Chapter 14 — Carter #2
“Most true things aren’t at first.”
Carter groaned. “Coach said basically the same thing.”
“Smart man.”
“I hate when adults coordinate wisdom.”
Anne smiled. “We have a group chat.”
Carter pointed at her. “Don’t even joke. I just found out the team has one about me.”
Michael perked up. “What’s it called?”
“No.”
“Is it Team Clipboard?”
Michael held up one hand. “Resting. Not speaking.”
Anne looked at Carter, eyes twinkling. “It is good to see you smile.”
Mason’s catastrophic lack of judgment made him smile, though under protest.
Maybe Carter had confused being unserious with being happy.
Maybe they were not the same thing at all.
Michael’s gaze sharpened again. “What’s wrong?”
Carter sighed. “Do we have to do feelings while you’re under blanket arrest?”
“Yes,” Michael said.
Anne nodded. “Doctor’s orders.”
Carter leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.
Then he said it.
“Lena got embarrassed today.”
Anne’s expression softened immediately.
Michael stilled.
“By you?” Anne asked.
“No. Maybe. Not exactly.” Carter shook his head. “Mason posted a story with a dumb shirt. People started talking. Someone at the coffee shop brought it up. Then someone made a comment about me. About how I do cute when there’s a camera.”
That helped more than it should have.
Carter went on. “And Lena said she doesn’t want us to become a campus joke. She said my reputation scares her.”
His dad stayed quiet.
Carter looked at him. “You’re not going to defend me?”
Michael’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you need me to?”
“Good. Because you’re not a kid who got unfairly accused of something he didn’t do.” Michael’s voice was steady, not harsh. “You’re a young man dealing with consequences.”
Anne’s eyes moved to Michael.
But Carter shook his head once.
“No,” he said. “He’s right.”
Michael sighed, softer now. “That doesn’t mean you’re bad, Carter.”
Carter swallowed.
“It means you have to be patient with the girl who’s deciding whether the man in front of her is stronger than the reputation behind him.”
Carter stared at his father.
Michael settled back, looking tired but certain.
Anne smiled faintly. “That was good.”
“I’ve been saving energy.”
Then he sat forward, elbows on knees.
“What if she decides I’m not?” he asked.
Anne’s face softened.
Michael’s answer came quietly.
“Then you become that man anyway.”
Just the truth sitting there in his parents’ living room, wrapped in soup smell and hockey game silence.
Because it was who he wanted to be.
Carter rubbed a hand over his jaw.
“Yeah,” he said.
Anne stood and came over to kiss the top of his head.
He groaned. “Mom.”
“Hush. I’m allowed. Medical emergency.”
“That’s not how that works.”
Michael pointed toward the kitchen. “Also, bring me crackers.”
“I need them.”
“You need rest.”
“Crackers help me rest.”
“They help you avoid soup.”
“Soup is not a meal. It is a wet suggestion.”
Really laughed.
Anne pointed at him. “Do not encourage him.”
“I’m emotionally fragile.”
“You are all emotionally fragile when crackers are involved.”
Carter stood. “I’ll get the crackers.”
Anne sighed. “Traitor.”
Michael smiled proudly. “My boy.”
Carter was in the kitchen rinsing his mother’s soup bowl because she looked like she might collapse if she sat down too long.
Carter: Home. Stable. Annoying. Keeps trying to negotiate crackers like a hostage crisis.
Carter: Mom is pretending not to hover. Dad is pretending he doesn’t like it. I am washing dishes because I contain personal growth.
He looked toward the living room, where his dad was now arguing with Anne about whether reclining counted as activity.
Carter: Yes. Just want to hear your voice without a campus audience.
The real one.
He slipped the phone into his pocket and finished the dishes.
When his mother caught him wiping down the counter, she stopped in the kitchen doorway like she had seen a religious vision.
“What?” Carter asked.
“I know.”
“Without being threatened.”
“I live independently, Mom.”
“You live like your laundry is trying to escape captivity.”
“No.”
Anne smiled, then her face softened. “Thank you.”
He shrugged. “You’re tired.”
“Yeah, but…” He glanced toward the living room. “I needed something to do.”
“I know.”
He tossed the paper towel away and leaned back against the counter.
“Dad gave me advice.”
Anne looked amused. “Was it good?”
“Annoyingly.”
“He does that sometimes.”
“He said if Lena decides I’m not stronger than my reputation, I should become that man anyway.”
Anne’s expression changed.
“Oh,” she said.
She stepped closer and touched his arm. “You already are becoming that man.”
“I do.”
The confidence in her voice made his throat tighten.
“You’re my mom. You have bias.”
“Of course I do. I loved you when you were twelve and smelled like hockey pads. My devotion is proven.”
He laughed.
She smiled. “But I’m not wrong.”
For now, maybe trying was enough.
He called Lena at ten-oh-four.
One word.
His whole body relaxed.
“Hi,” he said.
Not awkward.
Just quiet.
Then she said, “How are you?”
He stretched out on his bed, one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling of his childhood bedroom. He had decided to stay the night at his parents’ because his mother was exhausted and his dad was pretending not to need anything.
The room still had an old Ridgeview youth hockey pennant on the wall and a dent in the closet door from when he had tried to practice slap shots indoors at thirteen.
“I’m okay,” he said.
“Your okay or mine?”
“Good.”
“My dad is home. He’s stable. My mom is tired. I’m in my old room and I just saw a trophy from eighth grade where my hair looked like a helmet.”
“I need to see this immediately.”
“No.”
“Carter.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I stayed with you through a hospital scare.”
“And I appreciate that.”
“Show me the hair.”
“The hair died for a reason.”
Then the silence came back, softer this time.
Carter turned the phone slightly against his ear. “I talked to Mason.”
“No. Paige heard from someone who heard from someone that Mason looked like he’d been sentenced to community service.”
She made a small sound. A laugh, maybe.
Then he heard her shift, fabric rustling.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” she said.
Carter stared at the ceiling.
“You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
“I know, but I don’t like how I handled it.”
“You handled it like someone who got surprised in public by a thing she didn’t ask for.”
“It’s true.”
“I pulled away.”
“It hurt,” he admitted.
He closed his eyes.
“But,” he said, because he needed her to hear all of it, “you came back. You told me why. You held my hand after. That matters too.”
Her breath left softly.
“I’m scared of doing this wrong,” she said.
“Same.”
“You don’t seem scared.”
Carter laughed once. “Then I’m still better at acting than I thought.”
“So do I.” He rolled onto his side, phone tucked against his ear. “Lena, I’m terrified.”
“Of wanting this as much as I do.”
Nothing.
He could not see her face, which made it both easier and worse.
“Carter,” she whispered.
“I know. That’s probably too much.”
“No.”
He stopped breathing.
“No?” he asked.
“It scares me too,” she said. “How much I want it.”
This was one.
“How much?” he asked, because apparently he had no self-preservation.
Her laugh was nervous. “You don’t get to ask that.”
“I think I just did.”
That got another laugh from her, softer now.
“I want coffee and studying tomorrow,” she said.
“Okay.”
“And I want no shirts.”
“Done.”
“And I want to go slow.”
“And…” She paused.
He waited.
“I want you to kiss me again.”
Carter’s entire body went still.
The bedroom ceiling, the old pennant, the eighth-grade trophy of unfortunate hair — all of it disappeared.
“Yeah?” he said, voice rougher now.
“Yes.”
“I can do that.”
“Tomorrow.”
He smiled into the dark.
“Normal life,” he said.
“Normal life,” she echoed.
Carter could hear faint movement on her end. Maybe Paige in the room. Maybe Lena shifting under a blanket. He pictured her curled on her bed with her phone against her cheek, hair loose, eyes tired, trying to control a thing that was already bigger than both of them.
Not to push.
Just to sit beside her and make the scary feel less like a cliff.
“Lena?”
“Yeah?”
“My dad said something annoying.”
“That seems on brand.”
“He said if you decide I’m not stronger than my reputation, I should become that man anyway.”
She was quiet for a long second.
“That’s really good advice,” she said.
“And I think…” Carter swallowed. “I think I want to.”
Careful.
Important.
“No,” he said. “Not only.”
Her breath caught quietly.
“For me,” he said. “Because I’m tired of being the guy everybody laughs about and nobody trusts.”
“Carter.”
“And yeah,” he added, because truth had already kicked the door down, “for you too. Because I want to be someone you can trust. But not just so you’ll pick me. I want to actually be him.”
Tender.
A little painful.
Then Lena said, “I already see him.”
Carter pressed his hand over his eyes.
He could not answer right away.
“Dangerous words,” he said finally.
“I know.”
“You keep saying them anyway.”
Changing.
Staying.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“Tomorrow,” she replied.
“Coffee. Studying. No shirts.”
“And maybe kissing.”
He smiled. “Definitely kissing.”
“Maybe.”
“Lena.”
“Goodnight, Carter.”
He laughed softly. “Goodnight, Brooks.”
Neither did he.
Then, just before the call ended, she said, “I’m glad you called.”
Carter lowered the phone and stared at the ceiling again.
Becoming the man who could sit with his father’s weakness, his mother’s worry, his coach’s truth, his friends’ chaos, and Lena Brooks’s careful heart without turning any of it into a performance.
The campus would still talk.
Mason would still probably try to make shirts in secret because personal growth had limits.
And Lena might still pull away sometimes when the fear got too loud.
Carter set his phone on the nightstand and turned off the lamp.
No joke.
No charm.
Just him.
Trying.
And for once, trying felt less like proof he might fail and more like evidence he had finally found something worth becoming better for.