“I want it all, too, Chance.” Her smile was watery and brave.
And that’s what life is about. Not fairytales and perfects. It’s about falls and mistakes. It’s about rising up and overcoming. It’s about being better than what brought you down. And mostly, it’s about the people you find along the way who make the ride worthwhile. Who pick you up and tell you that you aren’t alone.
It’s about the woman who loved me in spite of all my pride and all my imperfections.
I kissed the shell of her ear with a smile. “So, you tell Dream me to enjoy it while it lasts, because all those things are coming, J-bird. Every. Single. One.”
“I love you,” she whispered and I could hear the tears in her voice. “The real you.”
“I love you, Jessa. Only, ever, always.”
She tipped her head towards mine, staring up at me with a look that I’d break a knee or pull the fucking moon down for.
“Only, ever, always.”
“YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO come up with a new term,” Ally said with a laugh as she hugged me.
My face was already red and flustered as I’d rushed to Cup of Joe to meet her and Tammy. Chance had made me late. He’d made me a lot of things… the results of which were my tardiness and the color in my cheeks.
“What do you mean?”
“Instead of the donut look,” she teased as I greeted Tammy. “Because your face is all endorphin and no regret.”
I broke out into a laugh as I settled in at the table they’d claimed for us in the corner. I hadn’t seen them since Chance and I made up. I mean, I’d told them that everything was good—better than good—but I hadn’t seen them.
I didn’t really feel guilty—there were eight years that he and I wanted… needed… to make up.
I did feel guilty though about one thing. Lila. My gaze flicked to Ally and then over to Tam.
My heart crushed inside because I knew what not knowing about Lila had done to her, but Nick had made us swear not to tell anyone. Even Tammy. I valued my friendship with Tammy far more than I valued his—and if it was only that on the line, I would have gone and told her the following day for her peace of mind.
But it wasn’t only that.
He didn’t go into details, but I believed him and Chance when they said it was for Lila’s safety that the fewer people who knew where she was and who she was related to, the better.
So now, it felt like a betrayal to be in my best friend’s company. My only consolation was that Nick had promised—sworn—to me that he would tell her everything about Lila as soon as his parole hearing was over in a few months.
“I give it a month,” Ally spoke again with a smile.
“What?” I asked dumbly.
“Until my brother proposes.”
If possible, my face turned even redder. But I wouldn’t disagree with her.
Some things in life were worth waiting for, but when you finally found them, this wasn’t one of them.
“Well,” I sighed with a grin, “I currently have a bet going with one of my previous patients. Betty says that it’s going to happen in two months. I’m happy to cut you in to the wager.”
“What!” she exclaimed and both she and Tammy began to laugh. “Why two months?”
“I… ahh… Well,” I huffed with an eye roll, “she seems to think he’ll be too… distracted… until then to even be able to make it to a jewelry store.”
Her nose wrinkled up. “Ugh, gross.”
“Seriously!” I exclaimed on a laugh. “Now is the time you get grossed out about the fact we’re talking about your brother?”
It took a few seconds before we realized that we were the only ones laughing.
“Tammy?” I turned to her, ice-cold worry freezing over my bones. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
I couldn’t bring myself to mention Lila; I prayed it wasn’t that.
And then my prayers were answered in the very worst way.
“I-I’m sorry,” she said with a shake of her head. “I just… the doctor’s office called this morning. M-my tests came back. It’s nothing.”
“You’re as white as a ghost, Tam,” I said, reaching for her hand. “It’s not nothing.”
“I know. I don’t want to ruin this.” Her forced smile looked like it hurt. “I don’t want to drag everything down.”
“Don’t you dare think like that,” I bit out. “Plus, look at Ally, she’s practically green with the way I was talking about Chance. We are done talking about him. We want to hear about you; we want to know what’s going on. Let us be here for you.”
I begged because she’d never come this close before. Ally and I watched as the strongest woman we’d ever known began to crumble.
Her head ducked even as she spoke. “T-the results weren’t normal,” she continued with a voice that in many ways was softer than silence.
“What does that mean?” I asked, immediately trying to think about everything I knew about biology and blood. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a doctor and my training wasn’t even remotely enough to make me qualified to guess at what was happening. “What is not normal?”
“I-I don’t know. T-they are sending my samples to a lab in Denver now t-to see if they come back any different… to see if they come back not normal.” She wasn’t even looking at us.
Ally sat there in silence, her hand over her mouth in shock, but also in fear. There was a specter in the room, calmly creeping closer and closer to us.
“Tammy,” I said with a steady, low voice. “If they come back not normal again… what is not normal? What is the other option?”
She shuddered. “Cancer. Not normal would mean cancer.”
I grabbed Tammy and pulled her in for a hug just as I saw Ally’s shoulders shake in her seat.
“You’re going to be fine, you hear me?” I whispered thickly into her ear.
How was she the only one not crying?
“I’m sure it’s going to be ok, Tam,” Ally whispered, now alongside both of us.
Tammy didn’t cry. She didn’t shake. She didn’t even quiver while the two of us were about to break down.
“I know.” Her voice was steady even if it was quiet. “I’m sure it’s all going to work out.”
That was the thing about Tamsin Lucas. She would never falter, never bend. When it came right to it, she would be the strongest out of all us until she just broke. Without warning or recourse.
And if that happened, I was afraid there wasn’t anyone she’d let in deep enough to help her pick up the pieces.
I was going through hell.
Normally, I would just keep on going; it wasn’t like the rest of my life hadn’t prepared me well for surviving it.
Normally, if it were just me along for the ride, I’d have no problem fucking torching the whole goddamn place and watching my world burn down around me… with me… Honestly, I didn’t even care anymore.
But it wasn’t just me.
I stared down at the little girl who’d fallen asleep on the couch next to me watching Finding Nemo for about the fifteenth time. She was perfect. And she deserved none of the imperfections that made up my life.
She deserved someone like Tammy. My jaw ticked. That thought alone did fucked up things to my insides.
Lila asked about Tammy every day since I’d pulled her from Open Hearts. Every. Goddamn. Day. Even when she saw her almost every day at the preschool, I hadn’t heard so much about Tammy-fucking-Lucas.
And every day, I was reminded by the one perfect female in my life of the only other perfect woman I’d ever come across—the only one smart enough to know that I was only going to be bad news for her. And the only one who’d never had a problem turning me down. I laughed bitterly. Tammy was the only one who’d never even blinked before turning me down. Like being asked to put her hand on a hot stove—no thought, no hesitation needed before she said no and walked away.
No, I wasn’t good enough for Miss Priss.
But now, as if my days we
ren’t bad enough trying to make right what my past had done wrong, I had to be reminded, innocently yet incessantly, by my own daughter of just one more thing that Nick Frost would never be good enough for.
Maybe that was why she was the only one I’d ever wanted, because it was the eleventh commandment, carved in stone: Thou shalt not have Tamsin Lucas.
Queen of Pentacles: The nurturing mother.
One year later
I CHECKED THE CLOCK ON the dash again before hopping down from my truck. Chance would be home with dinner in fifteen minutes which didn’t leave me a ton of time if I was going to do this before he got here.
Grabbing the pharmacy bag, I left the rest of my stuff in the car as I went inside and made for the upstairs bathroom.
There was a part of me that had known for weeks now. Sure, I attributed the nausea at my morning workout in the gym to pushing myself too hard. Sure, I told myself that my boobs had gotten a little bit bigger but sometimes they did that before my period. And yeah, I found myself craving La Croix even more because the effervescent liquid seemed to settle my stomach that had become a much pickier eater.
There were a lot of stories that perfectly explained each piece. But the truth was that all the pieces put together only formed one picture—one that I couldn’t stand wondering about any longer.
Pulling the pregnancy test out of the bag, my shaking hands undid the packing and pulled out the stick.
This time, the nausea that overwhelmed me wasn’t from whatever changes were happening in my body, but from the memory of the last time I went through this process.
This time was nothing like last time. This time, my life was completely different.
I’d been promoted, along with Kyle, to Managing Therapist at the Center. I was living my dream, helping people in their journey to recovery. And Chance? Well, Channing and Wyatt had made him the third partner at their school a few months ago. The look on his face when he came home every day after teaching those kids… I don’t think I’d ever seen such satisfaction from winning any snowboarding competition.
And us?
I turned my left hand over to look at the giant pink ring that sat on my finger, a tremulous smile spreading over my face.
He’d proposed a few weeks after Wyatt and Channing’s wedding this past winter. Tears pricked in the corner of my eyes. We’d gone to spend the weekend at Park City. I was too busy blabbing about the makeover we were giving the master suite at the house to realize as we went up the lift the last time that we were the only ones on it. And when we got to the top of the slopes, the lift came to a stop after we got off it.
It was dusk; the mountain was closing, so I didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t uncommon to grab the very last run in after all the lifts had shut down. But when I pulled up at the top of the run and turned, confusion set in when I saw Chance walking towards me, his snowboard staked in the snow several feet behind him.
Confusion reigned until he made it over to me and then, at the top of the mountain with snow painted warm oranges and yellows from the sun setting on the horizon, Chance dropped down onto one knee and if my feet hadn’t been rooted on a board for support, I might have toppled over.
“Last time, I gave up my pride so you’d be my girlfriend, Jess. Today, I’d give up everything if you’ll say that you’ll be my wife, because everything means nothing without you. So, Jessa Lynn Madison, will you do me the honor of going on this ride called life with me by my side as my wife? Will you marry me, J-bird?”
I wiped the wetness from my cheeks. I cried every time I thought about that day.
And now, our ride was about to go through another loop. I hoped.
Yeah, this time was a whole lot different.
Still, the few minutes that I had to wait for the result were too long.
Pulling up my scrubs, I left the stick sitting on the box and made for our bedroom. Opening up my nightstand drawer, I pulled out my cards. A quick shuffle and a left-handed cut of the deck later, I picked up the top card.
Am I pregnant?
My heart proposed the question to the card, begging for its answer. Taking a deep breath, my eyes squeezed shut, I flipped it over and looked at it.
“Jess, I’m home!” Chance’s voice echoed through at the very same moment.
There were a lot of reasons I didn’t bother going back to the bathroom to check the results of the test. I knew the answer before I took it and I knew the answer before I even asked the cards. But the biggest was that last time, I’d looked at that test alone. Today, I wanted Chance beside me.
Taking the card, I hurried to the top of the steps, stopping abruptly to see Chance standing at the bottom, jeans hanging perfectly from his slim hips and his tee pulled tight over his chest, pink roses in one hand.
“You ok?” he asked immediately, one foot on the first step to come to me until I held a hand up, coming down to him instead.
“For me?” I whispered, struggling to get any words out over the lump in my throat.
His eyes flashed. Of course, they were for me—and now he really knew something was up.
“You haven’t been feeling well lately, J-bird,” he rasped, cupping the side of my face. “Brought pink flowers for my very own pink goddess.”
My hand came up to cover my mouth as a sob jumped out.
Cursing, he pulled me into his arms, the solace of the hot, hard planes of his chest comforted and calmed me.
“What’s going on, Jess? Tell me what’s wrong,” he whispered into my hair, brushing it back from where it stuck to my tear-streaked face.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said with a weak smile.
He had every right to look at me with confusion as I pushed myself back just enough to hold the card out to him.
Warily, he plucked it from my fingers and held it up.
“The Queen of Pentacles?” His gaze flicked from the card to me and back to the card. “Don’t know what this one means, Jess.”
Taking a deep breath, the words poured out of me like Niagara Falls—powerful, overflowing, breathtaking.
“The nurturing mother.”
He stared at it for another second before his eyes rose up to meet mine, hope and uncertainty painting the canvas of their bright blues.
Last time when I called him to say the following words, pain and doubt had crippled me. I called knowing there was going to be hell to pay because I’d run before the devil could get his due.
This time, a happiness that was too big for the word made my tongue tingle and my heart race.
“I’m pregnant, Chance.”
His shout of excitement echoed through the space as he picked me up and had me against the wall of the staircase just before his mouth fused to mine.
Tears and joy mingled into our kiss as love in its most raw form celebrated.
“When?” he said with a husky voice, more breath than noise.
“I… I just took the test. It’s upstairs.”
With a growl, his hands gripped into my ass as he jogged with me in his arms up the stairs and barged into our bathroom.
There it was: the lines I didn’t need to see to know what was happening to my body.
“We’re going to have a baby.” The awe in his voice stopped my heart and the love in his stare jump-started it again.
His next kiss was brutal. Loving and demanding, it was the highs of everything about the ride our relationship had taken. The first time around, we’d both made a lot of mistakes, but life was about second chances… and my life was about Chance and however many times it took to bring me back to him.
I cried as I kissed him, the most exquisite happiness mingled with just the smallest seed of doubt gnawed at my stomach.
What if I lost this baby, too?
Setting my ass on the counter, he gripped my head and captured my eyes.
“It’s going to be ok, Jess. You hear me?” he demanded, his forehead pressed to mine. “We are meant to be. And if this is meant to be, it’ll be. But no matter
what happens, we’ll get through it together.”
I let out a small cry, my heart squeezing because he knew what was going on in my head.
“Together,” he reiterated. “Only. Ever. Always.”
I nodded and repeated thickly, “Only. Ever. Always. Together.”
“I love you, J-bird.”
I smiled tremulously. “I love you, too, Chance.”
The way he grinned eliminated the lingering vestiges of doubt from my mind, “We’re gonna have a fucking baby.”
A garbled laugh left my lips as I alternately nodded and kissed him, wrapping my arms tightly around his neck determined to never let go. I held onto him for dear life because he was my life.
“What are you doing?” I cried out and giggled uncontrollably as he hoisted me up and carried me towards the master suite, kicking the door shut behind him. “Chance!”
He tossed me onto our bed, a devious smirk tugging one end of that delicious mouth.
“Making sure that we’re going to have a baby.”
My laughter was soon exchanged for moans as Chance stripped us down and did his best to ensure that whether or not I’d been pregnant before, I was by the end of the night.
This was happiness—not the ending, but the journey.
Winding and curving, moving up and down, life was a road that required balance. It was about taking the good with the bad because the only way to keep steady was to keep moving forward. So, no matter what would happen, I let go of my worries and held onto love because when the world stopped turning and the storms of life were through, there was only one man I saw myself standing with at the end of the longest of rides and it was his love that would make it all worthwhile.
The End.
I hope you enjoyed Chance and Jessa’s wild ride of a love story!
If you haven’t checked out the rest of the Snowmass crew, you don’t want to miss Wyatt and Channing’s fierce and sweet story, Up in the Air, or Ally and Emmett’s angst-filled, captivating tale, On the Edge. They are available now and FREE in KU!
Enjoy the Ride (Winter Games Book 3) Page 36