Second Chance with the Doctor (Iron Ridge #2)
Prologue
Maggie
Friday night football used to feel simpler than this.
Back when I was younger, the stadium lights had seemed exciting instead of painfully bright, and the noise spilling through the bleachers carried anticipation instead of the low, constant tension that now sits beneath my ribs.
Tonight, the entire town has packed itself beneath the floodlights for the first home game of the season, filling the stands with maroon-and-gold jackets, steaming paper cups, and enough energy to make the ground beneath our feet vibrate.
The air smells like buttered popcorn, damp steel, grass, and approaching rain.
Dad tilts his head back while I guide his wheelchair carefully through the crowd, his tired eyes moving slowly over the packed stands as though he’s memorizing every second of it.
“Still smells the same,” he says softly around the oxygen tubing beneath his nose.
I glance down at him and smooth the blanket higher across his knees where it slipped during the walk from the parking lot. “You’re supposed to watch the game, not sniff the stadium.”
His laugh starts low but catches halfway through when the cough grabs him.
The fit folds him forward hard enough that my stomach knots, even after months of pretending I’ve adjusted to moments like this.
“There you go,” I murmur once the worst of it eases. “Slow breaths.”
People stream around us while I stay where I am beside him, rubbing slow circles through the back of his jacket until his breathing evens out again.
Somewhere behind us, someone blew a sharp whistle while a man shouted for popcorn, his voice nearly drowned out by the marching band launching into the fight song near the field.
“You didn’t have to bring me, Maggie-girl.”
The guilt in his voice hurts worse than the coughing ever does.
“Yes, I did.”
I say it lightly because I refuse to let him hear the truth beneath it.
Dad spent my entire childhood showing up for everything that mattered to me. School plays. Softball games. Parent nights. Every single Friday night football game when I danced with the junior drill team, even after he’d already worked ten hours and came home smelling like motor oil and sweat.
If he wants one more season opener beneath these lights, then I will get him here even if I have to drag the entire damn oxygen tank myself.
The crowd erupts suddenly as the Bulls break through the line for a huge gain, and the vibration rattles through the bleachers hard enough to shake the metal beneath Dad’s wheelchair. His entire face lights up instantly, years falling away from him so fast it catches me somewhere deep in the chest.
“There we go!” he shouts hoarsely.
The Bulls break through the line and suddenly there's nothing but open field ahead of them.
Dad leans forward in his chair, completely caught up in the play. "Go, go, go!" The years fall away from his voice and for a few precious seconds he’s Dad again.
The runner crosses into the end zone, and the stadium erupts around us.
Dad's grin appears instantly.
Not the small, tired smile I've grown used to over the last year. Not the one he gives me when he's trying to convince me he's feeling better than he is.
His eyes light up beneath the floodlights, his attention fixed entirely on the field as the players celebrate.
Gone are the careful calculations that now shape every outing or the exhaustion he tries so hard to hide from me. Just my dad, grinning at a football game beneath the Friday night lights, completely caught up in the excitement of the moment.
The sight squeezes something deep inside my chest because it feels so familiar. So normal. So achingly close to the man I grew up with that I almost let myself believe nothing has changed.
Then his shoulders tighten and his smile slips.
A cough catches deep in his chest and the fragile illusion shatters before I can hold onto it.
I shift closer without thinking. My hand finds his back automatically while I wait for it to pass, listening to the familiar rhythm of it and hating that I've learned to recognize the difference between a minor coughing spell and one that will leave him struggling for breath.
Dad settles back into his chair looking happier than he has in weeks, and I fuss with the blanket again, mostly to give myself something to do besides think.
“Maggie,” he says patiently, “I’m sitting down. Not crossing the Oregon Trail.”
A laugh slips out before I can stop it. “That attitude is exactly why Mom threatened to smother you in your sleep.”
“She loved me.”
“She tolerated you.”
“Same thing after thirty years.”
His eyes crinkle warmly at the corners while I adjust the oxygen tubing beneath his nose again. He lets me fuss without complaint, in the same way he used to let me trail after him around the garage as a kid pretending I was helping fix engines.
Now I show up with medication schedules and extra blankets instead of wrenches.
Neither of us talks about how much has changed.
The announcer’s voice booms across the stadium again while I finally glance toward the lower bleachers.
And immediately regret it.
Caleb sits halfway down beside Jeremy Weston and Clara Bennett, close enough together that Clara is practically tucked against his side while Jeremy talks to Dylan Shaw sprawled beside them.
Behind them, the Ashford twins occupy the row above like they own the entire stadium, both in expensive maroon Bulls jackets that somehow still manage to look tailored.
Asher is yelling something toward the field while Logan hands popcorn to a couple of kids nearby with the kind of easy patience that still surprises me considering how terrifying both twins looked in high school.
The entire group looks settled. Comfortable. Like they never really stopped belonging to each other even after all these years apart.
And right there in the middle of them sits Caleb Monroe.
For a moment the noise around me fades into something distant and muffled.
God.
The last time I saw him this close… Well, it’s been over a decade.
We were different people then. Hopelessly in love and certain that nothing would ever tear us apart.
Confident that the circumstances keeping us in a long-distance relationship we’d never intended to be in are just temporary.
That everything would get better. That we’d be together.
It didn’t, and we weren’t.
The memory lands hard enough that I physically feel it.
Caleb laughs at something Jeremy says, his head tipping back slightly, and even from this far away the sound hits me with brutal familiarity.
He looks older now. Broader through the shoulders.
More worn around the edges in a way that somehow makes him even more attractive than the golden-boy quarterback half the girls in Iron Ridge used to obsess over.
The stadium lights catch the dark sweep of his hair while he leans forward to say something to Clara, and she smiles at him with easy affection before settling back against Jeremy again.
The sight twists unexpectedly inside me.
Not jealousy exactly.
Something lonelier than that.
Because Jeremy looks at Clara like she’s home.
And once upon a time, Caleb used to look at me that way too.