The hopeless romantic believes that a soulmate exists for each of us. That there is one person who makes us feel how good it is to love them. For some couples, things trigger them to push that love away. They find out too late they’ve lost true-love. Sometimes genuine love deserves a second-chance at the happy ending that eluded them the first time.
Desire Me Again is an eclectic assortment of short stories exploring a second-chance at love. The collection is as diverse as the authors who wrote them. Here’s a chance to read the work of talented writers you may not have read before. Within these pages, there are blends of tender, often moving and thought-provoking stories.
Sandy Henderson had been a sweet, wholesome girl in her first year of college, sure of herself and totally in love with her high school sweetheart, Tom Pritchard. Then something happened that shattered her dreams, her confidence, her will to live. When she meets Tom again many years later, she resists taking a chance on love because of her secret, but Tom won’t give up on her. On them. Or will he, once she tells him about her past?
"I loved every one of these stories, and I think they all deserve 5 stars. ... A wonderful collection, with something for everyone!
Second Chance: The hero and heroine of the powerful “Second Chance” by Dee S. Knight are both wounded – his physical wounds are matched by her mental anguish over a terrible thing that happened to her years ago. Can they overcome the past and find a new life together?" -- Alice Renaud, author"
Tom watched Sandy stack her bags of groceries into the back of her mother’s old Ford station wagon. When she bent over and her jeans stretched to cup her ass in all the right places, he sighed. He didn’t know where or how she had spent the last fifteen years, but holy hell, those years had been good to her. When he’d given her his letter jacket and she’d agreed to go steady with him in their junior year, he’d thought her the most beautiful girl in the world. He’d been wrong. The vivacious, sparkling teen couldn’t hold a candle to the woman she’d become.
Sure, she smiled more back then, maybe. The old Sandy couldn’t have gone the six or seven minutes they’d stood talking in Handy’s Grocery without giggling over something. Sandy now held herself back. Her eyes showed a glint of pain. Certainly she had been serious but not in a dour way. More like she knew about life now, something he could relate to. Unconsciously, he reached to scratch an itch on a right shin that was no longer there.
“At any rate,” he murmured to the empty car, “she’s still beautiful as hell.”
Her coppery hair was cut short. When he’d left to join the Corps, promising that while she was in college he’d write every day and get down to Florida to see her as often as he could, her hair had fallen in soft waves to her waistline. Her green eyes had sparkled with love and they’d promised to be true to each other.
They’d also promised to wait before having sex. He’d wanted their first time to be as husband and wife, something he assured her would happen as soon as he could afford to support her.
Tom had plans back then. He was going to apply for Officer Candidate School. Promotions were slow coming in the Marine Corps, but he was smart and knew that he had a good future. By the time Sandy finished her junior year of college he’d have a ring on her finger and the little Baptist church they both attended, reserved for a wedding for right after her graduation.
But life happened while you were busy making plans, and nothing had worked out as he’d expected.
He’d become an officer. But during his third tour in the Middle East, a well-placed bomb had removed his right leg below the knee and left shrapnel lodged in his body. In effect, that bomb had also removed Tom’s opportunity to remain in the Corps as a career. Long before that, Sandy Henderson had disappeared from his life—from everywhere, as far as he could determine.
When she stopped writing, he’d begged his mom to find out what had happened. She told him that the Hendersons had received a note from Sandy saying that college wasn’t for her after all and that she was going to “find herself.” She said she was fine and not to worry, and then she was…gone.
“Well, you’re here now, and I plan to find out what the fuck happened, whether you want to tell me or not.”
Tom put his Jeep in gear and pulled out onto Main Street for the short trip home.