Hope's Chance (38 page)

I wanted more than just to play a sport forever. Finishing my education was important as well, but I was looking at a bigger picture now. I could do all of those things and have Hope by my side. I
didn't
need to separate the two. We needed to make the decision to move together. I wouldn’t do it without her, because I knew that once school was over, she was my future. I couldn’t risk giving that up for any reason.

It
wasn’t
that Hope would deliberately make me give something like that up. She
wasn’t
like that at
all;
in
fact,
she would have pushed me toward it, forsaking her own happiness for mine. It pissed me off when she put her needs last. I wanted her to be happy too. In all honesty, Hope was the kind of girl that didn’t need a lot of things to make her happy. She made
do
with what she had and was generally happy about it.

Whatever we were to decide, we needed to do it soon. With Christmas and the wedding, things were about to get hectic.

When I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that the living room light was on. Without waking Hope, I managed to reach into the passenger side and lift her into my arms. She wrapped her arms around me, but it was obvious she was still
half-asleep
. Mark met me at the door and held it open while I carried Hope upstairs to her room. I received some curious looks when they saw her disheveled hair and blanket. I knew as soon as I walked down the steps, I would be drilled by the sergeant himself.

Sure enough, I hit that last step and he was there waiting. “What happened to you two?”

“Hope thought she hit something so she pulled over. We both jumped out of the car, but one of us must have somehow hit the damn lock button. When we went to get back in, we were locked out. Our phones and everything were in the car. I had to break the window to get us inside.” I confessed, even
though
only half was the truth.

“I assume it was already raining?” He asked.

“Yep, it had just started. Anyway, Hope said she had a blanket in the trunk, so once I got her safely into the heat, I grabbed it and made sure she was warm enough.”

“Thank you Chance. You are always keeping her safe. I really appreciate it.” He gave me a pat on my shoulder. “So come in here and tell me how it went today. Did you see anything you liked?”

We walked into the kitchen and I started pouring myself some tea. “It was really nice. The fields are great there. Seems like they have a lot to offer.”

“What about Hope? Did she seem interested?” He asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Some things she really liked, but you know Hope. She hates school. I don’t know what she would decided honestly. Maybe giving her a goodnight sleep will help.”

“So, have you made up your mind?”

“I don’t know yet Mark. I mean, I
haven’t
played in a while. I don’t even know if I will still be good enough.” I admitted.

“I don’t mean to keep pushing you about it Chance. I just want Hope to want to get a degree in something. She just has no clue what she wants to do with her life. I feel like if she has you there, she won’t feel so reluctant about it. You are friends and you could be a mentor to her like you are here at home.”

If he only knew how I mentored his daughter.

“I will talk to her tomorrow about it.” I announced.

“Thanks for taking her today Chance. She never would have gone with me.” He admitted.

I laughed. “Probably not.”

I took my drink and headed out to the
pool house
. Wishing Hope was there with me sort of came true when I found her already in my bed.

“Hey, how did you get in here?” I asked as I crawled into the bed behind her.

“I went out the garage while you and dad were talking. I locked my bedroom door and he already thinks I am sleeping. I just wanted to be close to you.” She confessed.

I got up and threw on some dry clothes and then finally cuddled my body into hers. With one final kiss to the top of her head, I easily fell fast asleep knowing she was right where she belonged.

Chapter47

Hope

Waking up in Chances arms was something that I wanted to do
every day
, for the rest of my life. It didn’t matter where we were as long as it happened. His strong arms were wrapped tightly around me and I never felt safer.

Knowing I needed to get back inside of the main house before I was detected missing was getting easier. When I snuck out, I would wear my running clothes. Exiting Chance’s pool house from the rear was easy and I would return to the house, without my father knowing any different. Most of the time, he didn’t even notice me coming in.

I kissed Chance on his perfect nose. “Good morning.”

He kept his eyes closed but gave me a welcomed smile. “Morning baby.”

Chance nestled his face into my hair. I actually think he likes smelling it, since he did it often. I let him hold me close, because I was not ready to be let go.

“
What are your plans today?” I asked.

“Well I would love to stay right here in this bed and hold you tight all day, but I guess that
isn’t
very
feasible
.” He admitted. “I need to run out and get this Christmas shopping done so that I am not out there with all the crazies.”

“Can I come with you? I have to get something for my mom, and I also wanted to pick out Dad and Buff’s wedding gift.”

I felt little kisses on top of my head. “Of course we can go together, after I get your window fixed of course. I almost forgot about that.” He was quiet for a second. “Do you want to get them something from the both of us?”

Chance knew I didn’t have a lot of money. I had saved a bunch when I was in school and even worked a small job as cashier at Rylee’s
mom’s
consignment shop, but it was
dwindling
away. My father was always leaving me twenties and since Chance and I were a couple, he never let me use them, so
I had
quite a stash from that.

“Yeah, what do you have in mind? I don’t have a whole lot of money.” I confessed.

Chance started running his
hand
over my arms. It felt good but gave me
goose bumps
immediately.
“I was offering to pay for all of it Hope. I don’t think you realize how much money I made when I went away. You do realize that I was working almost eighty hours a week and forty of that was double time? I saved almost every cent I made. I will buy the present from both of us.”

“I don’t want you to have to do that.” I confessed. I felt like I was worthless.

Chance turned me around and looked directly into my eyes. We were so over the morning breath issues, in fact we never even discussed it. “Hope, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I am completely okay taking care of you and our children. If you decided that you don’t want to finish school, I will be fine with that. I am in this for the long haul and I want to take care of you.”

H
is
words were perfect, but one thing stuck out. “Children, as in more than one? How many do you want exactly?”

“We can start with nine boys. After that you can have your girls.” He joked.

I picked up a pillow and hit him with it. “Do you know what my body would look like if I had more than nine children?”

“It doesn’t matter, because I will love you no matter what you look like and besides your body would only have changed because we created something so perfect. Every stretch mark will remind me of that.
I will always love your body.” Chance’s words made me want to cry. They were beautiful.

“I don’t know what to say.” I pushed the pillow out of the way and leaned in to kiss him. Then I whispered in his ear. “You know the probability of me having nine
children that
are all boys, is highly unlikely.”

“How about we start with one and
go from there. I only wanted
nine to have my own ball team, so I guess I will just have to be the coach of our
child’s
team, whether it is a girl or boy.” He kissed me again.

“When will we be having this child?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Whenever you decide to go off the pill. I don’t think Mark would have the heart to kill his Grandchild’s father. I am not saying I want to do it now, but if it did happen, I wouldn’t be disappointed.”

“You seemed to have put a lot of thought into this. Do you have names already?” I asked curiously.

“Of course I do.” I watched dimples forming on his cheeks and knew this was going to be good. “The
girl
will be named Faith, and our son will be Lucky.”

I burst out in laughter.

“What? Don’t you think that is good? We can have one of those country signs made over our door. Instead of it saying Faith-Hope-Love, it will say Faith-Hope-Chance-Lucky.”

I continued laughing until I was sure I was going to pee myself. I got up and ran for the bathroom. It was becoming a habit for me to just go with the bathroom door wide open, so I decided to
continue
the conversation. “What would the dogs name be?”

“Oh that is easy, Rumplestiltskin.” He yelled.

I was trying to get up to finally brush my teeth and I cocked my head into the bedroom door. “What the Hell? Why?” I said laughing.

“Have you ever know
n
a dog with that name? I mean, if I take him to the park, I want him to know I am talking to him. I think it is quite
genius
actually.” Chance was still in bed with his arms both folded behind his head.

I rolled my e
yes and let out another chuckle
befor
e heading back into the bathroom
. “You know that is ridiculous right?”

“Probably.”

I was brushing my teeth, looking at the mess on the top of my head. With a brush stuck in my mouth
,
I continued to speak. “So when do you want to head out to the stores?” I asked.

“Well since the Mall is about an hour from here, I would say soon.” He replied.

I ran back into the bedroom and jumped on top of him. I had fresh breath and managed to get my hair looking halfway decent. “Get up then. I will meet
you
in the house in a half hour. I am going to go run around the block and then hop in the shower.” I said as I leane
d
in to kiss him.

He pulled me back down on top of him. “
I just need one more hug from the future mother of my children and caretaker of Rumplestilskin.” He joked.

I got up and headed out of the pool house, just like I did almost every morning.

Chance

After finally managing to get myself out of bed, I jumped in the shower and got myself dressed. I had to call two different places before I managed to get someone that could repair Hope’s window today while we shopped.

When I headed into the main house I found the three of them glued to the television in the kitchen. They barely took their eyes off of the screen. “Good morning people. What is so interesting?” I asked.

Buffy didn’t say
anything;
instead,
she grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.

Investigators found the woman living in Ohio. It appeared that the incident had been staged so that the woman could run away from her life here in Virginia. Since there were never any formal charges in her disappearance
,
the case has been closed.

After
getting
the volume on
the television back down, they all turned to looked at me.

I took a sip of my coffee. “What? I told you all I had nothing to do with it.”

“We are just glad everyone else knows that now Chance.” Buffy admitted.

“Buffy is right, you have to feel some kind of relief knowing you don’t have that lingering over your head.” Mark added.

“I do, but I knew all along that I had never even met the woman.” I took another sip of my coffee. “So I managed to find a shop near the mall that can fix Hope’s window today. She and I have some wedding, and Christmas shopping to do, so we are going to drop it off.” I explained.

“Thanks for taking care of that so quickly Chance. I was going to make some calls about that this afternoon.” Mark replied.

I finished my cup of coffee and rinsed the cup in the sink. “It wasn’t a problem. Besides, I am the one that had to break it.”

“Yeah, but you did it so that Hope wouldn’t freeze to death.” Buffy added.

When I finally looked up to meet Hope’s eyes, I noticed that her hair was down and the natural waves were showing off her highlights. She was wearing tight jeans that tucked into a pair of
black
riding boots, and a sweater that sho
wed off a lot more cleavage than
it probably should
in the shape of a V
. I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She caught my gaze. “Are you ready to go Chance?”