Authors: Marissa Farrar
No Second Chances
No Second Chances
Marissa Farrar
TABLE OF CONTENTS
*You can click on the title to be taken to the selection. Additionally, clicking on the chapter titles will bring you back to the table of contents.
Gabi – Six Months Earlier
“Last day before
you go home, Captain Weston!”
I turned toward the male voice, a smile on my face as I adjusted the waistband of my ACUs—my Army Combat Uniform. “That’s right, Private Jeffers. One more day and then I get two whole weeks of watching crap television and eating pizza.”
He laughed. “And drinking cold beer.”
“And hot showers and sleeping in my own bed.”
“A real bed,” he replied. “Make sure you enjoy it.”
“Oh, I will.” I noted his Kevlar helmet, like my own, his protective gear, and the ammo strapped to his chest. “Where are you headed?”
“Just got a call that a lookout post on the west corner is one man down. Private Moss has been taken down with the stomach flu.”
“I’ll go,” I offered. “I’m at a loose end today anyway, just trying to get things tied up before I go on leave. I don’t mind swinging around there for a couple of hours.”
The young man’s eyebrows lifted. “You sure, Captain?”
“No problem. Just carry on doing whatever it was you were doing.”
“Thanks, Captain. And enjoy your time at home if I don’t see you before you go.”
“Will do.”
Home to me wasn’t the same small California town I’d grown up in. I’d left that place ten years ago, and while I felt bad I’d barely visited my dad during that time, I didn’t have any intention of going back. I’d left only a matter of months after my eighteenth birthday, joined the Army, and the rest was history. These people were my family now. My father had more interest in finding the bottom of an empty bottle of Jack than he did spending time with his daughter, so I doubted he even noticed I was no longer around. Mom left us when I was two, claiming this wasn’t the life she had signed up for and she couldn’t handle being around a toddler all day. Dad had been great when I’d been little, though I thought he’d always been drinking—he just hid it better back then. But the older I got, the more I noticed the empty bottles in the bin, and the smell on his breath. He didn’t like having someone around who would question him, so gradually he started to shut me out. I didn’t even care by that point. I had my own shit going on, and what teenager wanted to hang around with their dad anyway?
I headed out into the hot Iraq sunshine. The wind blasted my face like the air from a dust-filled hairdryer. One thing I looked forward to heading home to was the change in light. Everything here felt burned by the sun, the ground a scorched yellow sand, the buildings—those still standing—the same faded sandstone. Even the occasional piece of vegetation—the tall palm trees—felt like the color had seeped from their leaves. The dirt didn’t help with the lack of color. Thick yellow dust coated everything, filling the air and settling on anything that stayed still long enough.
Thoughts of home stayed with me as I walked. My fantastic father-daughter relationship wasn’t my only reason for leaving, but I tried not to think about that. I tried not to think about the life I could have been living right now. I’d made a lucky escape, even if it hadn’t felt like it at the time. At the time, it had felt like I’d left with my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces, and that I’d never be able to glue it together again. But I had. Perhaps my heart wasn’t in exactly the same shape as it had been before, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
I crossed the small, dusty town, my weapon at my side. The town was quieter than I had imagined before I’d been deployed out here. I’d been expecting a constant warzone, but it wasn’t like that. Yes, reminders of the war could be found everywhere, from the bombed buildings, to the malnourished children, and the almost constant chatter of distant gunfire. But it was also just a town with its inhabitants trying to live their lives the best they could in the circumstances. The locals hawked their wares on the side of the street—cheap imported radios that were falling apart, and stacks of old VHS tapes no one could watch—while feral dogs and tick-infested goats dropped feces all around them. I buried my face down into the scarf around my neck, trying not to inhale both the dust and the stench of rotting trash in the heat. There were no waste disposal services here, and everyone lived in the streets. A group of children, with threadbare clothes and skinny brown limbs, kicked a half deflated ball around in the dirt. They glanced my way as I strode by, but barely reacted to the sight of an armed soldier, and a woman, at that. The local people had gotten used to seeing us here now.
I approached the lookout point which was currently undermanned. The soldier on watch, Private Thomas Moss, spotted me approaching and lifted his fingers to touch his forehead. “Captain Weston. I wasn’t expecting to see you over this way today.”
“Private Jeffers mentioned you were a man down, so I figured I’d make myself useful on my last day before leave.”
The young man grinned. “That’s good news, ’cause I’ve been dying for a piss for about two hours now.”
I laughed. “Good thing I’m here then. Hey, how’s your new baby doing?”
Tom’s wife had given birth only three weeks earlier, and I knew it was killing him to be apart from his family so soon after the birth.
“She’s good, and Kimberly is doing great, too. She’s got her mother staying to help out with the baby, so I doubt she’s even missing me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I replied.
I moved to enter the building, planning to climb the steps in order to reach the lookout spot, passing the other soldier on his way out as I did so, but the growl of an engine made us both stop and look in the direction the sound was coming from.
I frowned, instinctively reaching for my gun, and Tom did the same.
A small car hurtled around the corner, yellow dust billowing in a toxic cloud from beneath its wheels. I heard Tom swear, “What the fuck!”
I didn’t have time to say anything myself, alarm and fear bursting inside me, threatening to wipe out my rational thought. But my training kicked in, and a calm voice spoke inside my head.
Take out the driver.
He was headed right toward us, his foot down hard on the accelerator. I caught a glimpse of a set of dark eyes in a young man’s face—so young he was practically a boy rather than a man—and I read the terror and righteous determination in them. The car was meant for us, and I didn’t think he planned on running us down.
I aimed my weapon and squeezed off a couple of shots, putting holes in the windscreen. Tom did the same but still the vehicle kept coming. Only seconds had passed, but felt like minutes, and all I could think about was the new father at my side.
“Get out of here,” I yelled, shoving him to one side. I squeezed off another bullet and this one met its mark, the car suddenly veering to one side, the same direction in which I’d just pushed Tom. But the vehicle was now on course for hitting the outside wall of the building instead of directly at us, and even though Tom was closer to where the car would smash into the wall, he wouldn’t get hit.
A second later, the vehicle crashed with a bone-jarring bang and screech of metal. The car instantly burst into a ball of flames, but it was far enough away from us to not cause us any harm.
I allowed myself to exhale a breath …
Then my world exploded.
Cole – Present Day
I hauled a
trash bag out of the bin, the muscles in my forearms popping under the strain. I’d learned the hard way that a professional kitchen created a lot of two things—garbage and dirty dishes.
I glanced down at the multitude of tattoos covering my lower arms. Hell, they were covering most of my upper arms and torso, too, but were hidden beneath the white sleeves of my work shirt. The tattoos were surprisingly good considering the vast majority had been acquired while behind bars. They were just another way of fitting in, of acting like I was part of the gang. Though I hated having to blend in with the crowd, I did what I needed to do in order to make it out of jail in one piece. That, and fighting. As soon as people realized you were handy with your fists, they tended to leave you alone. I figured that out in foster care before I’d ever seen the insides of the prison walls.
Turned out the two institutions weren’t all that different.
I’d spent most of my days in and out of the system, but I’d been lucky to end up in foster care in this town. My foster parents had been good to me, but things hadn’t quite gone the way I’d planned.
Being released from prison was never the way I’d wanted to be reintroduced to Willowbrook Falls. I would have liked to have ventured somewhere else—a Caribbean island, perhaps—but I had to go into the halfway house initially for my probation officer to make contact with me, and then I’d been given this job. It might not be much, but I knew how hard it would be to find other work in a different town. Thank God my old foster parents hadn’t completely disowned me, and had managed to find me a position in the restaurant. It was owned by a friend of theirs, Frankie Kilhorn, and they’d put in a good word for me. The money wasn’t great, but it was enough to allow me to rent a small, rundown house on the outskirts of town.
I understood why Frankie wanted to keep me out back, away from the watchful eye of the rest of the town. I would be bad for business, and I didn’t want to cause Frankie any trouble when he was helping me out. I was a grade A screw up, and I’d given up trying to prove any different to anyone else in this town, or even to myself. Even when I tried to do the right thing, it always went wrong, so what was the point? Now I was just keeping my head down and living for myself. I was never born to be a crowd pleaser anyway.
Trying to ignore the stench of old fish permeating from the trash bag, I hauled it outside to throw into the large industrial container located in the alleyway which ran alongside the back of the building.
As I stepped out, two voices were speaking in low tones, and I just caught the end of the conversation.
“—moved in with her alcoholic father, from what I’ve heard.”
“No shit. How’s that going to work? One old booze hound and Hopalong Cassidy.”
They erupted into laughter, but as I stepped into view, the laughter faded.
Two of the other kitchen hands, Deano and Ben, were out on a smoke break. The two men were also longtime residents of Willowbrook Falls, and though they’d been a couple of years above me at school, they knew my background.
“Ah, shit, man,” said Deano when he caught sight of me.
My mild curiosity about what they were laughing about suddenly deepened to concern. “What’s going on?”
Ben nudged Deano and gave his head a slight shake.
I looked between them, the strange sensation in my gut solidifying. “What’s up? Seriously.”
They exchanged a glance and then Ben said, “Gabi’s back.”
The words hit me like a punch in the chest, expelling the breath from my lungs and making it hard for me to take another. The ground suddenly felt a long way away, no longer right beneath my feet, as though I’d distanced myself from reality for a fraction of a second.
“Gabi?” I managed to say. “When?”
He shrugged. “Not sure. A few days ago, I think.”
“Holy shit. Any idea what’s brought her back to town?”
I’d done my best over the last ten years to forget Gabriella Weston ever existed. I’d never succeeded, not really. I’d always held her at the back of my mind, wondering what she was up to, if she was married and with a young family by now. Being behind bars helped to prevent my desire to look her up again, but any time a young woman had walked in at visiting hours, with the same kind of wild corkscrew curls Gabi had, the same curls I used to love twisting around my fingers while she lay with her head against my bare chest, my heart and stomach always lurched with ridiculous hope.
She would never have visited me. Not after what I did. I didn’t blame her.
I realized the two other men still hadn’t answered my question, and were both distracting themselves, Deano flicking cigarette ash and scuffing a butt around on the floor with his foot.
“What the fuck is going on?” I demanded, squaring my shoulders. There was something they weren’t telling me, and I needed to know.
“You should go see her, man,” said Deano. “She might appreciate a friendly face.”
Ben scoffed. “More like she’d want to bash his face in.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” I said, jerking my chin in mock amusement.
“We’ve got to head back in,” said Deano. “Smoke break’s over.”
They finished their cigarettes and moved to head back into the building.
“Hey, wait up,” I called after them, and Deano turned back. The sadness I saw in his eyes shocked me.
“Seriously,” Deano said, “just go see her. Even if she smacks you in the face, I reckon she’ll be happy to see someone she knows. It’s been a long time since she left. I think she’s been through a lot.”
He walked back into the restaurant’s kitchen, leaving me shell-shocked and playing the conversation over in my head.
What were they talking about? I already knew she’d been through a lot—after all, I was the one who’d put her through it—but, for some reason, I felt like they weren’t telling me something important.
Gabi, back again.
I almost didn’t want to believe it.
I couldn’t allow myself to hope for anything. She’d still hate me, I had no doubt about that, and I deserved her hatred. I’d dragged her heart through the dirt and then stomped on it several times for good luck. She’d left, and I’d never made any attempt to contact her again.
I didn’t think she could hate me as much as I hated myself.
