C01 Take a Chance on Me

by Susan May Warren

  Oh. He got it then. “Social services shows up and yanks you away.”

  She went a little pale. But nodded. “I don’t have baggage because I know that nothing really lasts. Ever. People just . . . They give up on me. So I learn to not expect much. And now you . . . and Tiger and . . .”

  She gave a harsh, almost-bitter laugh. “Or maybe it’s God who gives up on me. Who hates me.”

  “What? Ivy, why would God hate you?”

  Another sharp laugh. “No, wait; He doesn’t hate me. That would involve caring. He just doesn’t . . . Well, He’s not on my side.”

  “Ivy—”

  “It’s not that I care. It’s just . . . I want a break, you know? For just one thing to go my way.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t let it matter.”

  She was walking away, toward the parking lot as if—shoot, she wasn’t leaving!

  “I’m going home, Darek.” Her voice shook. Was she crying?

  He caught up to her, turned her. Tears cut down her face. What in the world—? “Listen, I admit that God and I aren’t necessarily on speaking terms, but I know that He doesn’t hate you. And I’m not going to let you walk away from me. I’m not going to give up on you. Or . . .” He swallowed. “Us. I’m not going to give up on us.”

  She frowned as if flummoxed by his words. “Us?”

  Us. The word lodged in his brain too. But he’d really said that, and there was no going back now, so he nodded.

  “I . . . I’ve never been a part of . . . us.”

  He ran his thumb down her cheek, found the words easier than he thought. “Maybe it’s time you were. Maybe it’s time someone believed in you, held on to you, made you believe you matter.”

  She blinked and a tear dropped off her chin.

  He felt the words even as he said them. “You do matter, Ivy.” He nudged her chin up and bent down to brush her lips. “To me. I want an us.”

  He kissed her sweetly because it felt right, and then more because his heart took hold of him.

  She didn’t respond, not at first. Then she slipped her arms around his neck. A sigh shuddered out of her as she kissed him back.

  She was small and perfect in his arms, and as the shadows carpeted the forest around them, he let himself believe that yes, he could be a good man. The man he should have been with Felicity.

  The kind of man Ivy deserved.

  WHAT DAREK HADN’T DONE physically, he’d accomplished mentally. Or perhaps spiritually. Because looking at Jensen, Claire knew something had shattered inside him.

  He stood on his deck, unmoving, watching shadows fill the nooks and crannies of the lake. As if caught in that moment when Darek grabbed his arm.

  Claire had the overwhelming urge to go up to him, put her arms around him. Tell him that he wasn’t the man Darek accused him of being.

  She believed that. Whoever Jensen had been, ever so briefly three years ago, he’d changed. He wasn’t the man who would steal another man’s wife. Wasn’t the man who would betray a friendship.

  That kind of man didn’t work from dawn till midnight building his neighbor a wheelchair ramp or widening doorways or raising the table and lowering the bed. Didn’t set down his hammer for an hour to accompany her to an art festival.

  How Claire wanted to return to the nightmare in town and erase it.

  “I’m so sorry I got you into this, Jens.”

  “It’s hardly your fault that Darek hates me.” Jensen didn’t turn from the railing. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I know better than that.”

  “What, going into town?”

  “Running the risk of being seen in public. Especially by Darek.”

  She handed him a glass of lemonade. “That was my fault. I saw Tiger and missed him so much . . .”

  “He looks so much like Felicity—those cute freckles, that nose. He has her eyes, too.”

  She didn’t know what to make of that.

  “The last time Darek and I got into a fistfight was the day I walked off the hotshot crew.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “It wasn’t a fight really. He got in my face about leaving, called me a coward—and it turned into something ugly.” He stared at his glass. “I didn’t even ask my father before I went—just took off right after graduation with Darek, dreaming of being a hero with him. My father tracked me down—literally got on a plane and found me. We’d just come off a month of training and fighting a fire in Idaho, and he appeared at the camp in Montana.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to leave, but . . . but I didn’t have anything else. My mom had moved to California with her new husband, and maybe Darek was right—I was a coward.”

  “You weren’t a coward—”

  “I was. I should have stood up to my old man. But I bought right into the idea that I should be something more than Deep Haven. That I should be above it.”

  “Then why did you come back every summer?”

  He looked at her, then swallowed, looked away. “I had my reasons.”

  Oh, right. Like Felicity. She could never dodge that subject.

  “I think I was jealous of Darek living his dream, becoming a hotshot. And then, of course, he married Felicity.”

  She sighed, desperate to change the topic. “Thank you for all your hard work on the house. I can’t wait until Grandpop sees it. He’s going to love it.”

  Jensen took a sip of his lemonade. “Are you sure you’re up for this? Taking care of your grandfather will be a big job and—”

  “Yes.” She didn’t mean for it to emerge so fast, but . . . “Yes. I am. It’s why I’m here.”

  He nodded, studied his glass. “Of course. Your grandfather is lucky to have you.”

  “I’m lucky to have him. I keep thinking about what would have happened to me if they hadn’t taken me in—if my parents had made me stay in Bosnia.”

  “They should have stayed home for you,” he said, his voice shifting.

  “I couldn’t ask them to do that. They were missionaries. Doctors.” She shook her head, trying not to hear the past. The moments she’d cried herself to sleep in her bed. Or her mother’s words: We have a job, a duty, to the Lord, Claire. You can’t ask us to betray God.

  Which, of course, was why God hadn’t been talking to her. She’d betrayed Him with her accusations. Her doubt.

  God isn’t kind.

  She still couldn’t believe she’d said that out loud. She’d sat in her bed last night repenting of her words. Hating that deep down, yes, she felt that sometimes.

  But she had to believe in a kind God, a God who cared. Otherwise life was out of control. Random. And no safety could be found in a random, chaotic world.

  “You were more important. They should have come home.”

  Oh. Silly tears pricked her eyes. She turned away.

  True to form, Jensen rescued her. “You didn’t have to make dinner.”

  Claire drew in a quick breath, found a smile. “It’s one of the things I do well. The pizza will be ready soon.”

  He glanced at her, his gaze roaming over her face, those kind blue eyes that always made her aware of the woman she wished she could be. Beautiful, flirty like Felicity. Strong. Taking what she wanted from life, instead of letting it take her.

  “From what I remember, you do everything well.”

  She made a noise, something that resembled a laugh.

  “What? You do. You made great grades in school. Weren’t you like number six in your class?”

  “Five.” Funny how he remembered that.

  “And you can play nearly any instrument. I used to sit out here on the deck at night, hoping you’d make an appearance on the dock with your guitar. Sometimes I’d take out my harmonica and play along.”

  “You should play with me sometime.”

  Now he gave a humorless laugh. Shook his head.

  “Why not? You could join the band—”

  “The minute I’m done, I’
m leaving.”

  The harshness of his tone stilled her. He must have noticed because he looked at her.

  “I just . . . I thought you loved it here,” she said softly. Tears burned her eyes again. She turned away from him, faced the water. “You told me once that you couldn’t wait to live here. Said you planned to come back after law school, open a practice, save the world.”

  “That’s before I needed saving.”

  Right. She swallowed the knot in her chest.

  “Yeah, I wanted to live here, once. But now . . .” He shrugged. “I like the idea of Hawaii.”

  She didn’t match his smile. “It’s hot there.”

  From the kitchen, the oven buzzed. Claire tore herself away and retrieved the pizza, slid it onto a wooden cutting board, returned to the patio table.

  Jensen pulled up a wrought-iron chair, lighting the electric lantern. She set down plates and pulled up her own chair.

  “Yum.” He reached for a piece and grinned as if trying hard to brush off the horror of the day. He caught the dangling cheese, piled it on the pizza.

  Oh, he was a handsome man. He’d changed out of his ripped shirt into a blue button-up, a pair of low jeans, flip-flops. Dressed like this, he looked every inch the rich city kid he’d become.

  The lawyer he’d wanted to be.

  Hard to think of him like that, especially when he rolled up his sleeves, wore his faded Huskies cap backward, clomped around in those boots.

  “I downloaded the clemency application.” She pulled a piece of pizza onto her plate. “It looks simple.”

  “I read it over.” He took a sip from his glass. “I don’t think it’ll work, Claire. It asks for letters of reference. And after today in town . . .”

  “Not everyone agrees with Darek. Not everyone sees you as a villain.”

  He considered his lemonade. “When are your parents going to be here?”

  She watched him, not sure why he’d changed the subject. “They said a couple weeks. I don’t know. With luck, they won’t come.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  She drew her legs up in the chair. “They’ll just start making me feel like a failure. Remind me of how I didn’t do anything with my life.”

  “If you could do anything, what would it be?”

  “I don’t know. Be a professional gardener, maybe.”

  “Not play music?”

  “No. I don’t have a passion for it like Kyle and Emma.”

  “But flowers you love.”

  “I love working the soil, seeing the seeds come to life, watching them bloom. I love the weeding and pruning.”

  “You keep the Deep Haven roses, right?”

  She nodded.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “Resilient. Every year, we have a debate about when to take off the covers. This year, I . . . well, I nearly killed them. I was afraid of a late-season frost—we get them almost every year. But it never came, and they nearly suffocated.”

  “But you coaxed them back to life.” He studied her, a strange look in his eyes. “You do that, Claire. Coax things back to life.”

  She couldn’t move, not sure about his words, the texture of emotion in his eyes.

  From across the lake, a loon called, and the sound of it echoed off the water.

  “I owe you an apology,” she said quietly.

  He frowned.

  “I thought you had an affair with Felicity.” Claire felt him tense in the small intake of breath. “Felicity . . . She told me about how you came over and helped her construct that play set for Tiger. And she was talking about you like . . . like she had feelings for you. Then that night . . .” She winced, not sure if she should tell him. “Well, I think Darek might have thought so too.”

  He had closed his eyes as if he’d just received a blow.

  “I’m so sorry—”

  “I didn’t, Claire.” He opened his eyes, met hers. “I swear to you, I didn’t.”

  “I believe you,” she said, perhaps too quickly. But then she offered a smile. “I believe you.”

  “So if you could do anything, it would be grow gardens?” His words rushed out fast.

  “Yes. I think so. I would love to open a nursery in town, maybe do private landscaping. I know it’s not as glorious as my parents’ work, but . . .” She let her words fall off, realizing that no, actually, it wasn’t glorious at all.

  She picked at a pepperoni on her plate. “So there’s no chance of you staying in Deep Haven?”

  “I won’t have a choice in a couple weeks.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “We need to get real about this, Claire. I need community service hours in the worst way. And they just aren’t available here. And after today . . . there’s no clemency for me. I kept thinking that if I just worked hard enough, someday the town—Darek—might forgive me. Or at least stop hating me.”

  “No one hates you, Jens. They’re just grieving.”

  He looked at her, something so raw in his eyes that she pushed her plate aside, leaned closer to him.

  “I don’t hate you.”

  He swallowed. “Thank you, Claire. You have no idea . . .” He looked away. “I’ve missed your friendship, you know. The way we used to hang out. You always took me seriously. Seemed to see the real me.”

  She touched his hand, unable to stop herself.

  He looked down at it. Back to her.

  “I still see you, Jens,” she said softly.

  I still see you.

  Jensen couldn’t escape the way Claire looked at him, the tone of her words; he wanted to drink it all in, let it nourish him. But . . . no, she didn’t really see him. How could she?

  Maybe Gibs had been right. He wasn’t guilty of the crime Deep Haven accused him of, but he had darkness in him. He had certainly wanted to turn on Darek today and hurt him.

  Really hurt him.

  And that scared him. It should scare her, too, if she only knew.

  There was more—things inside him that he feared acknowledging. Like the fact that, deep down, he’d been glad that Felicity and Darek weren’t happy. That she’d turned to Jensen for an ear, a friend.

  But no, he hadn’t gone as far as to betray Darek physically. To tempt Felicity to destroy her vows. Claire’s apology, her admission, had nearly leveled him, but he could see how she might think . . .

  He withdrew his hand from her touch. Got up and walked to the deck railing again. Spied a light glowing from Evergreen Resort, cutting through the twilight.

  “What’s the matter, Jens?” Claire followed him to the railing, and he hated how much he needed her there, beside him.

  “I . . . I’m not the man you see.”

  She said nothing.

  “I keep thinking that if I just keep doing the right thing, keep smiling, keep working out my sentence, I’ll break free of all this anger—this hurt—inside.”

  “My grandfather says when we try to work out our own redemption, that’s when we find ourselves far from God. Christianity is the only religion that says our works actually do nothing to save us. It’s only our acceptance of grace that makes us whole. We have to draw near to God and let Him do the redeeming.”

  Grace. He wasn’t exactly sure what that looked like. As for wholeness . . . he would settle for peace. The kind that allowed him to sleep through the night and look at himself in the mirror in the morning.

  “I don’t think there’s any grace for me.” He took a breath. Might as well tell her the truth. “I’m so angry all the time, Claire. And not just at Darek or Deep Haven, but myself. I can’t figure out how to live with what happened. And I feel worse with every hour of service I put in. Like that will bring Felicity back. It’s such a farce. Then I start arguing with myself that it wasn’t my fault, and then . . . then the anger sets in. It’s a cycle I can’t break.”

  She stared into the darkness. “You start to see the things you should have done. The ways you should have been more careful. Locked the doo
r. Screamed.”

  “Not checked the radio, or maybe gone slower around that turn.”

  “Keep reliving the moment when you turned around, and they were right there.”

  “When you heard her scream, the sickening thud.”

  “When the world started to move in slow motion.”

  “And stopped.”

  She closed her eyes. “And stopped.”

  God isn’t kind. He heard her words, a soft echo inside. Felt them, like a dagger in his soul. No wonder he was angry all the time.

  At the touch of Claire’s hand on his, he opened his palm. Folded her fingers into his.

  I love you, Claire.

  The thought stilled him, froze his breath in his chest.

  But with her standing there, the wind stirring up the dark hair around her face, the past seemed so close, so . . . redeemable.

  “Thank you for being my friend today.” Oh, how lame. But what else was he supposed to say? I’ve been in love with you since you moved to Deep Haven but I was too scared to tell you? Instead, I dated—even fell in love with—your best friend?

  What a fool he’d been, and he’d known it even then. But being in love with Claire was a little like being in love with a saint. Just a little unseemly. Because then she’d see him, know him . . . and of course there was Felicity. It was easier, somehow, to flirt with her, tease her back. Mostly because Felicity’s rejection wouldn’t have torn him apart.

  Because he hadn’t really loved her. Not the way he loved Claire. And in fact, he had a terrible suspicion that he’d always been a tool for Felicity to get who she really wanted—Darek.

  All the same, his words to Claire felt a little like he’d taken a piece of his heart and pinned it to the outside of his body. Thank you. For being my friend.

  She shivered as a sudden gust of wind shook the trees.

  And because she hadn’t rejected him, because she hadn’t looked at him like he didn’t deserve a moment of her presence, he couldn’t stop himself from pulling her to his chest. Wrapping his arms around her. Like a miracle, she tucked herself against him, her arms around his waist.

  So maybe they could forget the past, just like she said.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to leave Deep Haven to start over. “Claire . . .”