Read Online Whatever It Takes (Second Chances #2) by L. E. Bross - Free Book Online

the night or morning as it were. I’m awake anyway, and I know how hard it is. I’d love to help.
    Without her, I’d never be able to keep on top of everything.
    After a quick check on Noah, I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Pulling the elastic bands out of my hair always made me sigh in relief. I loved washing off work and settling into my favorite worn pajama pants and a tank top.
    It took me about an hour to wind down on the nights I worked, so I grabbed one of my textbooks and a snack and settled on the couch with my laptop. I had a paper due tomorrow in English, and I was almost done proofreading it.
    It had taken me two years to finish my sophomore year of college. The first year after I moved back to take care of Noah was still a blur. I did nothing but panic a lot and cry. Sink or swim when it comes to a one-and-a-half-year-old. That’s when my father had threatened me with losing Noah.
    So I enrolled in an online course through the local community college and got a job working nights. Two years later and I was only a class away from my AS degree in business. Once upon a time, I dreamed of being an astronomer. Reality set in after I got guardianship of Noah. Business was much more practical and would make it easier to find a job after I graduated. I did use my electives to take astronomy classes, though.
    I hit Send on the assignment and powered down my laptop. Once the grade posted and the semester ended next week, I’d be done and somehow managed to keep a 3.99 average the whole time.
    Noah would be ready for preschool this fall, which would make taking on-campus college courses easier. I knew there were already programs to help with the cost of child care, but I hadn’t used any yet. I wanted to make sure that Noah had adjusted to all the change in his young life before I thrust him into another new situation.
    And selfishly, I loved spending my days with him before I went to work, even if it meant late nights of studying. Plus, if we had to move again, if I got accepted into a program at whatever university would take me, I didn’t want to have to pull him away from any new friends he might make.
    Provided I got into one. All I had to do was figure out where I could go to finish my BA while still working somewhere that paid decently.
    It was a lot, and it might even take me four more years, but I was going to succeed.
    I had to start applying to in-state schools soon, and as a last resort, a few out of state just in case. Tuition would be a lot more than if I stayed in North Carolina, where I was a resident, so I was really hoping I got lucky and could stay.
    It didn’t even matter which school, as long as they had a bachelor’s program for business management, which most did.
    After tucking my books back into my bag, I pushed the light switch and headed down the hallway in the dark. This place wasn’t much and we didn’t have much, but this was all me. Somehow I’d managed to survive the past two years.
    And I’d make it through the next five, the next ten—because failing wasn’t an option.
    I wasn’t the same girl I was before all this. I was stronger. More determined. Nothing—and no one—was going to make me apologize for any of it.
    Damn anyone who tried.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    ryan
    “ S o why didn’t you tell me that you’d run into Tess?” Seth asked, trying way too hard to be casual. He’d apologized for Sunday when he got there, but I knew that the only reason he did was because Avery put him up to it.
    It was Wednesday night and we were tinkering under the hood of his truck. He kept it at his old trailer—well, it was really his now, even though he stayed with Avery most nights. Seth’s stepfather never actually put the thing in his name, so it was deeded to Seth’s mom, who had died years earlier. As the eldest child, it went to him. He rarely even went inside. There were way too many bad memories there for him to deal with.
    “Didn’t seem like a big deal,” I