Consider Me (Playing For Keeps, #1)

by Becka Mack

“Every single guy in this team is invaluable,” he starts, talking into the microphone. “Every single one of them. But we wouldn’t be where we are right now if it weren’t for this guy right here.” He points at Adam, who stumbles backward in shock before the guys push him forward. “Ladies and gentlemen, on your feet for the best fucking goalie in the world!”

His gaze finds mine, and he glides across the ice to me. He opens the door to the tunnel, gesturing for me, and my cheeks blaze. This is his accomplishment; I don’t want to take anything away from him. But still, I go to him, because I always will. “Congratulations, baby,” I whisper, grinning down at him and smacking my tears away. He crooks a finger at me. “Come here.” He brackets my chin in his hand. “Thank you.” “For what?” “For making me feel like everything is within my reach if I work hard enough. This is amazing. Everything I dreamed of as a kid. But it’s you who makes my world complete.” He touches his lips to mine. “I love you.” With a wink and a smile, Carter steps back onto the ice. My heart bursts in my chest as he lifts that cup above his head, letting out a wild, unrestrained scream that the entire arena echoes back at him.

Alannah scowls as she slides down my body. “You cried like a baby, Daddy.” “Did not.” I might believe him if it weren’t for the look on his face as his gaze settles on the shiny cup sitting on the kitchen table. His shaky hands fly to his face. “Oh. My. God. It’s the … it’s the …” He whimpers, and I absolutely smirk. I plop Jem in the cup and he giggles, smacking his hands down on it.

Jem peers up at me with sparkling blue eyes, reaching his tiny hands out. “Cah-Cah.” Kristin claps a hand to her mouth. “Oh. He said your name.” “He did not,” Jeremy grumbles, reaching for Jem. Jem frowns and grunts, wiggling out of his dad’s reach, making grabby hands at me. “Cah-Cah!”

She looks up at me. “Carter, do you want to go somewhere private to talk with her?” “Fuck no.” “And why not, baby?” “Because I’ve already got the only woman I’ll ever need.” She smiles up at me, hand curving around my neck as she brings my mouth to hers. “Does that answer your question?” she asks Blondie, but doesn’t give her the chance to reply. Instead, her fingers twine with mine and she tugs me toward the door.

My eyes fall to the sleek black object she spins in her hand before presenting it to me on her palm. “What kind of a friend would I be if I didn’t return something so valuable, Carter?”

“I love you.” The way he whispers my three favorite words, laced with brokenness, sounds like they’re not quite meant for me to hear. Or maybe they are. Just one last time. “Carter.” His face, over his rough stubble, the strong line of his rugged jaw. “Look at me, baby.” He doesn’t. He doesn’t move a muscle, except for the almost imperceptible tic in his jaw, the vein pulsing in the side of his neck. “Carter. Look at me.” “I can’t,” he whispers, the words weak, shattered. Something wet drops, splattering onto my forearms where I’m reaching between us, holding his face in my hands.

The end is supposed to be easier than the start. Because this isn’t the way this was supposed to go. Or maybe it’s exactly how it was always destined to end.

That’s all we’ve been doing. Pretending the inevitable wouldn’t happen. That this all wouldn’t go up in flames. But it is. This life we’ve built together, the future I put so much stock in, the forever I was so sure about it. It’s been doused in gasoline, torched. My heart will never be the same after Carter Beckett.

“I love you.” His words are shattered, lifeless. “I love you, Ollie.” “You know, I never doubted that until now.”

I watch Carter fall to pieces in the garage while I fall to pieces on the inside, and everything feels so utterly wrong, so devastatingly broken. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t have a home, and the person I need more than anything, the only one who can take all of this away, the pain, the heartache, is the one who’s brought it all in the first place. Visiting hours don’t start until eight, so I sit in the parking lot and fall apart some more, until I’m sure I can’t be put back together. When I burst through the door of the suite, I find the man I’m looking for sitting on his balcony, looking nearly as defeated as I feel. He lifts his head from his fist, weathered blue eyes searching for his visitor. Whatever’s left of my heart crumbles to pieces as I cry out his name. “Hank.” “Olivia.” He stands, spreading his arms wide. “Come here, sweetheart.”

How can I open my mouth and be honest with her when I don’t have all the answers? 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. 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.

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 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. 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.”

“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.”

“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. “No. No. It’s not—she’s not—you can’t! She’s coming back! She’s coming back, Cara. She has to.”

“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. It feels pointless, but then again, I don’t have many other options. “Help me,” I beg softly. The floor creaks behind us and 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.”

“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.

“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.

I kept the photos on my phone. The password I chose to lock the folder was fucking mindless. 1022. Olivia’s birthday.

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 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 think I’m dying. In fact, when she dashes into the bedroom, cowering in the corner, like she’s afraid of me, I’m certain of it.

“That’s not at all how I feel right now. I feel worthless, Carter. Worthless and so fucking empty. 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 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.”

“There is no me without you, and I won’t stop until it’s fixed.” I gather her wet curls in my hand and stroke my fingers down her face. “Do you still love me?” She places her hand on top of mine. “I’ll always love you, Carter.” “Then please. Please, hang on. Wait for me. Give me a chance. I promise, Olivia, I won’t let you down. Not again.”

“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.”

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 as I stand in the doorway with my hands in my pockets. “Can I help you?” “I need to file a police report.”

He promised me answers, and the longer he’s away, the more I worry there isn’t any. I swipe at my screen, over and over, pictures of us smiling up at me, until I settle on one of my favorites. I’m laughing, looking into the camera, and Carter’s got his arms around me from behind, his chin on my shoulder with his biggest, goofiest grin. But he’s not looking at the camera. He’s looking at me. Never in my life has somebody looked at me the way that man looks at me, like I’m the only thing he sees, like someone seeing in color for the first time. He holds so much love in his gaze, fierce appreciation, devotion, and that right there is why my heart keeps urging me that something doesn’t add up. It’s why I promised him the time he begged for right here in this room, the time to figure it out.

“My heart hurts so much,” I admit, wiping at a tear that gathers in the corner of my eye. “This doesn’t feel like Carter. Not at all. He was talking about our wedding and babies. He was calling it our home long before I moved in. He wanted to share everything, his whole life. And I only wanted to be a part of it.” “Oh, honey. You’re the biggest part. You know that.”

“If this were reversed, if it were me trying to find my way through this, Carter wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d demand we do this together. He wouldn’t let me go through this on my own, no matter how much I’d try to push him away.” Cara’s blue eyes hold mine. “You’re right.” “I don’t want him to do this, to try to be strong on his own.” “What do you want?” I want to be next to my person instead of feeling so lost without him. I want us, together and forever. I want the answers I deserve, and if he’s having trouble finding them, then I want to help him look. “I want to show him what he’s been showing me all along. That we’re stronger together.”

“You said you were coming back, Carter. You said that. But you …” I pry my face from his neck, swiping at my sopping cheeks as he holds me. “Why haven’t you come back to me?” Shame tints his cheekbones. Carter takes a seat on the step, setting me on his lap, and smooths my hair back from my damp face as Dublin lies beside us. “It’s still broken, Ollie. I have to fix it before I deserve to come back to you.” “No,” I say firmly, fisting his shirt in my hands. “That’s not what you taught me. You taught me to communicate. You taught me to lean on you when I need strength, and you’re supposed to lean on me too. Because we’re supposed to do these things together, aren’t we? Work through the hard stuff, the fears?” His eyes cloud, an uncertainty that takes over, steals the brilliance of his evergreen forest and replaces it with a bleak and hazy fog. He rests his forehead against mine, a tremor in his voice as he whispers, “I’m so scared, Olivia.” “I don’t want you to be scared alone. That’s not how we do things in this relationship.”

A bitter chuckle leaves his lips. “If she’d wanted money, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I tried, trust me. I threw it all at her, but she didn’t want it.” He runs an agitated hand through his hair, mussing his waves. “She said we ruined her life, that Adam didn’t trust her anymore because of what happened that one weekend at the bar, that he would’ve been able to forgive her cheating otherwise. She said it wasn’t fair that I was getting another chance after my past, that she couldn’t stand seeing me portrayed as such a perfect boyfriend. She wanted to remind everyone of who I really am.”

He looks down, nodding. “She wanted to hurt us, and I think I let her.” “Why didn’t you tell me all that?” “Because she wanted me to break up with you. She wouldn’t get rid of the pictures until she knew we were done. I can’t ever be done, Ollie, not with you. But I can’t let your pictures get out either. You’ll lose your job, and I won’t let you be exposed that way. I need to keep you safe, and I’ve already failed by letting someone get their hands on your pictures.” “I love my job, Carter, but nothing in this life is worth risking you. I would trade all of it for a happily ever after with you.”

“Failing is part of life. And we pick back up and start again. We can do that, Carter. As long as you’re by my side, I can always start again. Can’t you?”

But you can have your phone back.” Carter takes his phone, turning it in his hand, and the hot sun glints off the fragments of the broken screen before he tucks it in his pocket. “What does this mean?” Officer Wolters smiles. It’s warm and broad and makes me feel something I haven’t felt in days. Hope. “It means we’ve got both women in custody. This is over.”

The tears that haven’t stopped these past four days overflow again, cool trails tracking down my cheeks. “I don’t want to sleep without you.”

“I haven’t lost you?” “Carter, you will never, ever lose me.”

Being at the house has been hard because it feels less like a home than it ever has. Everything is a reminder of the person missing that makes it a home.

So I spend my days here and at Hank’s. Hank is quiet, in the way I need rather than the way I hate. He lets me just be, lets me feel what I need to feel.

“We’re proud of ya. Plus, Adam was so mad when she-who-must-not-be-named called him from jail, he told her to go fuck herself and move back to Denver. Angry Adam is so rare, I cherish every moment I get with him.”

“I want to go home,” Adam whispers. “I’m scared.” I clap a hand to his back. “We all are, buddy.”

“They say there comes a time in everybody’s life when you meet your soul mate, the person who will love and cherish you for the rest of your life, hold you close and never let you go.” The women in the crowd all aww and Emmett grins at Cara. “For Cara, that day happened at seventeen when she met me.” Emmett’s jaw drops and Cara smacks the table, hollering, “Hell yeah it did, baby!” “I don’t know how in the world I got so lucky to land Cara as my roommate, but all five foot ten of her took one look at me, declared I was the perfect size for her to boss around, and then promptly shoved a shot of tequila into my hands. It was ten in the morning, and as terrified as I was, I knew I’d found my best friend.

“Emmett, Cara took one look at you and knew you were the one that was going to change her world.” Olivia’s eyes flicker to me before she licks her lips and looks down at the paper in her hands. “When you met, it was like two worlds colliding, an explosion of color. You met her wild with your calm, and you’ve drowned her in love every step of the way. The love you share has always been an inspiration to never settle for anything other than unrestrained passion, fierce obsession, a love that knows no bounds and only gets stronger every day.”

I drop my head, trying to ease the pain that’s already well-buried itself in my chest this past week. When I look up at Olivia, it’s everything I can do not to cry. “I know what it’s like to live without you. That’s something I never wanted to experience.” And I’ll be damned if I ever put either of us in that position again. “Carter,” Olivia whispers, fingers fluttering over my cheekbone, threading through my hair. “I want to come home.” My heart stutters. “Yeah?” She smiles. “Yeah.”

Carter steps up to me, offering me his arm. “Shall we, princess?” I grin at him through my tears. “We shall.”

“I’m starting to think you only requested to sit beside me so you could clean my plate.” “Nah. I requested to sit beside you because I’m fucking obsessed with you.”

Every bit of this day has been perfection, and I’m only mildly horrified when I return from a trip to the bathroom after dinner to find Carter talking to my brother in one corner of the ballroom. And then the oddest thing happens. Jeremy laughs, they shake hands, and then they … hug. What. The. Fuck.

I didn’t understand how he felt until I met …” His eyes move, finding me, and he smiles. “Until I met her. And then it all made sense.”

Jennie starts dragging me to the center of the dance floor with her and the rest of the women. “I don’t want to,” I whine. “I didn’t ask.” Jennie starts stretching out. “If I have to do it, so do you. But fair warning: Watch your back. We Becketts are competitive as fuck.” “You can have it. This tradition is ridiculous.”

“Five! Four! Three! Two! One!” I wait. And I wait. Finally, I crack my eyes open. My heart does a backflip at Cara standing in front of me, tears in her eyes as she smiles so brightly, holding out her bouquet. To me. She wraps my fingers around the ribbons of silk and velvet that keep the stems together, then spins me around to where Carter stands before me, waiting, smiling.

“Have I told you today why I love you?” Carter takes a step toward me, then another, his smile growing with each inch he eliminates. “I love you because you’re funny and snarky, sarcastic as all hell, and the night we met, you told me to go fuck myself.” He ignores the way Cara shrieks his name. “You’re also kind and soft, sensitive and sweet, the best auntie, and a teacher I would’ve died to have in high school. You’re not just my girlfriend; you’re my biggest cheerleader and my best friend.” He takes my face in his hands, thumbs wiping at the overflowing tears dripping down my cheeks. I don’t even know where they came from. “Why are you crying, Ollie girl? I haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.” “I don’t know what’s going on, but you called me your best friend and your girlfriend,” I sob, folding toward his chest as I grip the loosened collar of his shirt. His soft chuckle is warm against my lips as he tips my chin up to kiss me. He takes a step back, dipping his hand in his pocket, pulling out a small velvet box, and he sinks to one knee. “I’m hoping to call you something else when I’m done doing what I need to do here.”