One Last Chance (Complete Series Box Set)

by Lauren Wood

  “How can I get to know her if she doesn’t speak English? How did you get to know her if that is that case? Did you learn another language in the past year that I didn’t know about?”

  I told her that I was still working on Swedish, but she was right. I hated it when she was right, and it happened far more often than I would like to think about it.

  “I’m not going to say that we are in love, but that is my baby and I have to do the right thing. Surely you can see that? If she has the baby in Sweden, we will never get to see it and I couldn’t imagine one of my children growing up and me never being able to see him or her.”

  She softened a little bit and I started to see that she wasn’t just mad that I ruined it with Anna, she was mad that she was kept out of the dark as well. It was her worry that was coming up and not much more than that. I never really thought about how she felt about it. I would take off on missions for weeks or even a couple of months, but never have I been gone for this long of a stretch and I could tell now that it had bothered her more than I thought it would. In truth, that just made me feel worse.

  “This is just not the way that it was all supposed to go.”

  I should have asked her how she had seen it all going, but I knew that there was no use. It wasn’t going to happen the way I thought it was going to happen either. I never thought that I would be getting married to a woman that I didn’t really know. I knew very few things about her and even that was shallow. I knew what she liked in her coffee because she had spent the night a few times. I was stuck in a situation that had ruined every plan that I’d ever had. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it, but I knew that there was another part of me that wanted to try to find a loophole out, as wrong as it was.

  “It was a nice party. I’m glad that you had it because I got to see a lot of people that I haven’t seen in some time. Now I won’t have to go visit with all of them individually. I always forget to see someone and then they get mad. This way, I don’t have to forget anyone.”

  She just shook her head. “I wish you knew what you had just done. This was all Anna. She’s been counting down the days till you came home. I know what happened before and she explained it all to me. She was waiting for you this time son. I know it’s late, but that girl really loves you.”

  It was the one thing that I’d wanted to hear for a long time, but it wasn’t the way I wanted to hear it. I’d envisioned us meeting again so much differently as well. In my imagination, I wasn’t with a pregnant chick and it hadn’t been seven long years in between times that I’d seen her. No, this way was far different than anything I came up with.

  “That may be mom, but I’m getting married in a couple of weeks and we’re going to have a baby. I can’t change that now.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  I was amazed that she was even asking me that. I was trying to do the right thing and she was acting like she didn’t know what that was. It was the obvious answer, but it was one that she seemed not very happy with. I didn’t know how I felt about that.

  “I’m going to do what I’m supposed to do. We’re going to get married and I’m going to take care of them like I’m supposed to. I am going to be a better father than dad ever was.”

  She clicked her tongue in her mouth and I knew that I’d upset her. She didn’t like to talk about him and I didn’t blame her, but it was hard to have a conversation sometimes when she just refused to talk about it.

  “I knew that you were never going to be like your father. You will be a good dad and I am happy and proud of you son; how could I not be? But you know that I love Anna and I just wished that the two of you could have worked things out. That’s just how I always saw it happening.”

  “I love her too mom, but it just doesn’t seem to be the way that it’s all going to work out. Not this time. Me and Anna don’t get the happy ending.”

  Anna

  It was later that night as I lay awake crying that he decided to come back. I was devastated more than I could ever imagine I would be and now he was standing in front of me. I could never have him and it felt like a cruel joke. It wasn’t right, and I was tired of feeling this way about it all. Matt had messed with my head for the last time.

  I heard the soft click of rocks on the windowpane and when I looked down, he was standing there like he had so long ago.

  “What do you want Matt?”

  He waved his hand to his car. It was the same car that we’d had fun in, but this wasn’t the same sort of meeting as before when we were younger.

  “The same thing I always want when I come here. Are you coming down or am I coming up?”

  I knew that it wouldn’t take much for him to scale the side of the house. He’d done it before and he was far more buff and trained then he was when we dated back then.

  “I’ll come down there. Mom will freak out if she sees someone climbing up the side of her house. Her boyfriend is here anyways, and I don’t want to have to explain you.”

  Matt just grinned and said he would be waiting for me. I don’t know what he thought was going to happen, but I told myself that nothing was going to happen. We were just going to talk, and I was going to get the closure that I apparently needed to get over him once and for all. This was going to be the last time I saw him, and I wanted to at least have this last conversation. I just hoped that I could ignore my silly body that was a dumbass and still called for the pleasure I knew he could give.

  I snuck out of the house and it felt weird because I wasn’t in school anymore. I don’t know why but being around him made me feel a lot of things that I used to feel when we were together before. It’s like his presence had literally made me go back in time to the same age that I once was. It was strange, and I felt the same giddiness. I tried to cool myself down, but it wasn’t doing me any good. All I could think about was how much I wanted things to be different.

  “Here I am Matt. What do you want? I thought you made yourself clear back there at the party that you didn’t want to see me anymore. Imagine my surprise that you’re here now.”

  “I was in shock. How was I supposed to know that you were going to be there?”

  “Well I was pretty shocked myself when you brought a pregnant woman home with you. I can’t even say the word fiancée. You said that you would be waiting for me. You know that I just finally opened that letter a couple of weeks before I called you. I know that it was a long shot and that it had been too long, but for a minute I believed the words that you wrote. I believed that you would be waiting for me. I’d hoped anyways.”

  My heart was breaking as I said the words. I’d put so much into fate and faith. They had screwed me over and everything that I’d thought was real was a lie.

  “It wasn’t a lie. I wanted to wait for you.”

  “I just took too long. I get it.”

  “I don’t think you do. Can we go somewhere else? I really don’t want to do this in front of your mom’s house with the nosy neighbors all around us. We will be the main attraction of topic at the diner in the morning and neither one of us want that.”

  “Yeah, we wouldn’t want your little wifey to know about us talking.”

  Damn I still sounded bitter. I don’t know if that feeling was ever going to change.

  “She can’t even speak English, so I doubt that she is going to be too into the gossip around here.”

  “How does that work?”

  He just shrugged and told me that it had to work because she was pregnant with his kid. I could have went another lifetime without having to hear that and there was another silence that fell over us. I didn’t know what to say and he was off in his head thinking about something.

  “Can we get out of here?”

  “Yeah, come on. I don’t want to have to explain you out here, no more than you want to have to explain me.”

  Matt chuckled. “If you were to hear it like I do, you’d know that it’s the complete opposite. My mother has always liked you better than I
think she likes me. She always wanted a daughter and if she had her way, I’d chuck Nadia out and we’d get married and have grandkids that she wanted.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He grinned. “You know it is. It’s never been family keeping us apart.”

  I got into the car and a flood of memories assaulted my senses. Last, I had checked, this was under a cover in his mom’s garage. I didn’t want to look around and remember. We had far too many memories here in this car. Before I found out about Nadia, this would have been perfect, but things were different now.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Just away from here. Just drive.” For the first time in a long time, I felt at peace, while I still felt nervous as hell. This wasn’t supposed to feel this way.

  “Relax Anna, I don’t drive as crazy as I used to.”

  “It’s a shame because I was looking forward to a real ride.”

  “Are you baiting me?”

  “No, just wondering how much has changed.”

  Not much had changed and as soon as he put his foot on the pedal, I closed my eyes and leaned back in the car seat. I don’t know how many times I would just ride with him. Matt was a good driver, but a little risky and fast. It always did something to me, even back then. I realized that I liked fast cars when I was with Matt before.

  “Why do you always close your eyes when I’m driving?”

  “Because then I can feel it better. It’s the same reason women close their eyes during sex. It makes every turn and thrust a little stronger to your senses.”

  “That’s probably the best answer that I’ve ever heard.”

  I giggled and realized how much I missed this. I’d waited a year for him to come back home and this was the first time since he had that I felt like it was worth it. Maybe me and Matt didn’t get forever, but I started to hope that we would at least get one more night together. Why did it always end with one more night with us?

  Matt

  The mood was set, and my car found itself going in the same direction as it always went before when we were together. This was a Saturday night for us and it felt the same as I looked over to see her angelic face smiling. She’d always liked my driving and I’d always liked the fact that she didn’t get upset when I drove. Most women would complain and even try to slow me down, but Anna never had.

  I didn’t want the moment to end and I didn’t want to ruin it with talking, so I just drove. Her body was stretched out and I was able to admire it without her realizing I was gawking at her. I didn’t think that she would like it all that well, so I was thankful that I had the opportunity.

  “You know that I can feel you staring at me, right?”

  I groaned inwardly and stopped. Looking more at the road that was one long stretch for the next couple of miles. It was the perfect time to test if she could see me or not. She could have been just taking a shot in the dark and came up with something.

  I watched her chest rise and fall. They were just as perky and jiggly as I remembered, and I was tempted to take it off road just to see what happens next. I would have lost a lot of speed and I would have been had. I still don’t know why the hell I’d came out here and why I was driving up to the coast with her next to me. It wasn’t on the plan and I’d left Nadia behind with my mother. I should have went back, but the foot on the pedal just pushed it down a little bit harder. It wasn’t the time to worry about the plan. I’d never been able to plan with Anna around. She wasn’t the type, while I’d wanted to lock her in a long time ago.

  When I looked at her face, I realized her eyes were open and looking back at me.

  “You’re staring and not paying attention to the road.”

  She was right on both accounts. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” That was the only excuse that I had, but it seemed like a good one for me.

  “And?”

  Apparently, Anna didn’t think so.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you haven’t seen me in seven years, so what do you think? Do you think I held up good?”

  I chuckled at her question and the reminder that she could be vain. “Yeah Anna, you held up real nice.”

  She smiled for a minute and then frowned, something slipping into her mind to make her that way.

  “You did too. I think you’re bigger now. Did you take steroids and ruin it?”

  I knew what she was talking about and I felt my own cheeks getting a bit red. She was the only girl that I knew that would ask such a question in the first place, but Anna could manage it with a straight face as well.

  “Ruin it?”

  “Yeah, you know, your thing.”

  I just shook my head and slowed down to go around the curve. The car still picked up a little bit with the sudden turn and it leaned her towards me a little more. Her eyes never opened back up though. For some reason, Anna always trusted me and even though she was shifting back and forth in the car, she never once felt like she needed to see what I was doing.

  “No, I don’t use steroids and my thing is just fine, works great.”

  “A little too good if you ask me.”

  She was suddenly talking about Nadia and I was not an idiot. I knew that I wanted to stay miles away from that conversation. She was on Anna’s mind, but Nadia was the last thing on mine.

  We stopped at the same place up the coast that we always had before, and I put the car in park, turning the engine off, listening to the slight pops and crackles left as it cooled down.

  “Let’s not talk about that.”

  “I have to leave soon. Maybe we should talk about that. What else is there to talk about? Plans changed and I’m happy for you.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Okay, not really so happy, but I’m trying to be.

  It was exactly how I felt, but now I could see that I’d been part of her plans. I didn’t know how to feel about that, but I knew that I liked it. I didn’t want to think about how it could never be. That would just make it worse. I wanted to think about how she looked tonight and how it felt to have Anna back in my car, lying back like she was. How much I wanted to kiss her.

  “We have tonight.”

  That got her eyes open and she looked at me. “I was thinking we’d have a little longer.”

  I don’t know why her words affected me so much. I’d waited for a long ass time for her to be here and me to be here and this to happen. I’d waited for her to tell me that she missed me, and I was part of her plan. This was the girl that had changed me in ways I was still not all the way understanding of.

  “Why the sudden change Anna? You know where I’ve been all this time before. Why now?”

  “I tried to get back with you a while back, but you were leaving on a dangerous mission, remember? I called around for three days until I found someone sappy enough to like our story and let me speak to you and you were cold. You didn’t want to talk, so before I could get anything out, you were hanging up and that was that.”

  I remember the conversation and I’d sworn then that she was just messing with me. She’d came out of the blue and wanted to talk about us. It hadn’t seemed real and I’d asked the person who gave me the phone later if I’d talked to her. Anna had become the white whale that I could just never get my hands on. It was frustrating and even more so now that I was the one with limitations. I’d waited all that time and once I couldn’t no more, she was back. It was about my luck.

  “I wasn’t ready to talk to you. I should have gotten like a warning or something.”

  “What about all the letters I sent you when you were away? Were they that hard to interpret?”

  “I never got any letters. I wasn’t by a base. How could I have got them?”

  “Well they went somewhere because they never got returned.”

  “I swear I never got one letter. I wish I would have talked with you longer the day you called, but I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t want
to get my hopes up again and you be nowhere to be seen when it came time to come home. I don’t know if I could have went through that again.”

  “Well I was here, waiting for you Matt. I couldn’t change the past, but I wanted to give us something to look forward to. I thought that it was finally going to be our time.”

  “What did the letters say?”

  Anna looked over at me and those dark brown eyes were so soulful. I could see she was sad and I hated that it was because of me. It was a situation that I was stuck in as well, but she didn’t want to hear about that. I know that I wouldn’t want to if I was her.

  “It doesn’t matter now Matt. Like I said, plans change.”

  “What if I don’t want them to?”

  “I don’t either, but some things can’t be changed.”

  “What about tonight?”

  She leaned over to me and kissed my lips softly and pulled back. “Tonight, is all we have left.”

  Anna

  When our lips touched again for the first time in so long, I knew that the spark that I felt was the same one from before. There had always been something between me and Matt and it was still there, alive and well, driving me crazy.

  “Is that why you brought me here? You want to forget about all the things waiting for you when you get back?”

  “Yes. I want to pretend like none of that exist.”

  “For just tonight?”

  It wasn’t near as long as I wanted it to be. I’d been thinking of us living together and starting a life together. Now I had just one night, purely physical, but something else brewed in the back of my mind. If I was only going to get one night with Matt, I wanted to take a piece of him with me.

  “That’s all I have Anna.”

  I pulled him back to me and kissed him after I told him that it was going to have to be enough. If that was all there was, I would take it and hold onto it as long as I could.

  I was climbing over the shifter and trying to get onto his lap. His hand flicked the steering wheel up and it allowed me to sit just as I had before.