A Fighting Chance by Annalisa Nicole Page A

chair so it’s facing her, cross my arms over my chest and my feet at my ankles and stretch out. I plan on letting her sleep as long as she needs to. I’m not going anywhere. As I look at her small, still frame, and watch her steady, even breaths rising and falling, I can’t help but wish she could just hear me and know how much I love her. That I only thought I was doing what was best for her, and just how wrong I was. I never meant to hurt her and push her back into the hell that she’s living in now. I must have fallen asleep myself, because the next thing I feel is my cell phone buzzing in my pocket. I dig it out of the front pocket of my jeans and look at the display. It says ‘Asher Calling’.
    “Asher, what’s wrong?” I answer in a whisper. For him to be calling so late, there has to be something wrong. The silence on the other end confirms my suspicions. I hear his fast breathing and a devastating sob that I’ve only heard once before from him, the day his first wife, Olivia, died. The timing couldn’t be worse, but there is no way in hell I won’t be there for Asher when he needs me. Not after everything he and his family have done for me.
    “Where are you?” I ask concerned.
    “Home…Max…it’s my dad,” he forces out.
    “I’m on my way, it may take me some time to get there, but I’m on my way, I’ll be there, I’m coming right now,” I assure him.
    I walk quietly over to Chloe. I don’t want to wake her up. I pull the covers up to her shoulder and whisper in her ear, “You sleep angel, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I kiss her temple and write her a note, and leave it on the table under a can of soup. One can hope she’ll eat it, right? I hate to do this to her, but I can’t risk her leaving if she wakes up before I get back. Because I have also used this house for work, I have installed locks on the outside of the house in order to keep suspects in. Feeling conflicted and with a heavy heart, I lock her inside the house. It’s for her own safety as much as it is a piece of mind for myself. She can’t climb out of the window either. The one window that’s in the house was built into the wall and doesn’t open.
    When I get to Asher’s house, it’s very late, but his driveway is lined with cars and it looks like most of his family is still here. I rush into the house and I’m immediately hit in the gut with a freight train of sorrow. I don’t need anyone to say the words to me. I can feel it. Samuel is gone. I can feel the loss deep in my heart. My own father means nothing to me, but the one man who I looked up to, who taught me how to be a man is gone. I can’t even take two steps in Asher’s house. The vice that constricts my heart is too much to bear. This proves once again that it’s way easier to never have loved at all. Why put yourself in this position in the first place.
    I spot Amelia and trace her as she crosses the room. She walks straight to Asher, taps him on the shoulder, and points to me still frozen in the doorway. I stand there with my hand still on the door knob for fear if I let go, the floor would swallow me whole in the depths of the grief emanating in this house. Asher’s grief when he lost Olivia was something I had never seen another human being suffer, but all of these Wellingtons and their combined grief is suffocating.
    Asher walks up to me with tears streaming down his face. I can’t control my own as I shake my head no. With a closed fist he wraps his arm around my upper back and pulls me in hard to his chest. Under normal circumstances I would never let a man embrace me. It’s just not done. There are no walls when it comes to the loss of someone that has played such an important role in your life. These people, this family, are all I have ever had. To lose one of them is just too much, and something I have never felt so strongly before.
    Samuel’s damn speech and his damn fucking stars plays in my head. His star will never go anywhere.