Love You Anyway: Our Second Chance at Love, page 1
Content copyright © MJ Fields. All rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America.
First published in November, 2022.
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Much love and thanks!
*Songs mentioned throughout have been given credit and are the work of the credited artist, musician, or song writer.
Disclaimer: The following ebook is a work of fiction. Ant resemblance characters in this story may have to real people is only coincidental.
*This book was previously published as Love You Anyways and has been rewritten with added scenes and changed narrative form.
THANK YOU
To the reader of this book:
Thank you for loving this couple enough to see them through decades and believing that people can change for the better, if they choose to.
LYA,
MJ
To the amazing women I am blessed to work with, we did it!
Cover Design - Amy Queau @ Q Cover Design
Editor - Kris @ C&D Editing
Proof- Asli Arif Fratarcangeli
Proof- Kim Ginsberg
And
Autumn @wordsmith publicity
XO,
MJ
PLAYLIST
I Touch Myself - Divinyls
My Own Worst Enemy - Lit
What’s My Age Again? - blink-182
Do Me! - Bell Biv DeVoe
Crazy Bitch - Buckcherry
Just Like a Pill - P!NK
Nookie - Limp Bizkit
Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone) - Chris Tomlin
Beautiful Things - Gungor
Seventeen - Winger
Name - The Goo Goo Dolls
Found Out About You - Gin Blossoms
Poison - Alice Cooper
Eternal Flame - The Bangels
Closer To The Edge - Thirty Seconds To Mars
Look After You - The Fray
Fall For You - Secondhand Serenade
All Of Me - John Legend
I Could Not Ask for More - Edwin McCain
CONTENTS
Thank You
Playlist
Prologue
1. December Rain
2. Memories
3. Snow Fire
4. Home
5. Service
6. Playoffs
7. Fix This Shit
8. Game Time
9. Old Friends
10. Normal
11. Bitch
12. Lake Watch
13. Champagne
14. Feelings
15. Spring
16. Confused
17. Over Again
18. Goodbyes
19. Letters
20. Two Months Later…
21. Collin Says So
22. Jack, Jim, Johnny, and Tessa
23. Date
24. Unfrozen
25. Full Circle
26. Heart Ache
27. Home
Epilogue
Family Tree
Next Is Ava’s story
Books by MJ Fields
Audio Books
PROLOGUE
LUCAS
I could bang any chick I wanted to with just two words whispered in her ear. “Wanna fuck?” By the time I’d met Tessa, I had a dozen chicks under my belt, all willing and waiting to hear those two words from me. I was never turned down and, let’s be honest, I didn’t even have to use those two words often. I could look at a chick and know that the juices were pooling between her swelling lips. One swipe across the love nub, and she was cream in my hands. The sign that I was about to be buried inside whoever that lucky girl was … for that night.
I loved to feel a tight pussy clench around my dick as I drove into it. I loved to hear an uncomfortable whimper turn into my name being screamed as I savagely fucked them until they couldn’t move. I especially liked to fuck uptight little bitches who thought their shit didn’t stink then just walk away, showing them they weren’t all that.
Bitches talk. One girl gets fucked right the first time and your cock is suddenly prime beach front property in the OC. The ones who acted like no one deserved their pussy were like walking infomercials. When they talked, every B-list girl who admired those pretentious bitches listened. After I fucked them, they became A-list, too.
I finger-fucked more girls in classrooms, on bus trips, and while at parties than anyone I knew. I was given blowjobs in locker rooms and stairwells at school. I even had three girls who, at the drop of a hat, would come to my house and fuck me and each other whenever I wanted it.
Get pissed all you want about what a pig I was or how crude it is that I talk about those days like that. But give me the opportunity to help you get your head on straight. I fingered, fucked, and got blowjobs from females who weren’t looking for anything more than a taste of what I had to offer. I never promised a second half to the Links show. I never even went down or kissed a girl that much. They knew what I was about. I just gave them what they wanted and, in return, I got to watch as my cum ran down their chins or hear the screaming applause of a fan.
With some of them, the aftereffect of being done right—reaching orgasm for the first time, over and over again—confused them a bit. They got needy. Wanted a “relationship.” I told them the only relationship they were gonna get was via a phone call when I needed another release, ’cause no way was I putting myself in a situation like that. If it was good, they got my digits, enabling them to do the same. Relationships involve feelings, right? I watched what those types of feelings did to my parents, and aside from an orgasm, I didn’t need a female for anything. I had football, my boys, and my school work. I had goals, and there was no way in hell I was going to screw that up.
Still not convinced I’m not a complete asswipe?
Fine, I’ll throw you one more example.
Sadi Black.
I let my dick lead that one. She led me to believe she felt the same as I did. I would pick her up for school since she lived close, so I wasn’t going out of my way, and she would suck me off the entire ride to school. She didn’t act like it was a big thing. So, after a week straight of that, we were on our way to an away game, and I was amped up. She was a cheerleader. I sat next to her on the bus (Mistake 1) because I was gonna give her a little something back in hopes that her fondness for sucking me off in my vehicle would carry over to a fondness for sucking me off on public transportation.
Up her skirt my hand went, and she rode that finger like a woman possessed, which I later learned she quite possibly was. She added her finger to the mix and rubbed her clit as I sank another finger inside her. She got a bit loud, so I kissed her (Mistake 2). After she came a few times, she sucked me off.
After our win, I offered her a ride home. She declined, and I was instantly pissed off. I explained to her that I wasn’t going to offer it again and that, after a week of teasing, I was ready to give her the ride she was really after.
She informed me that blowjobs and manual orgasms were all she would allow someone who wasn’t hers alone. She told me that she would not give it up to a boy, and yeah, she said boy, like me. I asked her what the fuck she meant, and she shook her head and walked toward a car, and Joey, a guy who had graduated the year before, stood waiting.
I was pissed and grabbed her arm. I remember telling her that I would not be fucking used! And she laughed. “Then think of it as a mutual exchange, Links. Bye-bye.”
We ended up at the same afterparty, and I ended up drunk. I was banging Tina when I heard her walk into the same bedroom I was in with Joey. It was dark, so I’m sure they didn’t see us (Mistake 3) when they started throwing off clothes.
“I need this so bad. No one has ever given it to me like you, Joey.”
I stood up and flipped on the light. “Says the fucking girl riding my hand to Whitney Point!”
She pretended to cover herself, and I threw Tina’s clothes at her. “Out.”
“But …” Tina started to argue.
“You know the deal, Tina. I’m done.”
“You didn’t come,” she said as she pulled her shirt over her head.
“You did. Consider yourself lucky.”
I looked over at Joey, who was pissed, and Sadi, who was now crying.
“I’m out, Sadi. Tina? You need to make someone come, you come with me.”
They left together, and Sadi turned into a crazy lunatic.
“How dare you!”
“Fuck you!” I grabbed my boxers.
“Fuck you? You’re not worth it. I don’t share …”
“Oh no? Does Joey know that?”
“We were broken up. That was us trying to get back together. I hate you!”
“Good! I’m not too fucking fond of you right now either.”
When she started bawling, I felt a bit of remorse and was fucking drunk.
“You could never give me what he could, so why did you have to do that, Links? Why?”
“I could give it to you better than he ever
could.”
“I need a man, not a boy.”
A challenge arose, and I stepped up to the challenge. “I can be a man, Sadi, better than you’ve ever experienced.” I grabbed her and kissed her.
“I can’t do this with you …”
“Try me. I won’t disappoint. Never have.”
“I won’t be one of many.”
Drunk and horny, I caved, “Fine.” (Mistake 4).
I brought her home, and she still wouldn’t give it up, but I have always been a competitor, and if she needed me to prove something, I sure as fuck was up to the challenge.
I woke to my dick in her mouth in my bed, sucking, slurping, and fingering herself. I could deal with this.
Boy, was I wrong. She got knocked up right away. But this kid was in challenge mode, yet another competition. I was going to be a dad, better than Landon ever was to me.
Sadi was a freak. A mess. A fucking crazy-ass rag. She told me I ruined her, like her ass had any better options in life than what I could give her. She was going to have an abortion. I told her no. We broke up. She went and fucked Joey. I brought over my three girls and had one of the raunchiest nights of my life, and she appeared.
I felt like a piece of shit for days. I assumed I was in love with her since eating, sleeping, and functioning were hell. Yeah, hell. I’d met its keeper a few times in my day. The Sadi issue just stirred those feelings back up. Feelings that I had buried in enough pussy that it had not mattered until now. A father who left you with a mother who couldn’t stay sober, that kind of hell that I certainly wasn’t going to put my kid through. So, I told her I loved her (Mistake 5), and she told me she had an abortion.
Dreams crushed, heartbroken, and completely devastated that the one little, tiny part of me was gone. A part of me that wouldn’t be tarnished or burned by life’s little secrets had been torn away from me. That life was one I would no doubt have loved, now gone, and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it.
So, what do I do? I angry fucked that bitch stupid. I banged her in hopes that she knew what it was she was losing (Mistake 6). Then I tossed her ass aside.
Fuck her, fuck everyone, and fuck love.
The problem was she wouldn’t let go. She played the I-made-a-mistake card, and I played the hell-yeah-you-did, go-fuck-yourself one.
Welcoming the change in schools that was happening that year, I played my ass off in football. I was going to be captain. I deserved to be. My senior year playing football was going to be a year to break records, and the community would talk about it for an eternity.
I might have been off my normal turf, new school and all, but I would own it there. Anyone who thought I couldn’t would be dead-ass wrong. Enter one big titted blonde with an even bigger attitude.
That one girl, one little foot-stomping, eye-rolling, I want you, I hate you, I love you, I need you to be my friend, turned my world upside down and inside out.
❖
I grew up—well, maybe not grew up—but I grew as a person in the nearly five years I had been welcomed with open arms into the Ross family. Tessa Ross …beautiful blonde tomboy who hid behind baggy shirts and a ponytail had caught my eye the first time I saw her tits bounce as she ran from her family’s pond and threw a shirt over a blue two-piece bathing suit. Then she rolled those blue eyes at me when I gave her my signature stare and “the look.” She rolled her eyes at me, Lucas Links, star quarterback, a privileged kid, with looks and moves to back up my cocky, arrogant demeanor.
Tessa Ross. My God, how I loved that girl. But back then, I had no clue what to do with the love she gave. I had no idea that we would go through so much, and I had no idea that, even when you were in the same room with the same person so often, you could still miss every damn thing about them.
What I did know is that I lost her. I didn’t deserve her. And that I’d be damned if I wouldn’t learn from my epic fuck-up and one day be exactly the man Tessa, and only Tessa, knew I could be.
ONE
DECEMBER RAIN
There comes a time in life when things are just simpler, easier. A time when you no longer have to worry about retirement because you’ve saved and built enough to take care of your children until they are well beyond the age you should have to. A time when the mortgage shows a big fat zero balance; a time when you no longer have to schedule vacation around school schedules and state testing. A time when you wake up in the morning, and look beside you, and see the woman who has stuck by your side and know that there isn’t a damn thing you’d do differently, because by the grace of God, she still loves you, and you love her, too.
There are other times when you can no longer wake up every morning and run five miles without experiencing some sort of physical discomfort. When a sprain takes a little longer to heal or a strained back throws you off for a couple of weeks. A time when you look at a book, or the computer screen, and have to give your eyes a chance to adjust. And when you say “huh?” you’re not just hoping they will say, “never mind;” you really didn’t hear what they said.
Then there are times when you can’t sleep and cringe when the body lying next to you rubs up against you because she’s been fucking another man for at least four fucking years. It would be so easy to kick her ass out, tell her she was a fucking whore, and never look at the face that causes you such anger and resentment.
I force myself to look up, to beside the TV hanging on the wall, at the picture in the bedroom, at the reason that Ash is still within five miles of me.
Ava and Logan. My kids.
I can’t hurt them. I can’t destroy the lives they have by going fucking crazy on the bitch lying in my bed. She blames me. She’s convinced it’s my fault, and she will try to convince them, too.
I never want them to look at me like I’m the cause of anything that hurts them. They’re the two people in my life who I want to be proud of me. I want them to not just think but to know that their father would never walk away from them, even when they are parents themselves.
I’m just not ready to chance it.
❖
My wife, Ashley, has said several times, in some heated arguments, that the reason our family is falling apart is because I have always been in love with Tessa Ross, and that I never let her go. She blames me for her infidelity, for her more than four-year affair with a man who used to work as my father’s lawyer, for nearly fifteen years, and is now a politician. She went to seek comfort from him when I made one fucking comment in our more than twenty years of marriage. One comment that our daughter overheard me say to Tessa in anger.
“You should’ve stayed with me.”
I truly thought, when Ash and I finally talked about it, she understood it was out of anger. I was so distraught that my daughter was vacationing with Tessa and her relatives, people I trust, then her cousin’s, Troy, ex-wife and her British rocker husband, who’d been splashed all over the news, all messed up in some sex trafficking shit, had shown up at her and Collin’s Cape home, and she never felt it necessary to tell me they were there.
I never want my children in danger, or Tessa and hers, so there was truth in what my wife said—I always have and always will love Tessa Ross-Abraham. She is the reason my life changed over twenty-five years ago. She is the reason I finally became the man that Tessa and her family taught me I could be.
I am a damn good husband and a better father than I ever had. As I grew older, I learned that my father’s father had been an abusive womanizer. Therefore, my father, too, was a better father than he had. I suppose that’s what happens when we grow in knowledge and age. We realize that, instead of lugging around the sins of the father, so to speak, we decide to do better. My father, Landon, never beat me or any of his wives, so he also grew from his past’s pain, just like I did. What he did do was cheat. Something I did to Tessa, too. Repeatedly.
