Read A Fighting Chance for Free Online Page A

complete stranger in a dingy bar?
    “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for hurting that poor girl. She’s such a good, sweet, person, and you broke her heart without any warning and might I add, for no good reason. You’re a selfish pig,” she says.
    “I have my reasons,” I tell her. And that’s all I’m telling her. I turn around and head home.

    The next few months drag by. I have cases that I take and deal with only if they’re local. Chloe has stuck with the same routine. She works fucking long ass hours at the hospital, then heads to Deuce’s until two in the morning. I see the light dimming in her eyes a little more each day that passes. I also see how much weight she’s lost. Her once cute chubby cheeks have sunk in her face, and she has dark circles under her eyes. My heart is broken too. She’s the love of my life, and she just doesn’t understand that I made the sacrifice here. For her own good. I’m a nobody. I have nothing to offer her. I don’t even know how to be the kind of man that she deserves. I didn’t exactly have a role model growing up. I haven’t even seen my dad since I was seventeen. For all I know, he’s dead or drunk in the sewer somewhere. With all the connections I have all over Seattle, I know nothing about his whereabouts, and that’s how I want it to stay. When it comes to Jimmy Jones, denial is the best policy.
    I start to think about the Wellingtons and just what I’ve learned from them. They’ve had the most influence in my life, and I don’t think any of them even know it. Their parents, Samuel and Samantha have a love for one another that I just don’t understand. They’ve raised five well respected, successful, loving children that love and respect each other and their parents. Their marriage is always one that I told myself if I ever did get married; I’d want it to be just like theirs. With all the divorce and hate in this world, they give such hope to this younger generation.
    I watched Asher live through his grief when he lost his first wife, Olivia, who was killed by a drunk driver. I thought then that I was much better off not even putting my heart in that position in the first place. If I never gave my heart to anybody, then there was no way for it to get hurt. I watched Asher’s spirit die right along with Olivia. He was a broken man. Their massive house and their grounds died, too. They went from bursting with flowers and color, to dead and void of life. Then he met Willow, and I watched as his heart came back to life, right along with everything else. Willow healed his heart, and the color and the flowers came back, too. They have two kids, and I’ve never seen him happier. When I met Chloe, I thought maybe, just maybe, I could let my heart love someone.
    I watched Amelia fall in love with Kyle, and I saw what he would go through to save the woman he loves. He risked everything to rescue her from a mad man. He, just like Asher, would put his life ahead of his own for the woman he loves. That moment when he found her, I’ll never forget the look of love and relief on his face. Of course that’s when I met Chloe. I’d never felt that spark for a woman before. I didn’t even question it. I grabbed a hold of it and never let it go. Until I felt that my career could put her in danger. I love her too much to put her life in jeopardy. What if someone I was hunting down, or an angry spouse who I caught cheating, decided to get revenge and take their rage out on the only thing that matters to me, Chloe? I just couldn’t live with myself. No, she’s much better off far, far away from me. When she came into my life, I started seeing things in color for the first time. I started seeing things in vivid color. I started to feel the sun on my face and it started to melt my sub-zero heart. I never thought a woman could love me for me.
    When she’d hold my hand walking down the street, proud to call me her man, I felt things in my chest I’d never felt