Second Chance Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

hadn’t threatened him, hadn’t said “You’ve got to drop out of school.” She had left the choice up to him. Still, it felt like no choice at all. Could he walk away from his family when they needed him? Could he risk letting his father’s business fail? If that happened, his entire future was in doubt, as well as that of his family and the numerous families whose paychecks came because the company made payroll. He walked to his car and drove to Elizabeth’s place in a daze. It was a big old house a few miles from campus that she shared with five friends. When he rang the doorbell, she flew down the stairs, threw the door open and said “Pancho!” That had been her nickname of the week for him, subject to change at any moment.
    Her smile disappeared when she saw his face. “What’s wrong?”
    “It’s my dad, Lizzie. He had a heart attack. He’s dead.” He hadn’t cried to that point, but seeing the instant sorrow and empathy on Elizabeth’s beautiful face, he couldn’t hold tears back any more.
    “Oh, Steve. Oh no. Oh no, oh no.” She threw her arms around him and held him for a long time. When she pulled away, tears were running down her face as well.
    “Mom just called me. She wants me home tonight.”
    “Of course she does. She needs you. I wish I could come too and help out.”
    "It's okay, but… It’s worse than that, Lizzie. She wants me to leave school and come home for good. She wants me to go to work for the company.”
    Elizabeth took one step back.
    “So… so then she wants you to leave, but you won’t be coming back? Ever?”
    “No, probably not.”
    “And, are you going to do it?”
    He nodded. “I feel like I have to. I don’t know what else to do.” Until that moment he hadn’t realized that was his decision.
    Her face fell.
    “Oh.” He had never heard her sound so small.
    In all the years they had been friends, there had never been an awkward silence between them, but there it was. Everything in both their lives had just changed, with no time to absorb it.
    “So...” Elizabeth said. “Since I’m going to be right here for three and a half more years, I guess we’ll have to keep in touch through phone calls and letters, huh?”
    “Yeah. Yes, of course. Lizzie, I’m going to miss you.”
    And he had.
    But he hadn’t seen her again until tonight.

 
    Chapter Seven
     
    Elizabeth hadn’t decorated the Christmas tree. It rested against the wall where she had leaned it the night before. It was too big for her apartment, really, but she didn’t know what to do with it, so she ignored it.
    Light was just starting to come through the frosty window in her living room, but she had been awake for hours. In fact, she wasn’t sure she had slept at all.
    When Steve had come to her house twenty years earlier and broken the news that he was leaving school, everything had changed for her. She had been in love with Steve since junior high, but had never told him. His family was part of the country club set, while hers just tried to avoid getting evicted for not paying their rent. She knew they could never really be a couple, so she enjoyed being his best friend and most-trusted confidante. Whenever anything good had happened in her life, like the day she got accepted into her first-choice college, Steve was the only person she wanted to share it with.
    For weeks after Steve left her, she often hadn’t gotten out of bed at all. Her grades slipped. In the months following, some mainframe in the bowels of the university had generated letters advising her that her scholarship was in jeopardy, that she was on academic probation, that her scholarship was now revoked, and that she must maintain a certain GPA going forward or end her studies. She lacked the will to answer any of the impersonal wake up calls until it was too late. For Elizabeth, school was over. Not long after, she had gotten the job at the bookstore. She had clung to it ever since, taking the small solace that came from