Chapter 11
Twelve years ago
Two days after Olive and Noah started Fake-Dating-Gate, she knew she’d screwed up. Sure, suddenly the entire school looked at her differently, plus people were talking to her, including her—which to be honest, pissed her off—but . . . she was no closer to meeting her goal.
Her Lose-Her-Virginity goal.
Hell, she’d never even been kissed.
And worse, there was only one guy on the entire planet she wanted to take the job. Except Noah didn’t want it, not for real.
She waited for him after his game, the one he’d won by hitting a home run in the last inning, landing the team in the state playoffs. Half the town had come, and finally the players started to trickle out, much to the crowd’s pleasure.
Noah somehow managed to slip out unseen by everyone but her, and she made her move, closing in, grabbing his hand, and pulling him around the side of building and out of sight. Caught off guard, he said her name in surprise when she pushed him up against the wall. “Congratulations,”
she murmured, her heart thumping so loud she could hardly hear herself think. She went up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.
He went still as stone, but didn’t push her away.
Taking that as a good sign, she pressed closer, but though she’d googled “how to kiss,”
it all fled her brain at the warmth of his body, the silky heat of his lips, and the way his hands had slid to her hips, holding her tight. Pulling back a fraction, she whispered, “Show me how to do this right—”
He groaned and dropped his forehead to hers. “Olive—”
“Just this, okay? Just a kiss. Please, Noah.”
As if the sound of his name on her lips galvanized him, his features softened and he leaned into her. “Don’t ever beg a guy for anything, okay? We don’t deserve it. You, on the other hand, deserve everything.”
Her belly fluttered.
“Just a kiss,”
he said gruffly.
He might as well have offered her a night of hot, sweaty sex given how everything in her body pulled tight like an overstretched bow at just the sound of his voice. She nodded, afraid to speak. God had granted her one full sentence. She didn’t dare hope for a second.
Then she couldn’t think anymore because he hauled her up against him and kissed her. Really kissed her, and it was better than she’d imagined. But then she was weaving unsteadily on her feet because he’d stopped, nudging her away from him, holding her up with his hands on her arms.
“More,”
she whispered, staring at his mouth.
With a groan, he dropped his head to her shoulder.
So she turned her face into him and pressed her lips to his neck.
Making another of those very male sounds deep in his throat, he tightened his grip on her. And thanks to her hands flat on his chest, she could feel his heart pounding beneath her palm. It was the first time she knew it wasn’t just her under his spell, but that he was caught up in it too.
“I’m a really bad idea, Oli.”
“Brand-new information,”
she said, trying to lighten the mood by teasing, but still not opening her eyes. Even without looking, she felt his smile.
After a moment, he sighed. “I’ve tried to steer clear.”
And now on to the gut-wrenching portion of the evening . . . “How’s that working out for you?”
“Not great . . .”
He paused, hesitating. “You know we can’t do this, right?”
“But—”
“We can’t,”
he whispered, voice tinged with regret. “Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
She held on to that, his regret, telling herself he’d change his mind.
But he didn’t.
Present day
Olive worked hard to keep control of her own runaway thoughts, but watching Noah coach the kids was sexy as hell. Even worse, watching him handle the snake situation, running toward the potential danger instead of away, had been even sexier. Dammit. She knew he worked hard to stay fit. Even recovering from the accident, he’d done some sort of exercise every day rather than take a break. Personally, she thought taking rest days was very important to a fitness regimen. She was currently on rest day four hundred and something, and she felt great.
When the game was called and both sides declared winners, Joey ran up to Olive. “Did you see me hit the ball?”
He hadn’t actually hit the ball—he’d hit the tee and the ball had fallen off. “I did,”
she said, and hugged him. “You were great.”
“Can I play with Mikey on the playground for a few minutes?”
“Sure, as long as I can see you.”
“Mikey has hermit crabs!”
“That sounds . . .”
Kinda icky . . . “Wonderful.”
She playfully tugged on the bill of his baseball cap. “Have fun.”
He and Mikey raced to the playground near the stands.
Olive’s gaze tracked to Noah, sitting on the players’ bench, making notes with one hand, his other absentmindedly rubbing his injured leg. As she headed toward him, he was staring down at his clipboard, looking . . . well, not thrilled. And it hit her, how hard this must be for him, back in a world he’d had to give up. Having to relive the dream that could have been. She knew what he’d told his mom, that the dream had been his dad’s, but Olive didn’t know if that was really true, or if he just hadn’t wanted his mom to worry. Either way, she quietly sat next to him on the bench.
He looked up, and she didn’t have to read minds to know what he was thinking. She was the last person he’d want to see. “Is this the first game of Joey’s that you’ve been to?”
she asked.
“No, but it’s the first time I coached.”
“I imagine that’s not easy for you.”
She saw the surprise in his eyes, like she was the first person to get it, although he didn’t say anything. But she needed to. So she drew a deep breath and pulled up her metaphoric big girl undies. “You know, I still think about that night, and how—”
“Olive. Don’t.”
Right. Of course he wouldn’t want to talk about it. Dumb. She was so dumb. Embarrassed, she stood and started to walk away.
“I don’t blame you, you know.”
He said this to her back with a quiet certainty, and she turned around. Hard to guess at his feelings since he wore those dark sunglasses, but she felt . . . well, everything. The breath had left her chest. Her heart pounded in her ears. But this wasn’t about her. As much guilt as she carried for what had happened to him, she knew he carried the same for what happened to his brother-in-law. “And Joe wouldn’t blame you either.”
It’d been a shot in the dark, a wild guess, but she knew she was right when he scoffed.
“He should,”
he said. “He should absolutely blame me. I was distracted and he paid the price.”
“I see.”
She put some humor in her voice, hoping to defuse his guilt and tension. “So you should’ve known that you were going to get shot at? Are you a superhero now? Because nobody’s perfect, Noah.”
He let out a rough laugh, and his shoulders lowered. “Katie told me you didn’t find your parents at the farmer’s market.”
She remembered what Mrs. Carlyle had said about her mom and Amy, but decided there was no reason to open that can of worms.
The past was best left in the past.
Noah was watching her, not saying anything, patient, steady, and, as always, someone she could count on and trust. Maybe not with her heart, but with everything else, including her life. “Apparently it happens.”
When she’d seen their empty booth, she’d been at DEFCON 1, but now, just from being in his calm presence, she was at DEFCON 3, rounding the bases to DEFCON 4. “No one seems worried.”
“But you still are.”
She sighed. “I can’t shake the bad feeling.”
“When was the last time you saw them?” he asked.
She appreciated, more than he could know, that he didn’t offer empty platitudes or a sympathy that she didn’t want. “A year ago. The last time I was back in the States.”
There was no judgment in his voice when he said, “Still, that’s a long time. They didn’t come to see you?”
“No.”
She slid him a look. “Sometimes distance makes the heart grow fonder.”
His smile was brief, his eyes still intense. “I can’t help but feel like I’m missing a piece to the puzzle that is Olive Porter.”
Because he was. His family had been her family. She’d have done anything for them. So when his dad had come to her the day after their horrific accident saying that Noah needed time and space to figure out his life without her influence—she hadn’t even realized she had influence—she’d believed every word. And because Noah’s dad had been somewhat of an authority figure in her life, she hadn’t even questioned it.
Maybe because at the end of the day, love had never done her any favors. Worse, she didn’t believe Noah could or would ever love her, and with his dad asking her to go, she also didn’t believe his family could love her either.
Except Katie. She knew Katie loved her. But Katie also had loved her dad very much, which meant Olive couldn’t, wouldn’t, drag her best friend into it. She owed the Turner family that much, to not further divide them. Instead, she’d kept it all to herself and left, all while knowing they were better off without her there anyway. As for herself, she’d been on her own again, but she was used to that.
Once she’d grown up a bit, she did have regrets about how she’d handled everything. Or, more accurately, how she hadn’t handled everything. She wasn’t sure what the statute of limitations was on requests made by a dead man. Even now, she was still trying to figure that part out without derailing her life, Noah’s life, and everyone else’s as well.
Joey ran over and hissed at them.
Noah blinked.
“He’s a snake,”
Olive said. “We met one at the zoo.”
Joey smiled, jumped into Olive’s arms, and cuddled in. “Is it ice cream time yet?” he asked.
Noah smiled and ruffled his hair. “Snakes can’t eat ice cream.”
“I’m back to being a boy.”
“Perfect,”
Noah said.
Twenty minutes later, Olive sat at the ice cream bar in the local creamery. Not too far away, Noah and Joey shared a huge ice cream sundae, their heads bent together, laughing at something on Noah’s phone.
Katie slid onto the stool next to her. “Joe squeezed my hand again. Twice. The doctor said he really does expect him to wake up any day.”
She looked across the table and smiled. “Doesn’t that cuteness overload make your ovaries yearn?”
Olive’s ovaries weren’t yearning. They were exploding. Watching Noah interact with Joey had something moving inside of her, but hopefully it was indigestion.
Katie sighed at her lack of response.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say you’re into him. For real, not pretend.”
Olive slid her a look. “You knew it was all for show back then?”
“I knew a lot of stuff.”
Olive hesitated. “You know that once Joe wakes up—and he will—I’m going back to London and Noah’s going back to Yosemite. I’m trying not to disappoint or hurt anyone this time.”
“You’re already hurting,”
Katie said. “I can tell.”
“No, you can’t. You can recall conversations verbatim that I can’t even remember having, you’re the best mom on the planet, and your skills as a research librarian are unprecedented. You’re really great at a lot of things, but reading people’s emotions isn’t one of them.”
“Okay, true, but I know some things.”
“Such as?”
“That while you might like your life overseas, I can tell you don’t love it.”
“Based on what?”
“The way you don’t like to talk about your life over there, or when you do, your smile doesn’t meet your eyes, and there’s something off in your voice. Come back to us, Olive. You can love it here. I know it.”
It was a ridiculous notion, so she was stunned at the pang of longing that settled in her gut. Because it was true, she didn’t enjoy living so far away. She loved her job, and the people she did that job with, but there were other kinds of love that were missing.
They both looked over at the sound of Noah and Joey laughing. Joey had a dollop of ice cream on his nose.
Katie shook her head. “I can’t believe my brother thinks he wouldn’t be a good dad.”
“What? He’d make a great dad,”
Olive said, trying to leave the wistfulness out of her voice.
“I agree, but Molly, his ex, really did a number on him. She’d been talking about their future, and he was slowly coming around to the idea, and then suddenly she just couldn’t deal with his long hours and the danger of his job. Told him he had to choose: her or the job. And when he chose, she then made sure he knew the breakup was all on him, not her.”
Olive shook her head. Why did people hurt those they supposedly loved? “Her loss because Noah knows how to balance responsibilities, not to mention pressure, like no one else.”
Katie nodded. “True, and we both know exactly how much pressure he’s been under for most of his life. He wasn’t about to let that continue, but it still hurt him. And now he’s blaming himself for Joe being in a coma . . . And let’s not forget how it all started. With me. How he always had to be okay because I wasn’t.”
She said this in her usual matter-of-fact way, without emotion, but it hurt Olive for her.
“Katie, it wasn’t your fault either.”
She shrugged, then pasted on a smile when Joey ran over, grabbed her hand, and dragged her to a table with his friends and their moms.
Olive turned her head and found her gaze locked with Noah’s. Something passed between them, something nameless but . . . easy.
It felt a whole bunch like the affection they used to share.
He shifted to a closer stool and she used her professional smile. “Do you always come here after Joey’s games?”
“Joe started the tradition.”
He let out a breath. “Half the time, I’m not sure how to be a help here, so I do whatever he’d do.”
Amy came and sat with them, looking at Noah. “Some of the dads want to talk to you.”
She gestured with her chin to a table across the room.
Amy watched him go, but was probably not staring at how good his ass looked in his jeans like Olive was.
“It’s still there, isn’t it?”
his mom asked quietly. “That pull between you and my son.”
Olive’s heart skipped a beat. “It was all a long time ago. We were just silly kids.”
Amy gave a small smile and nodded. Then shook her head. “When it comes to this kind of a connection, time doesn’t matter.”
She paused. “I’ve never said this before, because I was too ashamed. But . . .”
This pause was longer. Finally she grimaced, and when she spoke, her voice was low, an agonized whisper really. “I’m so very sorry for the role I played in you leaving town.”
Olive’s mouth fell open. As far as she’d understood, no one had ever known of the promise she’d made, except for Noah’s dad and herself. “You knew?”
Apparently, she hadn’t masked her hurt because Amy’s eyes were remorseful. “I did.”
And she’d done nothing. Now Olive’s heart didn’t just skip a beat, it hardened.
Amy watched her, probably taking in the emotions she was having a hard time fighting: anger, betrayal . . .
“When Chuck told me what he’d asked of you,”
Amy said quietly, “I told him to undo it.”
Olive looked away, trying hard to absorb the blow without letting anyone see that she was upset. “He didn’t.”
“I know.”
“Nor did you reach out to me. Not even after Chuck was gone.”
Amy closed her eyes for a beat. “No. And I’m sorrier for that than I can say. I should have, but after all this time, I wasn’t sure what to say.”
Just keep breathing. Slow and easy. Do not cry, not here.
Amy opened her eyes. “Believe me, I hear myself. In hindsight, I know how unfair this was to you. Especially since we cared for you, we really did. But at the time, there were things in play that you didn’t understand.”
She drew a breath. “Chuck’s tumor was already pushing in on his brain and causing mood swings. So what he asked of you . . . it had nothing to do with his feelings for you. But he knew Noah’s love for baseball was waning. He got it in his head that if you weren’t around, Noah wouldn’t give up on the dream.”
Olive wasn’t sure what to do with that. She’d felt so bad for the entire Turner family when they’d lost Chuck. Katie had been particularly gutted—which was a big part of why Olive had never told her what her dad had asked of her. Instead, she’d let Katie think that she and Noah had lost touch because they’d had a fight they couldn’t resolve. Katie had spent several years trying to talk Olive into meeting Noah to fix things, but she’d eventually given up.
And if Olive was being honest with herself, even knowing what she knew now, about Chuck being sicker than anyone had known, about Amy not protecting Olive, she still didn’t hold what happened against any of them. “I’ve never blamed you,”
she said to Amy now. “Or Chuck for that matter.”
She blamed herself, because it hadn’t mattered what he’d said to her, she should have pushed back. “I just felt so guilty about my role in ending Noah’s career that I turned into a coward. It wasn’t your husband’s fault I stayed away, it was mine.”
Amy’s eyes went shiny with unshed tears. “That’s . . . incredibly generous of you. I’m not sure if you know this, but I think Noah mourned the loss of you more than baseball.”
She paused. “Are you two . . . ?”
Olive let out a mirthless laugh. “Noah and I don’t agree on much, but we align on one thing—we’re not going to revisit the past. We’re just . . . friends. We want different things in life.”
Amy put her hand on Olive’s arm. “Where does this leave you when our hell is over and Joe wakes up?”
Honestly? Olive had no idea. Living the life she’d dreamed about, but was feeling unfulfilled with, she supposed. Since that was a depressing thought, she smiled grimly and got up to get some more toppings for her ice cream.
Noah was on the other side of the toppings station. His eyes took her in. “You okay?”
“Yep,”
she said, snapping the P. She added her weight in chocolate syrup to her bowl. And then crushed peanuts. That should help.
“You’re allergic.”
“It’s more of a sensitivity,”
she said defensively. Would her throat get all scratchy? Was she going to wheeze? Was she going to break out in a rash? Most definitely. Did she care? Nope. Not in that moment, not even a little bit.