A Hope and a Chance(71)
Author: Jennifer Foor

I laughed. “Wow! Well here come the parental units. Maybe we shouldn’t be so close together?”

Hope squeezed my hand. “I’m tired of lying, Chance. I think we should just tell him.”

“I just got back, Hope. Do you really think that is a good idea?” I asked, but as I did, I heard the car door opening on my side.

“Chance? How did you…? What the…?” Buffy said.

We both climbed out of the car at the same time. “I can explain, but I think we all need to go inside,” Hope said.

When her father looked at Buffy, he had a concerned look on his face. He put his arm around her as they headed inside, but never said a single word to either of us, which I found weird.

We all headed into the kitchen. I leaned against the counter after Buffy had handed me a beer while she and Mark sat at the breakfast bar waiting for an explanation.

I looked over to Hope and then back to them. “Hope is going to have to tell you how I got out. She did it all herself.”

Hope looked at her dad. “Well first I need to go back to last year. I guess you already know about mine and Trevor’s relationship, but it was worse than I ever led on. Dad, on several occasions he forced me to do things with him.” Hope put her head down. She couldn’t look him in the eye.

“I will kill that bastard!” Mark yelled.

Hope looked up at him as the tears ran down her cheeks. “When I got the nerve to break up with him, I severed all ties, and then eventually moved here with you. He still tried to call, but I never spoke with him, not even once.”

I looked up at Mark who still seemed like he was fuming. “How did you get Chance out, Hope? Did he make you do something? Did he make you be with him again?” Mark asked.

I cringed at the thought.

“No! No way, dad! I texted him and Rylee to meet me in the park. I took Chance’s baseball bat to protect myself. I only went there to threaten him, not to do anything physical.” Hope seemed to be thinking about her next words. “When I gave him an ultimatum, he came at me. Eventually Rylee stepped in and saved me. With her on my side I was able to convince him that I had proof of what he’d done to me and I would use it against him if he didn’t drop the charges against Chance.”

I couldn’t help but smile at her as she talked about her brave move, and there was the fact that she knew where I kept my favorite bat, and also that she’d used that bat to harm Trevor.

I wanted Hope to stop with the story and leave it at that, but Mark wasn’t finished with his interrogation.

“Hope, it’s really nice of you to do so much for Chance, but I have to wonder why you would risk your life in a dark park for him? You were very foolish and could have gotten yourself killed,” Mark said.

“It doesn’t matter. The charges are dropped and we’re all here together, right?” Buffy chimed in.

Fear stabbed me in the gut when Mark looked from me to Hope. “No, that isn’t it. For the past two months, I have regretted sending Chance away. I honestly feared that he was a bad influence on you, Hope, but now I see that you two are great friends. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you; for both of you.”

Marks confession made me feel guilty and I worried what Hope was thinking, and what she would say next. I just got home and I couldn’t leave her again. It will kill me, especially after this.

“I think Chance has proven that he would do anything for this family. It wasn’t fair for him to get into trouble because he was helping me.” I wanted to scream out loud how much I loved Chance, how I loved him for always saving me, how he would never hurt me or leave my side. I wanted everyone to be able to see us holding hands; to know that I was his and he was mine.

However, it was just impossible…

My father was finally seeing Chance in the positive and not the negative that he’d always assumed. It was important for me to keep things that way. If my dad knew that Chance and I were intimate then everything would be ruined. I couldn’t take the chance, literally.

Before I could make any more excuses for myself, my dad and Buffy looked at each other and nodded. “Well it’s been a really long day. Maybe we should all just call it a night,” he suggested.

“Yeah, I am pretty tired,” Buffy admitted.

Chance leaned against the counter. He snatched the last apple in the wooden bowl and took a big bite out of it. I watched as his lips covered a part of the fruit. I realized half way through that I had begun licking my lips. Just as fast as I’d started, I turned around and stopped. “Yeah, I’ll be right behind you guys. Goodnight!” I said as they headed toward the stairs.

“Goodnight, sweetie! Goodnight, Chance!” My dad announced.

I leaned on the other side of the counter and watched Chance taking another bite of his apple. With his mouth full of fruit, he smiled. “So are you really heading up to bed?” He asked with one eyebrow cocked.

I reached across the counter and grabbed the apple from him. Before he could argue, I took a big bite out of the same side of it. “Mmm. Do you have another option for me?” I whispered.

“Maybe,” he said with a half smile.

“So what do you have in mind?” I asked curiously while biting down on my lip.

“Did you ever sneak out of your house when you were a kid?” He asked.

I put my head down, feeling like I had missed out on something. “Not really. My mother would have known, and I was too good when I was really little to even consider doing something like that.”

He leaned over and gently ran his fingers across my mouth. All I could do was watch him biting down on his own lip as he did it. As his finger trailed over my bottom lip I licked the tip slowly. When he didn’t remove his finger, I sucked it into my mouth and drug my tongue against it.

I could see the eagerness in his eyes. “If you continue to do that, I’ll be taking you right on this counter top with no regard as to who may see us.”

I climbed on top of the counter top until I was directly in front of him. I was risking it all, but nothing else was on my mind. My lips reached his and I immediately felt his hands in my hair, pulling me deeper into our kiss. I gripped the collar of his shirt and did the same thing. Our tongues mingled together, and I could feel my body tingling everywhere with eagerness.

Chance backed away. Our foreheads pressed together as we both gasped for air. “Your bedroom or mine, Hope?” It was all he could get out.

“Give me ten minutes?”