Chapter 9
CARTER
I'm not a praying man. Never had much to pray to, growing up, and less reason to believe anyone was listening.
But sitting there in my apartment with the phone still warm in my hand after Jess hung up, I came about as close as I ever had — because what she'd just told me felt like the answer to something I'd been too scared to ask for.
She'd caught me that morning while I was getting ready to work out.
Not Carter-I-need-to-talk-to-you urgent — just Carter-something-happened calm, which had its own kind of significance coming from Jess, because Jess didn't rattle.
And then she'd told me the thing that had me sitting motionless on my own couch an hour later, still turning it over.
Barnett University Hospital and Medical Center had called her — a leading hospital and teaching center in St. Louis.
They were looking for a new Director of Labor and Delivery.
They'd found her — she hadn't been looking, hadn't applied, hadn't done anything except be exactly as good at her job as she'd always been, and they'd noticed.
She could be here. That was the part I couldn't quite get past. Not four hours away, not a flight I had to plan two weeks ahead of time, not a voice on a phone at eleven o'clock at night that I had to talk myself out of wanting more of. Here. Same city, same drive.
I knew better than to get ahead of myself.
She had a formal interview scheduled for Thursday — the real conversation, the one where she'd find out the details and decide whether she even wanted it.
She hadn't been offered anything yet, hadn't decided anything yet, hadn't even fully decided whether she wanted the job or not.
Jess Calloway did not make life-altering decisions quickly, and I respected that about her enormously, which was the only reason I wasn't already texting her real estate listings.
I picked up my phone to call Liam, then put it down again.
He was going to be insufferable about this.
In the meantime, I had a PR event to get through.
The organization had put together a charity golf tournament out in Chesterfield in the afternoon — one of those summer obligations that came with playing professional sports, the kind where you showed up in a collared shirt and smiled for cameras and shook hands with sponsors who wanted a story to tell at their next board meeting.
Liam, Ty, Cole, and I had all been tapped to represent the team. It was the sort of thing I'd done dozens of times and could do in my sleep, which was fortunate because my mind was not entirely on golf.
"You look like a man who's somewhere else entirely," Ty said, on the fourth hole, watching me line up a putt I wasn't paying nearly enough attention to.
"I'm present. I'm very present."
"You've been very present somewhere else for the last hour and a half."
I made the putt, mostly by accident. "Jess got a call yesterday. From Barnett University Hospital."
Ty processed this for a second. "In St. Louis."
"In St. Louis." I couldn't stop the grin that came with it. "They're looking for a new Director of Labor and Delivery. They recruited her — she wasn't even looking. They just found her."
Ty's face broke into something genuinely delighted. "Man. That's — okay, that's huge. That's really huge."
"I know."
"She'd be here."
"She'd be here." I said it again, just to hear how it sounded. "She hasn't been offered anything yet. She has a call Thursday — she needs to find out the details before she decides anything. I'm very deliberately not getting too far ahead of this."
"And yet."
"And yet, I am thrilled and keeping my fingers crossed it happens!" I picked up my club. "Don't tell Liam yet. He's going to make a whole thing of it."
"I absolutely will not tell Liam." Ty paused a half second too long. "Today."
The reception was held at the clubhouse, all high ceilings and open bars and the loose energy of a room full of people who'd spent the afternoon in the sun and were ready to be social.
I worked the room the way I always did at these things — easy handshakes, a little self-deprecating humor about the golf, the version of charming that came naturally after a decade of doing press and appearances.
It was muscle memory at this point, comfortable as a well-worn jersey.
If I was being honest with myself — which I generally tried not to be at charity golf receptions — it was a skill I'd developed long before the NHL.
If there was one thing I could say the Iowa foster care system had given me, it was this: I knew how to be charming.
Likeable. Easy, low-maintenance, the kind of guy who made people glad he was in the room.
I'd learned it the hard way, in a series of other people's living rooms, figuring out in real time which version of myself was least likely to cause problems and most likely to be invited to stay.
You learned fast, in foster care, that nobody was obligated to keep you.
That you were always, on some level, auditioning.
So you got good at the audition. You got good at being the kid who didn't ask for too much, who cleaned up after himself without being told, who made people laugh and then quietly disappeared when the room got heavy.
The charm wasn't fake exactly — it was real, it just wasn't complete. It was the part of me that was safe to show, and I'd shown it so consistently for so long that most people never thought to look for the rest.
I was halfway through a conversation with a sponsor's VP about our playoff run when a woman materialized at my elbow with the specific confidence of someone who knew exactly what she was doing.
She was stunning. Dark hair, a red dress that had clearly been chosen with intent, a smile that managed to be both warm and pointed at the same time. The kind of woman who'd been walking into rooms and changing the temperature for years and knew it.
"Carter Michaels," she said, like she'd been waiting to say it. "I've been hoping to run into you all afternoon."
"Well." I turned toward her, the automatic charm clicking into place the way it always did. "Then your afternoon just improved considerably."
She laughed — low, pleased, exactly the right response to exactly the kind of thing I used to say.
We fell into conversation easily, the way these things went.
She was smart and funny and not at all subtle about what she was angling toward, which I'd once found flattering and now just found — interesting to notice.
She leaned in slightly when she laughed. She found reasons to touch my arm. She asked what I was doing after this with an inflection that was doing a lot of work on the word after.
And the entire time — every single minute of it, while my mouth was doing its reliable charming thing on autopilot — my head was somewhere else entirely.
It was the Fourth of July, specifically. The way Jess had looked at me right before she put her glass down on that hotel room couch — deliberate, certain, like she'd finished deciding something and was done waiting. The sound of my name in her voice in the dark.
The way she'd held my hand tighter on the lakefront when I'd told her things I hadn't told many people, like she understood that the right response to someone handing you something fragile was to hold it carefully rather than make a fuss about it.
The woman in the red dress said something I didn't fully catch, and I smiled like I had, and realized with startling clarity that I hadn't actually been in this conversation for at least five minutes.
"I'm sorry," I said, and meant it genuinely. "I think I'm a little distracted tonight."
Her expression changed — not unkindly, just recalibrating. "Someone waiting for you somewhere?"
"Something like that," I said. "I'm sorry. You've been great company. I just think my head is somewhere it's decided it would rather be."
She took it with more grace than I probably deserved. "Lucky someone," she said simply, and moved on.
Liam found me at the bar ten minutes later, because Liam always found me.
"What happened to the woman in the red dress? I thought I was about to have to rescue you from yourself."
"I let her down easy."
He stared at me. "You let her down easy."
"Is that so hard to believe?"
"Carter. I've known you for years. I have never once seen you let a woman like that down easy. I've seen you order drinks for women at a bar and then forget they existed by the time the drinks arrived."
"That's not — okay, that might have happened once." I turned my glass. "But I couldn't stop thinking about Jess. The whole time. She was right there in front of me, and I was somewhere else entirely."
I idly rotated the glass, watching the light move in it.
"I kept thinking about the way she looked at me on the Fourth. Right before she put her glass down and kissed me like she'd made up her mind about something. The way she says my name when she's not thinking about it. The way she laughed in that hotel room like nothing in the world was complicated."
I stopped.
"This has never happened to me before. That's what I'm saying. This is not a thing that has ever happened to me."
Liam was quiet for a second. Then he picked up his drink and took a sip with the careful composure of a man trying not to look like he was extremely pleased with himself.
"Say it," I said.
"I'm not saying anything."
"Liam."
"You're hooked, man." He said it simply, without any of the gloating he was clearly entitled to. "That's just what that is."
Ty had materialized on my other side at some point — the man had a gift for appearing exactly when something was happening. "Did I hear hooked? Hah! I called this during our fishing trip and nobody listened to me."
"You did not call this on the fishing trip."
"I absolutely called this during the fishing trip. I said, and I quote, that fish are not the only things getting caught this summer."
"You said nothing of the sort."
"Well, I may have been thinking it very loudly." Ty raised his glass. "To Carter. Finally, catastrophically, and by all accounts very happily hooked."
Liam raised his. I stared at both of them for a moment, thought about objecting, and then picked up my own glass.
"She's got a call Thursday," I said. "With Barnett."
"I know," Liam said. "Ty told me."
I looked at Ty.
"I said I wouldn't tell him today," Ty said. "It's after eight. It's basically tomorrow."
I laughed despite myself, and we drank, and the night went on around us warm and easy, and somewhere in the back of my mind I was already counting down to Thursday.
I called her on the drive home, windows down, the city still warm at ten o'clock the way it got in late summer.
She picked up on the second ring, voice soft, like she'd been winding down for the night. "Hey. How was the event?"
"Golf, handshakes, a rubber chicken dinner. The usual glamour of professional sports."
She laughed. "You love it."
"I tolerate it. For the team." I merged onto the highway, settling in. "How was your night?"
"Quiet. Justin went down early. I've just been sitting here thinking too much."
"About Thursday?"
"About Thursday." A pause. "I keep going back and forth. One minute I'm certain, and the next I'm terrifying myself with everything it would mean to actually do this."
"That sounds about right for a decision this size."
"Very unhelpful, thank you."
"I try." I smiled at the road. "For what it's worth — and I know I'm biased — you're going to be extraordinary on that call.
You're going to ask exactly the right questions and they're going to want you more than they already do, and then you're going to have all the information you need to make the right decision. Whatever that turns out to be."
She was quiet for a moment. "You're being very optimistic about this."
"I have my moments."
"Carter."
"Jess."
"I miss you," she said, simply, like it had surprised her to say it out loud.
Something in my chest did the thing it had been doing for weeks now, the thing I still hadn't found a clean word for.
"I miss you too. More than is probably dignified to admit, considering I just spent an entire charity golf reception thinking about you on that hotel couch instead of paying attention to the woman in front of me. "
"Excuse me — what woman?"
"Nobody. A very charming nobody who I was very poor company for, because my head was entirely somewhere else."
A pause. "Your head was in Chicago."
"My hotel room, specifically. The part where you put your glass down."
She laughed again, and the sound of it carried easily through the phone, all the way from Chicago, and I thought about how in a few months — maybe, possibly, if the universe kept being this specific about its intentions — that laugh wouldn't require a phone at all.
"Get some sleep," I said, when the city lights of St. Louis were coming up ahead of me. "You've got a big day tomorrow."
"I know." She exhaled softly. "Thank you. For everything. For being — you."
"Best I can do," I said. "Good luck, Jess. Not that you'll need it."
"Goodnight, Carter."
"Sleep tight."
I drove the rest of the way home with the windows still down and the radio off, and didn't feel the need to fill the quiet with anything at all.