Second Chance Ranch by Audra Harders

the bridge of his nose.
    And their child had cancer.
    * * *
    Her life had never lined up. Zac had been the only constant in her life. After her mother had died, Jen had counted on him to be there for her…and then he wasn’t. A whole new world had opened up to him and he’d embraced it with gusto. “No.”
    “No, what? You hate me, or I messed up your plans?”
    “Neither.” Thoughts and feelings long subdued shot to the surface and she didn’t know how to stop them. She motioned to the wicker furniture arranged beneath the window. “Zac, can we sit down?”
    “I’d rather stand as my world explodes around me.”
    Jen hiked a hip onto the porch railing and prayed for the right words to explain, to make him understand. “ We messed up our plans. We were invincible the summer before college, remember? Plans, dreams, freedom all lay before us - before both of us, Zac. You were leaving for Colorado State and I was packed for DU.” She pushed away from the railing and began to pace. “Had a great apartment lined up just off campus with a roommate chosen for me like something out of an Internet dating site.”
    She took a breath, undaunted by the uncompromising jut of his chin. “ That’s having your life all lined up. Classes, books, friends all waiting for you to walk in and begin a new life. The only thing missing in the whole picture was familiarity and heart.” She stopped back at the newel post by the steps and looked out over the hillside covered in pine trees backed up to her house. Vast and serene, a slice of mountainside she could only appreciate now that the past was behind her. The whole ranch became a fortress for her when she finally realized God’s plan for her life, that she’d never been alone. She squinted along the ridge line, following a trail of cone studded pines until she returned back down to the porch and met Zac’s wary brown eyes. She dropped her gaze. “Yeah, I was excited to begin my nursing degree, but nothing was lined up in my life.”
    “Are you telling me you were homesick? After all the plans we’d made? You wanted back home?”
    “That was the last thing I wanted.” Recognizing his disgusted tone, she dug her fingertips into the railing. “You found your new life.” The cruel memory of walking into the lobby of his dorm wisped through her brain. She shook it away before the details played out. “I got what I wanted, and so did you.”
    “What did I get?”
    A creak of the porch board warned her he’d stepped closer. He stood beside her now, a lifetime too late for everything she'd wanted to say to him. And everything she wanted him to say to her.
    “Neither one of us was ready to raise a child, Zac.” A breeze blew her hair across her cheek. “I made a decision I thought was best.”
    “You were pregnant and handled it alone?” He grabbed his ball cap and pulled it off before driving his fingers through his hair. “I don’t buy it. Maybe the kid wasn’t mine.”
    His words stabbed deep in her heart. She lifted her head and met his defiant glare. “I forgive you for saying that.”
    He blew a breath as he fit the cap back in place. “So why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I tried to once, but couldn’t go through with it. I wasn’t going to ruin the life you’d dreamed about for so long.” Her stomach turned at the memory of their moonlight talks back in high school filled with the big what-ifs of life. They’d shared their innocent dreams, their eager anticipation of finding out what the world held for them. The promises they’d made to one another, promises carrying as much weight as the breath they’d been delivered on in the heat of the moment. “You couldn’t wait to get out of Hawk Ridge. I didn’t want to drag you back. I didn’t want you to resent me.”
    Zac stood silently, digesting the secret she’d held alone for so many years. The Zac of years ago would have thrown a tantrum and denied the claim. Jen didn’t know what to expect out of