One Last Chance (Complete Series Box Set)

by Lauren Wood

  “Yeah, we’re in love and it’s been years that things just haven’t worked out. I found out today that the baby my wife had wasn’t mine. Now I don’t have to do the right thing and stay a married to a woman that I never loved. I can have real love with Anna now. That’s why I’m here.”

  Anna was speechless, and Braxton was about the same way. It was clear that it wasn’t what I was expected to say, but it was the truth.

  “You found out today?”

  Anna was the one that asked the question and I told her that it was true. I hadn’t wasted any time getting here. I knew as soon as the doctor told me what was going on that I didn’t want to be there with Nadia. She’d used me for a house, baby stuff, money and a visa. I’d done enough for her and her baby. I was done helping her. I was ready to help myself now.

  Braxton said that he was confused, and I told him that I would try to clear up anything that he was needing help with.

  “So, you two were together before?”

  “For well over a year. We were hot and heavy.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “I was a year ahead and I went into the military. Anna was supposed to come after she graduated, and she didn’t.”

  Anna made a face. I was oversimplifying it. I’m sure that is what she would say, but I really wasn’t. It wasn’t as complicated as she liked to believe it was. I’d lost her and now I wanted her back.

  “So why am I here?”

  I shrugged to Braxton. “Good question.”

  Anna

  “I can’t believe you were like that. You didn’t have to be so mean to him. He was a really nice guy.”

  “If I have to hear you say that again, Anna, I swear I’m going to lose it.”

  “You were acting like you had back there. What came over you? At least when you walked into that welcome home party with Nadia, I didn’t make a scene.”

  “Well obviously you are more grown-up than I am. I was done looking at him and you shouldn’t have made him think that he had a chance. You know that he doesn’t. How could you have even considered it?”

  I didn’t want to answer him, because I don’t really think that I had. I knew what he was all about, but Braxton had been very persistent. In a way I had done it just so that I would have a buffer between me and Matt. I didn’t trust myself with him and I wanted to make sure that there was someone else to make it lighter. Matt had pushed that all to shit and now there was no one else to sidetrack from the situation I found myself in. Matt was sitting in front of me and I was left with a lot of questions.

  “It was just a date Matt. He knew that, and I knew that. It’s all that it was.”

  “Bull. I guarantee you he had some wine and some Barry Manilow in queue on his radio at home. That man may be nice, but he’s like every other man and I can guarantee you that I know what he wants. He wants what every straight man that meets you is going to want. He wants in those panties and I can’t say that I blame him all that much. You’re smoking hot Anna. Nothing’s changed.”

  He thought he knew me so well and that irritated me the most. Matt liked to act like he knew me, but things had changed. I’m not the same woman I was a few months ago when I went to him. I learned that I was being silly to think that he would ever be the one for me. I’d finally put it out of my mind as best as I could and of course, now he was here.

  “Do you know how frustrating you are?”

  “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”

  “And you don’t care though, do you?”

  “If my caring keeps men like Braxton around, then no I don’t. Did your seriously think that I was going to just sit back and let the two of you flirt? You should know me better than that.”

  “I wasn’t flirting.”

  “Yeah you were. You were trying to make me jealous and you did a damn good job of it.”

  I was trying to do that very thing, but I certainly wasn’t going to cop to it. He didn’t need to know how I really felt. I still wanted him, no matter how much I wanted to tell myself that I didn’t. Matt was always going to be the one as far as I was concerned. I don’t think that was ever going to change, no matter how hard I tried to fight it.

  “I wasn’t trying to make you jealous Matt. How was I supposed to know that you were going to show up? You come out of the blue and expect me to forget about everything that I’m doing?”

  He shook his head and I sat back. The waitress brought out the order and asked about Braxton. He had ordered the most expensive stuff and it was all vile. I couldn’t believe that he would eat food like that. Didn’t he know what happened to them? Matt had been smart to bring that up and for me to see Braxton like that because he knew that was something that I couldn’t get over, no matter how much I might have wanted to. I just couldn’t be around it and I asked her to take it off the table. I hadn’t known how long I could have sat there while he was eating such things.

  “Still grosses you out huh?”

  I shook my head and he seemed amused. “I guess things didn’t change all that much.”

  “No, not on my end, but it looks like you’ve had all kinds of changes. Were you being for real about the whole wife and baby thing?”

  Matt agreed, and I could tell that he wasn’t too happy about it, but at the same time, he didn’t seem all that worried about it either. I wanted details. This could just be a case of he doesn’t think that the baby looks like him. Babies features change in the first couple of weeks and I was determined not to get my heart broken if I could stop it. I didn’t want to get my hopes up again, only to get them dashed back down to reality. I don’t think I could take one of those reality checks at the present moment. Truthfully, I knew that I couldn’t.

  “Well I was at the hospital and the doctor came out after Nadia requested that I not be allowed to go in the birthing room. I thought it was strange at first, but then the doctor said that he was sure that it wasn’t my baby. To save a scene, he wanted me to know that the baby was of African descent and could not be mine. He was real judicial about it, but that didn’t matter. I was happy, and he thought I was going to be upset.”

  “So, did the baby look like it wasn’t yours?”

  He shrugged. “I never went in there. The doctor told me all that I needed to know. I knew that she had played me. She made me get everything for the baby before it was born, got a house, everything that she would need, including a visa so that she could stay in the country. This was all just a scam to her.”

  I sat back and picked at the food on my plate. I didn’t know what to say, but I can’t say that I was all that devastated by his news. It wasn’t bad news, not as far as I was concerned. I’m sure that Matt felt the betrayal, but to me, it meant that he was free. We both were, and I had to wonder again, what would happen next. There was really no telling, and we sat and looked at each other for a time.

  “Well, say something.”

  “I don’t know what to say honestly. You were getting married and going to have a baby the last time I seen you. I tried to wrap my head around that and now you’re telling me that it was all a lie? I’m confused, and I don’t know what to say about all of this. I don’t know how you expect me to feel Matt. I thought you were gone to me again. Now what?”

  “You keep asking that question. Do you really not know?”

  I told him that I didn’t know. I wanted him to tell me because I was so damn confused. Why couldn’t he just tell me what I needed to hear? And what even was it?

  “No, Matt I don’t. I thought I did a long time ago, but now I have no idea. I just know that we’re playing this dance that I don’t get, and I want to know what it is that you want. It would be a whole lot easier than all of this guessing you’re making me do.”

  “There is no guessing Anna. I love you. I always have and now that we’re both single, why don’t we try again? I know that I want to, and I know that you do too. You would have told me to leave at your job if you really felt like there wasn’t a chance for us.”

 
; He had a point, but I was still afraid of the bottom dropping out for some reason. I couldn’t believe that it was all just this easy. There had to be something that was going to ruin it, I was sure of it.

  “Maybe Matt. I don’t know why, but you have some control over me that I just don’t understand. I’ve tried to get over you, I really did, but nothing works.”

  “That’s what I want to hear.”

  “Why does driving me crazy make you happy?”

  “Because that means that you haven’t moved on. I never did either, by the way. Nadia was a distraction and I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “She’s still your wife.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well you can’t expect anything to happen while you two are still married Matt. You should know better than that. I’m not going to be the other woman.”

  “The marriage is a farce.”

  I shook my head and told him that I didn’t care if it was or not. Farce or not, he was married and that had to change before we took a step further.

  “Whether it is or not. You need to get divorced before anything that you want to happen, is going to happen.”

  He growled at me. “Well at least let me sleep on your couch for a few days. Nadia took the house and I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  I could have mentioned Evelyn, but mad or not, I still liked the idea of him being close to me.

  “Fine you can stay on my couch, but no funny business.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

  “I mean it this time Matt. I’m not having an affair with a married man.”

  He groaned, and I smiled. I had to get some sense of power back before Matt made me mental again. He could wait for a little while because I wanted to make sure that he was really going to get divorced first. I wasn’t going to be a homewrecker, no matter what the circumstances were between the two of us or the two of them.

  Matt

  Nadia was making everything far more complicated than it had to be. For the longest time, almost a week, she wouldn’t return any of my calls. I left message upon message and all I got back was the same cheesy answering machine message, promising to call me back. She never did, and I finally had to go back to my hometown and back to the home that I paid for that she was now living in. I needed some more things, but really, I needed Nadia to sign the divorce papers so that I could be done with it.

  I was ready to move on and Anna wasn’t making it easy on me either. She was adamant that I take care of things with Nadia first. I of course could see her point. It was killing me, but I think Anna secretly liked to see me flounder a bit. She let me stay with her and she was all about making me want her. I couldn’t help myself and before long, I was eating out of the palm of her hand. I would have given anything to be with her, but this was the one thing that she wanted, and it was the one thing that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do right away.

  Nadia answered after several times of me knocking pretty hard on the door. I could hear a baby crying in the background when she answered the door and I could tell that she was frustrated. She must have known that this was going to end this way, but she seemed genuinely shocked that I had even showed up. Maybe she truly expected me to say nothing. Nadia must think that I’m a push over when really, I was just trying to be nice and do the right thing. She was going to see that I wasn’t such a push over now.

  “I need to talk to you Nadia.”

  “Come in husband. Come in.”

  I couldn’t believe that she was calling me that. It sounded like a joke really. She had to know that things were not the same between us. How could they be when she had just had another man’s baby? It would have been different if she would have told me about it and I’d made the decision to stay with her. But I wasn’t given that option, to know the truth and make a real decision, so I wasn’t as pliable as she wanted me to be.

  I walked into the house and it was already in a state of disrepair. It looked like she hadn’t cleaned in days and Nadia herself looked a wreck. I had a feeling that being a new mother wasn’t exactly what she thought it was going to be. I knew that it was going to be hard work, but she looked exhausted.

  “Talk? Are you coming back home now? I know that some men take off after a baby. Are you back now?”

  I looked at her a little worried. Was she living in a fantasy world or what? I saw the baby for the first time and there was no way that it was mine, that much was clear. He was very dark, but so cute. He looked like Nadia in a way and the eyes were the one thing that he had exactly like his mother. The dark skin and the bright blue eyes were quite the scene.

  “Pick him up. He is handsome, yes?”

  I agreed that he was cute, and I was about to say that I didn’t want to pick him up when he looked over at me.

  “What’s his name?”

  Mathew.”

  I couldn’t believe that she had named him that, but as he looked at me, our gaze meeting for a long moment, I knew that I wanted to pick him up. I’d been waiting for my child to born. I thought about it a lot and at the end of the day, I had been looking forward to being a father. Everything had changed because of her, but that hadn’t changed the way I felt about it. I still had this fatherly vibe that had taken over me and this defenseless baby didn’t have anything to do with it.

  I picked the baby up and I felt something that I shouldn’t have. This baby wasn’t mine, but in a small way I wish that it was. I loved Anna and didn’t even care for Nadia now, but I’d never seen anything so perfect in all my life.

  “I go take shower, you stay?”

  Before I could even answer, she was already taking her shirt off and heading into the bathroom. I didn’t have anything to say because there wasn’t anything to say. I didn’t have a sexual attraction to her anymore, that had left once we’d gotten married. I don’t even know if it was consummated it had been that long.

  The baby was adorable, and I couldn’t believe she’d named it after me anyways. She’d known all along or at least for sure when she gave birth that he wasn’t mine, so it didn’t make sense why she would give him that name anyways. I tried not to think about it too much.

  It wasn’t long before Nadia was out of the bathroom and I was sitting on the couch with her son. She smiled at me, the first genuine one that I had seen in a long time. “You’re a natural, good.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but she was in a towel and since Anna wasn’t giving me the time of day, I was starting to have some reaction to her nakedness. It didn’t matter that she was the last person that I ever would have wanted, I was just horny.

  “Let me get dressed. I will be right back.”

  I agreed because my brain wasn’t working all that well and I waited for her to get back out. She usually didn’t take too long, so after a few minutes, I called out to her. She didn’t answer, so I stayed put, watching the baby in my arms check me out. Babies were magical things and it was hard not to look at one and think that everything was right with the world. I don’t know why but seeing him affected me in such a way.

  After a while, I called out to Nadia again and I still didn’t get an answer. I don’t know how long I had sat there because there was no clocks around, but when I went to the back bedroom, she wasn’t in there. The door was open and then I realized that the back door to the back porch was slightly ajar as well. Where the hell had Nadia gone?

  I looked down at the little baby in my arms and told him not to worry. I was going to worry plenty enough for the both of us.

  Anna

  I hadn’t heard from Matt in a couple of days. I knew that he was going back home, hopefully to get Nadia to sign the divorce papers. That was all that I wanted because after a couple of weeks being around him without sex, I felt like I was literally dying from it. It had been so long that I didn’t even remember what it was like.

  I tried to keep my mind off things and instead of worrying about it, I called up Callie, since I hadn’t seen her in a while.
She was home alone because her husband was gone out of town and she asked if I wanted to come over. The kids were already in bed and it was going to be good to get some girl time in. All I wanted to do was talk for a little while and drink, but when I got there, I knew the wine was off the table.

  “Wow Callie, you’re pregnant! Again.”

  “I know. I wanted to tell you, but you’ve been a little busy bee lately. How are you?”

  There was so many answers to that and until just then when I played a summary in my head did I realize how crazy my life was right now. I hadn’t really talked to Callie in a while and I asked her if there was any wine. She might not be able to drink, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t and truthfully, I needed something to wash this all down with.

  I took a sip after I grabbed a glass and a bottle. “I’m doing pretty good. Not as good as you. You’re glowing. Pregnancy suits you.”

  She waved me off and wanted to know what was going on. She said her life was boring, but sometimes I think I would take boring any day to what I had going on now. Now it was just chaos.

  “Okay, enough about me. What’s going on with you? You look a little different than the last time I saw you.”

  “Shouldn’t, not really much has changed. I went out on a date a few weeks back with a guy from work that I met and then guess who showed up right before to spoil it?”

  It was a hard think to lead into, so I was taking this route.

  “Who?”

  “Matt.”

  Callie looked at me and she looked stunned. I’m sure that’s exactly how I had looked to her because I still couldn’t believe it either.

  “Matt?”

  I nodded and took another sip. I’d needed this.

  “Yep, out of the blue.”

  “I thought he got married?”

  “He did.”