps furiously at the tears streaming down her cheeks. It’s no use; she sobs harder, louder, and I swear I’m dying.

I reach for her, because I need to hold her, but she slips beneath my arm and dashes into the bedroom, cowering in the corner, shaking, like she’s afraid of me.

“Ollie,” I plead. “Come here, baby.”

She covers her face, head whipping back and forth, and when I whisper her name once more, her eyes flip open. There’s no anger there, and fuck, what I wouldn’t kill for that. There’s just brokenness. Shattered pieces of her heart reflected right there in her gaze.

Her trembling arm lifts as she points at the door. “You need to…you need to go.” Her eyes squeeze shut as tears drench her face. “Please, Carter.”

“Hey.” Another fissure in my heart at the way she tries to smoosh herself into the corner when I approach her, like she’s damn near trying to disappear right into the wall. I’ve earned this, the fear that comes with being too close to me, like I might break her further, but I step forward anyway, taking her face in my hands. I’m not fucking perfect, that much is clear. I make mistakes all the time and she always loves me through them. I’m going to be better, for me and for her. I’m going to fix this, even if it’s not right this moment. “Listen to me. Please.”

Her lower lip trembles and her teeth descend, a weak attempt at quelling the quiver as her gaze swims with heartache. Her chest rises and falls in rhythm with mine, both of us battling for air, trying and failing to fill our lungs.

“I’m sorry, Olivia.”

Her eyes fall shut, tears that were clinging to her lashes falling now, and I swipe at her delicate, raw skin, coaxing her gaze back open.

“I’m sorry that I can’t see through this right now. I’m sorry that I couldn’t talk yesterday, that I still can’t find the words to explain this all to you. I’m sorry that my silence spoke words that weren’t and aren’t true.”

“Aren’t they?” she whispers. “Because your silence made me feel like I wasn’t enough, Carter. It perpetuated a feeling that we worked so hard to get rid of, but one that came roaring back this morning with those pictures, those articles.” Her eyes rise to the ceiling before floating back down to me, and the pain that swims behind them twists in my stomach like a knife. “You know what they’re saying, don’t you? They’re saying the verdict is out. Olivia Parker is not enough for Carter Beckett. They’re saying I should’ve known, the way they knew all along.”

She shifts my hands off her face, making to move by me. My hand shoots out, wrapping around her arm, bringing her back to me. Mocha eyes widen as they peer up at me, and when I push her against the wall, her breath catches in her throat, and I watch that pulse point in her neck thrum. I’m as gentle as I can be with her right now but something inside me flips like a switch at her words.

“You have always been enough. Always. You’re so fucking enough, it’s ridiculous.”

“That’s not at all how I feel right now. I feel worthless, Carter. Worthless and so fucking empty.” She looks away. “Shattered. You built me up, but you’re also the person who tore me down.”

Her lips part as tears tip over the edge of my eyes, clinging to my lower lashes. I blink, and they fall without permission. With them, Olivia’s tears fall harder, faster.

“I will build you back up, Olivia. I promise you.”

“How?” The whispered word is strangled with a strange mix of hope and disbelief.

“With the truth. With answers. With love.” I touch her bottom lip. “I know everything is broken right now. I know it all hurts. But I would never cheat on you. There’s nobody else for me, not for one night, and not for a lifetime.”

The way she stares up at me tells me she wants to believe me. Tells me she would’ve believed me, trusted me without a single doubt if I had only talked to her when she asked. The pain in her eyes tells me she doesn’t know anymore.

“You can’t give up on me. You can’t, Ollie, because I’m trying so fucking hard not to give up on myself right now. I know it feels like I am, like I’m giving up on us. I don’t have the words you need right now, the ones you want, all the answers you deserve, but that doesn’t mean I’m not trying to find them. None of this makes sense right now and I fucking hate myself because I’m hurting you. But I’m asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to give me a little bit of time, time to figure this out, to fix it. I will, Olivia. I will fix this.”

Her gaze wavers but never drops. “What if it can’t be fixed?”

“That’s not possible.” I rest my forehead against hers, my eyes shutting as I hold her face, brushing my thumbs over her cheekbones, over and over again, feeling her warm, damp skin. “There is no me without you, and I won’t stop until it’s fixed.” I mean every bit of those words, but there’s something dark and daunting in them, something that whispers that I can only do so much, that she has to want to take me back, that she can…that she can say no. I gather her wet curls in my hand and stroke my fingers down the side of her face in case it’s the last time I ever get to touch her, to feel her below me. “Do you still love me?”

“I told you,” Olivia whispers, placing her hand on top of mine. “I’ll always love you, Carter.”

“Then please,” I beg. “Please, hang on. Wait for me. Give me a chance. I promise, Olivia, I won’t let you down. Not again.”

There’s a hesitancy that flickers in her eyes, and before it can steal her, I press my lips to hers. She opens for me without a second thought, sinking into my touch, and I wind my arms around her, pulling her close, until there’s nowhere left for us to go. I memorize the feel of her body against mine, the way I can swallow her whole, the way her skin lights mine ablaze, and I cling to that feeling, the never-ending love, my forever.

“I love you, Olivia. So fucking much.”

She pulls back, my face in her hands as her heartbreaking gaze holds mine. “I love you, too, Carter, but for right now, you need to leave.” Pressing up on her toes, she touches her lips once more to mine, letting them linger for a long moment before she slips out of my hold.

I don’t want that to be my answer, not her walking away.

Just as the last of my heart shatters, she pauses in the doorway of the bathroom. “I’m not going anywhere, Carter. If you come back to me, I’ll be here, but I need you to come back with answers.”

I sit around all night. I sit at the kitchen island with my head in my hand. I sit on the bench in the shower while the water beats down on me. I sit on the balcony where I fell in love with Olivia, where she looked at the view while I looked at her. And I sit at my dad’s grave. I sit there and ask for guidance, for answers, for a way out, for a strength I didn’t know I’d ever need.

Until finally I find myself standing for the first time in hours, looking up at a building that’s much quieter now the sun has gone down.

A police officer looks up from behind the front desk, smiling at me as I stand in the doorway with my hands in my pockets.

“Can I help you?”

My pulse thunders in my ears. “I need to make a police report.”