A Second Chance

In the span of a single day, Evelyn's life fell spectacularly apart.

In the beginning she had it all. A doting husband, great friends, a wonderful job, and a beautiful grand house, all acquired before her twenty-first birthday. She wasn't oblivious to the whispers, about how she was a sugar baby, a whore, a ditzy blonde whose only education consisted of stealing wealthy men from better deserving women.

None of that was true. Evelyn was a good girl who just happened to be at the right place and at the right time when she met and fell in love with her husband, Ford. Yes, he loved her curvy, athletic body and liked to show her off at fancy parties. Yes, he was twenty-seven years her senior and had gotten her a cushy job within his company. Yes, she didn't have to struggle her way through college and yes, she didn't have to worry at all about mortgage, health bills, her retirement, or anything and everything that most people worried about every day. She wasn't about to sit there and pretend that the world wasn't handed to her on a silver platter, but at the same time, she wasn't a vile, stuck-up bitch or an airhead. She was just fortunate.

But none of that mattered anymore, because her doting husband had unceremoniously informed her that he had gotten bored with her and wanted a divorce.

He had casually dumped the news on her like he was going through bullet points in a boring meeting, seconds after he had bent her over the dining table and fucked her with his usual exuberance while she'd been in the process of setting up for dinner. Evelyn hadn't said anything while her body twitched and her throat ached with a familiar soreness due to her screaming and yelping with pleasure, her knees bent inwards and her inner thighs dripping with their combined cum. It didn't really hit her until he pulled out, wiped himself dry with the back of her fancy designer dress, and told her that his lawyers were drawing up divorce papers and that it would be in her best interest to start figuring out where she was going to live as he wanted her out as soon as they were signed.

It was cold-hearted, and when she looked at him incredulously, all she saw staring back were the jaded eyes of the man who had taken advantage of her for two years, the eyes of a man who didn't really love her. Evelyn knew then that it would be a waste of breath to persuade him otherwise. She would never know if it was spur of the moment, if he'd been planning it since the beginning or if he was simply having an affair. She didn't fight what she knew was an unfair proceeding and signed her name neatly on the dotted line when prompted. When she walked out of their marital home for the last time, it was with her head held high, knowing that it wasn't her fault and that the trash had taken itself out.

Still, when she returned home to her father's open arms barely two weeks later, she had fallen apart then and there on the doorstep, all of her energy and emotions laid bare for him to catch and cradle.

**

"Are you going to be okay here by yourself?"

Evelyn cracked a smile. She'd been back home for less than four hours, and in those four hours her poor father fretted over her like a shepherd regaining his lost flock. Ironic, really, as Evelyn had left home the minute she graduated from high school, not to go to college but to marry her bigshot boyfriend and move halfway across the country. The news that she had a boyfriend had been a big shock to her widowed father, who had raised and cared for her after her mother died suddenly when she was six years old. It was even more of a shock when he learned that her boyfriend was three whole years younger than him. Needless to say, they hadn't parted on the best of terms.

She was incredibly thankful that her father loved her enough to allow her back home after she had screamed at him for trying to ruin her life. She was also thankful that he wasn't throwing it back in her face, some two years later.

"I'll be fine dad, I'm not a little girl anymore."

"Yes, I know that but... you only just got here, and..." He sighed, gesturing to nothing in particular. "I don't want you to feel like I'm abandoning you."

Evelyn's gaze softened. She stood up from where she sat at the kitchen table eating a late lunch to grab and still his hands. She looked up at him with as much affection as she could muster. "You're not. You have your own life; I'm not expecting you to drop everything just because I'm... I'll be fine. I promise."

His shoulders dropped, and he seemed slightly comforted by her words. "If you're sure... if anything comes up, I'm only an hour away. Jannis will understand, so don't hesitate. Okay?"

"Okay," she replied back, happy that he was backing down. She didn't want to do anything to jeopardize his relationship with his girlfriend of five months; judging by the way he had recently shaved and was wearing tailored clothes that showed off his physique, she was a good influence on him.

Growing up, her father hadn't had much time for dating, and though he had tried to hide it from his children, Evelyn would see the loneliness settle in his eyes like a weight. She would always offer him a smile and a hug and an extra loud "I love you!", and for a brief moment, he would look happy.

He nodded and pulled away from her, his large hands easily sliding free from her smaller ones. "I plan on being back late Sunday," he carried on in a ramble while straightening out his shirt collar. "Chance is out on a hunting trip with his buddies but he told me he'll be home no later than Sunday, too. I haven't told him about you yet," he confessed, looking away from her curious hazel eyes, "I figured you'd want to tell him, first."

She didn't, not really. Chance, her half-brother, was nearly a decade older than her, and as such they didn't have the closest of relationships. He'd always been more mature than her, effortless where she had struggled, and when he had heard her declare her independence at eighteen to marry a man over twice her age, he had outright glared at her and told her that she was throwing her life away. She had sniped back that he wouldn't understand. How could he? Next to her, he was a genius. He didn't struggle through his classes and didn't have to pick his words carefully to make people like him. He had it made.

While people who didn't know her brother would at first assume he was a lazy asshole because he still lived with their father at twenty-nine years old, it wasn't because of an inability to live out on his own. Quite the opposite. When Evelyn left at eighteen, Chance had had a house on the water that he shared with his then girlfriend, who, like Evelyn had, lived a life of luxury with a man who could easily provide for all of her needs. Their break-up had been amiable, and though living there alone had made expenses easier as he didn't have to provide for anyone but himself, the entire problem lay in the fact that he was alone. Their father had taken him back in without complaint when he sold his house, the love between father and son allowing them to coexist peacefully. Chance took over the finances and their father provided companionship, each helping the other in areas where one lacked. Evelyn had been jealous of how well they got along, but that was a matter for another time.

"Yeah, I'll tell him," she said, already dreading the conversation. What would Chance's initial reaction be? To laugh at her? To tell her "I told you so"? Ugh. "You should get going before traffic gets too bad."

Her father smiled, his plump cheeks pressing up against his eyes. "I hope you have a wonderful evening." He grabbed her upper arms and leaned forward to press a soft kiss to her forehead. The familiar action brought a smile to her own face and she leaned into it, her eyes closed. "Bye, sweetie."

"Bye, dad."

Once his white sedan backed out of the driveway, Evelyn let out a long winded sigh. Being back in the house she grew up in was weird. Everything looked the same, and yet as she sat back down to finish her food, everything felt different. Maybe it was because she was looking at things through the lens of a woman who'd been through an event no-one should experience before they were old enough to drink. Marriage had made her believe that she had made it, that she was a mature grown-up with a world of possibilities sitting at her front door. The divorce had shown her that Chance had been right all along, that she was a silly child who couldn't look two feet beyond the tip of her nose.

She pushed her food away, suddenly losing her appetite. She didn't want to think about that right now. Instead she should focus on the present. She had a lot of unpacking to do and needed to sit down and come up with a plan. Unlike her brother, she liked her taste of freedom away from her father (who she dearly loved) and wanted to get her own place ASAP. First she would need a job. Hopefully her credentials would see her through and her old boss would put in a good word for her, if he hadn't been intimidated by Ford... in a way, she was thankful for her scummy husband. He had shown her that relying so heavily on another person would only end in disaster. She was still young, so the lesson wouldn't ruin her life forever, and in that sense, she had matured, at least a little bit.

There was no rush. Her dad would let her live with him for as long as necessary, and for now, she needed time to process and relax. Who knows? Maybe she'll decide to go to college after all. A degree would look really nice on her resume above her work experience. But first, downtime.

**

By the time night rolled around on her first day back home, Evelyn felt relaxed.

She had taken advantage of her time alone by unpacking her bags and redecorating her old room. Her posters of teenage boy groups and meowing kittens had still been plastered all over her walls, her things mostly left untouched and making it feel like a time capsule. It had only been a couple years, but it was like looking at someone else's life instead of her own. She tore them down and crumpled them up, leaving her walls bare and painted a pretty shade of pink. She kept her collection of plushies where they were and threw out old things like completed projects from her senior year of high school and knick-knacks that she didn't know what to do with. In the closet she had to box most of her old clothes, as they no longer fit her thanks to the extra weight she had picked up after spoiling herself dining on varied and expensive food over the past couple of years. She didn't feel any less beautiful, but it nonetheless made her stomach churn that she had gone up nearly two dress sizes. Not the end of the world, but it didn't feel great, either.

She hadn't completely gutted everything, but soon the space began to feel like her own again. A little more grown-up, a little less girly, but still strictly Evelyn. After, she took a shower in the bathroom she would have to share with her brother again (thankfully he was very hygienic and orderly) and spent some time outside admiring the little garden her father had been cultivating. He only had a few vegetable plants going, but the big ripe tomatoes and red chilis sparked her imagination for what meals she would make going forward.

She loved cooking and knew that her skills would fit in neatly with her father and brother's strengths when it came to running the house. With that in mind, she had started making lists of potential homecooked meals and took an interest in reading about how to can fruits and vegetables. Most people would find the process boring, but Evelyn spent hours reading different articles while enjoying the gentle breezes of a lovely spring day, her long dark blonde hair fluttering about her face as she reclined in one of the deck chairs situated around their pool. As the sky began to darken she found herself drifting off, for the first time in months completely at ease with the world.

When she woke up to a motorcycle purring its way down the street, crickets were chirping and the moon hung in a crescent above her head. She marveled at it in a sleepy daze before sitting up and stretching out her long limbs, her joints popping with relief. The neighborhood was winding down, the sound of children's laughter petering out as they were ushered inside for dinner and baths while a couple of dogs barked at one another in their fenced in backyards. It all felt so... nice, she concluded. Back when she was living with Ford, their home had been big and lonely with their closest neighbor being a football field away. It was quiet while here things were chaotic. She hadn't realized that she missed this feeling until she sat smack dab in the middle of it.

Back inside the house, she whipped up a quick dinner using the remnants of her unfinished lunch combined with a couple things taken from her father's stuffed fridge. She ate slowly, savoring the solitude for once, and washed her dirtied dishes with the same leisure that she had enjoyed her day with. Things were already slotting into place for her. She didn't feel bad at all about imposing on her father and brother with such little notice anymore. When she finally made it upstairs and stripped down into her panties, she sank into her old bed with a content sigh and found herself easily falling asleep with a smile.

Many hours later, Evelyn woke up to a dry mouth and her stomach grumbling something awful. Her room was completely dark despite the window being open, her lacy curtains fluttering peacefully with light breezes. She sat up and grabbed her phone to see the time and groaned at seeing that it was a quarter past one in the morning. She flopped back down and tried falling back asleep, but her nap from earlier and her complaining belly were preventing her from even closing her eyes. Heaving a sigh, she sat up, swung her legs over her bed, and picked her way carefully across the room.

Clad in only panties, Evelyn ventured downstairs into the kitchen. She kept the lights off, not needing to needlessly blind herself and cause her to stay awake longer, though when she opened the fridge doors its bright white light momentarily stunned her anyway.

"Fuck..."

Squinting, she set about locating the tiny wheel of cheese she'd spotted earlier. When she couldn't immediately locate it, she began shoving things aside and slammed the crisper drawers with growing annoyance. Upon finding nothing, she straightened up and crossed her arms snugly beneath her bosom with a listless sigh. It was in there. She hadn't imagined it. Had she? Tilting her head, she tried recalling when she had seen the damn thing. Before lunch? Right, because she had contemplated putting it in her salad. It had to be in there. No one else but her was home, and her dad hadn't taken anything with him other than the clothes on his back; no doubt he had some of his stuff already over at his girlfriend's place.

Just as Evelyn was about to give up and settle on some crackers in the pantry, the kitchen was abruptly flooded with the overhead lights.

Adrenaline pumped through her at lightning speed, sharpening her senses while at the same time her empty stomach cramped with abrupt terror. Spinning around with wide eyes, she immediately spotted the intruder. Standing in front of her was a half-naked man at least four inches taller than her 5'6 frame, his brown, muscular body posed with the intention to strike with the baseball bat they kept by the front door. She screamed and took a step back, almost falling into the fridge as her palms outstretched in a plea for mercy, until she looked into the man's eyes and realized that it was just her brother.

Chance stood there like a bronze statue in the middle of knocking his opponent's head off, his own hazel eyes filled with confusion. The snarl on his face fell away as he stared at her blankly until recognition had him hastily lowering the weapon with a deep gasp, his hairless chest rapidly rising and falling as his own adrenaline coursed through his veins.

"Holy shit, Evelyn!" he exclaimed, and using his left hand, swiped his palm over his handsome face. "You scared the shit out of me. What the fuck are you doing here?"

Evelyn struggled to find her voice. Chance hadn't changed much from the last time she saw him in person. He was still tall and imposing and clad in attractive muscle that she knew he secretly preened at in the mirror like a prized peacock. His dark hair was longer than normal and touched the back of his neck while his fringe swept over his broad forehead. His natural brown skin was a shade darker, a testament to his time spent out in the sun, the splatter of freckles across his nose seamlessly blending in. It took her a moment to realize why he looked so different, and it was because she'd never seen him in a pair of briefs before.

Sure she'd seen him in swim trunks and had even accidentally caught him in his boxers once or twice, but that was nothing compared to the vision standing before her. The briefs hid nothing to the imagination, and as her eyes swept down over his large pecs, to his chiseled abs and flat stomach and the cut of his V, she found herself trembling where she stood, her mouth slipping open in awe. She hadn't meant to stare like an idiot at her half-brother's crotch, but who could blame her? The fabric was pulled taut against his body, allowing her to ogle the thick shape of his dick and catch a sneak peek at one of his hairy balls threatening to spill out. His bulge was big, and he wasn't even aroused.

"Evie?"

"Huh?" She whipped her head up, momentarily stunned. At the expectant raised eyebrow, she shook her head and raised her arms to cover her exposed breasts; thankfully he seemed distracted enough by her mere presence to notice that his little sister was severely underdressed. "I, uh, I moved back home."

His eyes narrowed. "You moved back? Why?" He turned to lean the bat against one of the counters, and Evelyn couldn't help but check out his ass in the skimpy underwear. Like in the front, it struggled to keep his decency in check, his cheeks two sculptured twins threatening to burst free if he so much as squatted down.

"It's... a long story. What about you?" she deflected. "Dad said you were on a hunting trip and wouldn't be back until Sunday."

He looked at her suspiciously at the change of topic but thankfully went with it. For now. "I was, then something came up and we had to cut our trip short. Didn't even get to shoot anything," he grumbled, running a hand through his hair. "I only came in an hour ago. I was trying to sleep when I heard you stomping about the place."

Any weird lusty thoughts towards her brother evaporated at his insinuation. "I wasn't stomping! You've just always been a light sleeper." She turned her nose up at him and spun around to renew her search for the missing cheese. A thought hit her, then, that maybe Chance had snatched it when he came home. Typical.

A low whistle caught her attention, and when she glanced over her shoulder, she flushed upon seeing her brother's eyes rivetted down on her ass.

"Pervert," she hissed, to which he let out a chuckle.

"If you don't want anyone gawking, there's a thing they invented called pants."

"Oh shut up."

Chance did. His bare feet padded against the kitchen tiles towards her. Evelyn ignored him, partially annoyed and partially embarrassed by the entire ordeal; this was not how she envisioned their reunion to be. When he came to a stop beside her, he gently reached out and set a hand on her elbow, prompting her to give up the search and fix him with a guarded look. The humor was long gone from his face.

"Evelyn, why are you back home?" he asked, voice demure.

Evelyn bit her bottom lip then, closing the fridge doors, looked away. She wasn't prepared to tell him, she thought she had had a full day to figure out how to word things without coming off as an idiot. But she couldn't lie to him. She could try, but he would see right through her and demand to know until she gave it up. Ever since she was a child he had a way of knowing when she wasn't being truthful, and now that they weren't kids anymore, his deduction skills were highly trained.