Second Chance - Andy Barber x Reader One Shot

Second Chance

A/N -

Andy Barber x Reader
Summary - A second chance at life for Andy with a stranger.

For now this is just an OS, if the response is good I may turn it into a full fledged gf as I have it all mapped in my head.

This takes the book ending with some creative deviation to help the story move further.

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There's a thing about small towns, people there care too much. Andy Baber lived in one such caring small town, Newton in Massachusetts. For nearly 20 years all he experienced was warmth, respect and a sense of belonging from his town and the community that he was part of.

Andy Barber was known in Newton as a good man, respected and immensely talented Assistant District Attorney with a beautiful wife Laurie, them being college sweethearts and a teenage son Jacob, who seemed like a dream because he never got into any sort of trouble. The Barber family was the epitome of perfection and the perfect American family that the world knew America was famous for.

However, it is an age old saying the grass always looks greener on the other side. And anything which is too perfect is an illusion. We humans often chase perfection, thinking it to be the end of all our quests and life goals. But is there ever a thing called perfection? Andy Barber has been asking this question off late too much.

Andy thought he was perfect, his life and family was perfect until one fateful morning, one dead teenager, and one partial print on that teenager's body brought him down like a house of cards. Everything came tumbling down when Jacob was accused of killing Ben Rifkin. The ever welcoming community now looked at him and his family with suspicious eyes. Andy was greeted with prying eyes, lingering whispers and accusing gazes following him and his family whenever they were out. It was at that moment Andy realised, small towns care too much and sometimes not in a good way. His family turned out to be the topic of discussion in Newton and he hated it.

But Andy was also the man who was firmly defined by his belief system. He still believed his son was innocent, Laurie was fine and everything in his life was okay. However, he failed to see the signs or rather ignored the signs of Laurie slowly slipping away from him and taking his dream of a perfect family and life with her. He ignored the take over of gray material in his character and kept believing he is still black & white when he was anything of that sort. Hidden secrets let skeletons tumbling from closet making Laurie a stranger to her husband of almost 20 years.

The final straw came when Laurie crashed her with Jacob in it. The crash killed Jacob instantly and Andy lost everything that he fought so hard to protect. Andy clearly remembers the moment he received that fateful phone call and every moment leading up to now, when he is signing his divorce papers. He was not a cold person, despite not having too many friends but his heart became stone cold when he laid Jacob to rest, his son, his only child. He sat in Laurie's hospital room.for hours looking at her, thinking how he didn't see the signs of her being distant and he didn't even want to think about the word, murderous.

Andy went back to court and defended Laurie when Neal used every trick in the book to get him. Even though he was done with Laurie, Andy wouldn't give the world have the satisfaction of watching his family tear apart. It all has to be done within the closed doors where skeletons belong. Once Laurie was free from indictment, Andy got their divorce papers ready and Laurie signed them without any protects, leaving Andy with the feeling that even she was done with him. She left Newton but Andy stayed back.

Somehow, her couldn't leave this place and go somewhere new and deal again with the gazes and whispers. People in Newton have now stopped bothering about Andy and he became a stale topic. He took Lynn's offer and went back to his job but this time something changed in him, he became more empathetic. Earlier he used to look at everything as cases and subjects and now they were humans with families and emotions. It just made him better at his job. Andy sold his house and brought a huge farm house in the outskirts of Newton, away from people.