Page 58 of Second Chance Wedding
Ben’s question interrupted the silence at the table. Her parentsandBen watched her with their combined stares and waited for her response. Her mother looked worried, her father too for that matter.
She eyed the potatoes again. Right now, she’d welcome the tension-relieving aspect of a ridiculous food fight, or pretty much anything that would distract the lot of them.
“Ben obviously doesn’t know the extent of the options he has available for him,” her father said when she hesitated too long. “Your mother and I would be happy to pay for his college or…whatever training he’d like to pursue.”
“So long as you approve of it? Or so he feels dependent on you and does what you want and not what he wants?” She wanted Ben to follow his dreams wherever they may lead, but as a mother,hismother, she couldn’t ignore the surge of pain and panic at the thought of him facing the danger Cole had experienced. Or for Ben to feel like he owed her parents anything because they paid for his schooling.
As to the military… Had she avoided that life with Cole only to have it manifest in Ben?
Or was his sudden interest in the military due to the one-on-one time he’d spent hanging around Cole?
It was something to consider.
“The offer isn’t to control you or Ben, Analise. It’s to help the boy get off to a good start in life. Something you wouldn’t allow us to do for you.”
“I can just enlist. It’ll be okay,” Ben said. “Cole told me the military helped him grow up and become a man, and he’s extremely well trained now. He could get a job anywhere.”
She winced at the mention and prayed. Hard.
“Cole?”
Her father’s dangerously low tone wreaked havoc on her shredded nerves.
“Who is this Cole person you speak of?” the judge asked.
Finallyseeming to sense that he’d taken things a step further than he should have, Ben glanced at her before sliding his gaze back to his grandfather.
“Cole Blackwell. He’s one of Mom’s friends.”
Way to throw me under the bus,she mused.
The judge set his fork on his plate with painstaking precision and wiped his mouth with a napkin before tossing it to the table while shoving himself to his feet.
“Dad, don’t overreact,” she said.
“You willneverlearn, will you?”
Ana flinched. “Please, can’t we just eat and have a good Thanksgiving?”
“That man destroyed yourlifefifteen years ago, and now you’re back with him again?”
“I am not ‘back with him,’ and Cole didn’t destroyanything,” Ana said, her mind flashing with painful images of how utterly broken she’d been in the weeks and months leading up to sending Cole that email.
Cole had received it and taken on dangerous missions, butherbattle had taken place before and after she’d sent it. From the moment Cole had left after Christmas, she’d beenseverelydepressed and anxious and had barely been able to get out of bed as her anxiety continued to grow.
When she’d finally ended things, her parents had been so desperate, they’d contacted her friends to come and take her out. That’s where she’d made the stupid, stupid decision to drown herself in alcohol and a boy who’d never be a man…
“You—bothof you—stay away from him.”
“Like that’s possible now,” Ben muttered wryly.
“What does that mean? What have you done, Analise?”
“Robert, please, calm down,” her mother said. “Your blood pressure is going up. Your face is turning red. Remember what the doctor said.”
Ana lifted her gaze and stared at her mom, noting her trembling lips and teary eyes as she stared at the judge, visibly worried about him.
Ana realized then, right then, the precarious place her mother found herself in because—as Ben’s mom—she now knew that place as well. The in-between, torn between two people with no easy answer in sight because to choose a side meant alienating the other.
