C h a s i n g D r e a m s ➮ C a r r i s o n

• 12 •

3 Months Later

"I got traded."

"You got traded?" Carrie repeated back to minute. "Wait..." she started to laugh. "That's a new one. I like it."

She started to walk away. "Carrie, I'm not kidding," he called after her. "They called me during your game. I got traded."

"Are you serious?" she asked.

Harrison nodded. "I got traded. To the Dodgers."

It all made sense to Carrie now. She saw him on the phone when she was out in the outfield. She watched him take the call, and look very stressed after it. In fact, she almost missed a fly ball while she was watching him. Luckily she was able to make the catch, but paid the price for not paying attention to the game as she ran full speed into the fence. He texted her to come meet him immediately and Carrie then thought he was joking with her as he sometimes did after a tough game.

"Why the hell did they trade you?"

"Probably because Wilson is back and he's cheaper going forward. They don't want to pay me this offseason so they're going to get something for me and make another team pay me."

"When do you have to leave?"

"Tomorrow."

"Did you ever think they would trade you?"

Harrison shook his head. "Not at all."

"It'd be different if they were talking about it and they told me they might try and trade me because I could at least had some time to prepare myself to leave you," he told her.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with myself out there."

Carrie took a deep breath. "I can make this my last year," she said. "Then we don't have to worry about this anymore."

"I can't ask that of you," he answered. "You guys are going to go win it again this year and you've been working so hard to get a spot on Team USA and I just can't ask you to throw that away."

"I don't make anything playing softball."

"Let me ask you something Carrie. Do you want to be done?"

"Well, I think I should be b-"

"No. Putting everything else aside, do you want to be done?"

Carrie didn't know what to say. "That's why I can't ask you to do that."

"What are we going to do about us?" she asked.

"We're going to have to make it work," he answered simply. "It's going to be hard but we're going to have to do it."

"What did they get back for you?"

"Two prospects, a player to be named later, and international signing money."

"So it was pretty much a salary dump?"

Harrison nodded. "Pretty much."

"You're having a good year. After all we're going to go through it's going to feel a little better after the season's over when somebody offers you a big contract."

"I'm not going to settle down in LA yet. I haven't even talked to them yet but we'll see what their future plans are for me."

"Hey, at least you're going to the Dodgers and they're built to make a serious run for it this year. It could be worse."

Carrie finally got a smile out of him. "That's true, it could be a lot worse. I could be going to Baltimore."

"I'm interested to see what all the analysts have to say about it. Talk about a dark horse trade the day before the deadline."

"I still don't want to go though," he told her as she started to walk back to the locker room.

"I know you don't. We'll make it work though."

"I hope. We could go a month, maybe even more without seeing each other and I don't know what I'm going to do with myself."

"I'm going to look into playing for Team USA full time next season and retiring from pro ball so I can focus on getting ready Olympics in 2020. I'll be playing better competition and we'll see if I'll still have it by 2020."

"You'll still have it in 2020."

"Hopefully. Outfield is a lot of work."

Harrison put his arm around her. "And a lot more than catching? I really don't think so."

"Both are difficult."

"Whatever you say," he said with a smile.

Gonna try to get back into writing this! We'll see what happens! And also, for those of you who asked for the twist over a year ago, here it is!