Breathe by Kristen Ashley
But these were the only times my path could cross with any regularity with Chace Keaton’s so until the burn of his words faded away, I was avoiding them.
Benji and Serenity, I couldn’t control. They were adults (I hoped) and they were far from stupid. Maybe less involved in the real word even than I was but not stupid.
And for my part, I’d just keep warning them.
Benji, we weren’t, I typed. And I’m not comfortable with what we’re uncovering and you shouldn’t be comfortable with it either. It’s really none of our business. Things are good in Carnal again. I have a strong feeling, a very strong one, we should let this sleeping dog lie.
But what about Chace? Benji typed back and I closed my eyes.
Then I opened them in order to lie again.
He has a girlfriend.
What!?!?!?!
I pulled in a breath and kept lying.
Yeah. I saw him with her the other day. They look really close. She’s super pretty.
OMG! Why didn’t you say anything?!?!?
I just needed some time to give up a dream.
Oh Inara (this, by the way, was my screen name because Nathan Fillion’s character was in love with Inara’s character on Firefly – actually my full screen name was Inara000 since there were a gazillion Inaras out there) don’t say that. Is this thing new with him? Maybe it won’t work out.
That isn’t part of caring about someone, Benji, even if you care about them from afar, hoping they won’t be happy. He wasn’t happy with Misty. Now he looks happy with this new lady. He’s moving on. I should too.
Don’t give up hope. You never know, Benji replied.
No, what I know is, I’ve been home from college for seven years and he hasn’t noticed me. He’s been a widower for seven months and he hasn’t noticed me. This means he’s probably never going to notice me. I have a life to live to, Ben. And I should probably start living it.
My eyes remained on the screen as nothing came back from Benji for a while then it did.
I’m sorry, Faye. But you’re probably right. Still, I hope you find someone spectacular because you deserve that and when Chace Keaton finally gets his head straight and notices you, then he can feel a little of what you’re feeling now, knowing you’re happy and that happy isn’t ever going to be with him.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for that to happen.
This I did not share with Benji.
A Benji that, reading his words, I was reminded of all the reasons why, even though I’d never met him and probably never would, I loved him.
Instead, I typed, It’s getting late here, Ben. I need to go to bed.
Right, he returned, I’ll let you go. Back tomorrow?
Probably, I answered and I probably would be back tomorrow. Sitting in my apartment at my computer talking to people I knew well but had never met. Nor would I probably ever meet seeing as they were social misfits.
Like me.
Twenty-nine and never been laid. I’d hardly ever been kissed and I was pining for a man I’d never have who was real and another one who was a fictional character on a long-since cancelled television show.
“Yep,” I whispered as I typed, Later, Ben. “I need to get a life.”
I read his farewell then shut down my computer.
Then I wandered to my couch.
There was one thing in my life that could be considered kickass. This was my apartment.
It was the space over Holly’s Flower Shop on Main Street. This meant, on frequent occasions, it smelled like flowers. It also meant I could walk to work. Considering my car was a dark green junker Jeep Cherokee my Dad handed down to me seven years ago upon my graduation from college, being able to walk to work and anywhere else I needed to go in my narrow life was a good thing.
My apartment was all one room, mostly. Four, thin but tall arched windows in the front facing Main Street. All the walls were exposed red brick. The floors were beaten up wood planks that, before she rented it to me, Holly had refinished so, although they were distressed, they were also gleaming and gorgeous. I’d thrown a bunch of mismatched, multi-colored, multi-shaped but pretty and bright rugs here and there to warm up the room
There was a kitchen at the back delineated from the room by a high counter with stools in front of it. It was big because the space was big. It had lots of ivory painted cabinets with nicks and scratches in that looked cool rather than beaten up and some of the cabinets were glass fronted so you could see my vivid collection of stoneware displayed. It also had a huge island in the middle and lots of counter space. The kitchen was awesome.
Next to the kitchen was a small utility room. It was tucked in the nook created by the wood paneled room that bit into the space that was a big bathroom.
The bathroom had a pedestal sink and a deep, fabulous claw footed tub that was the dreamland of tubs for people (like me) who liked to take baths.
By the windows at the front was my bright pink, slouchy, pillow backed couch and three comfy armchairs (one royal blue, one aubergine and one bright teal), all with ottomans surrounding a variety of pretty but random mismatching tables. I read a lot so I needed a lot of different choices of where to read. With my seating area, I had it.
In the middle of the space sitting on a large, thick area rug in a rich forest green was my queen-size bed. It had scrolled, ivory painted iron head and foot stands and wide but not deep, ivory painted but distressed nightstands on each side. One nightstand had a big lamp with a fluted glass base. The other had a lamp on it that was round, matte pink ceramic that looked like punched out eyelet, the bulb inside it so the lamp threw pretty patterns on the wall when lit (like now). The bed had bunches of pillows of all shapes and sizes, soft sheets I indulged in because they cost a fortune but felt great and a down comforter covered in a mint green cover with purple, pink and blue flowers on it.
The wall to the side of the bed close to the seating area was filled with shelves that had my extensive collection of books, my stereo, CDs, DVDs, some framed photos and geek items like a small-scale model of the Serenity ship from Firefly and a frame with a mounted chakram, Xena, Warrior Princess’s awesome weapon.
The wall to the other side had a huge, antique wardrobe that my Dad had to dismantle and put together to get it in there.
The wall opposite the shelves by the living area held my big, awesome shabby chic desk, computer and its paraphernalia. On the other side, between the front door and bathroom, was antique, distressed dresser. It had on top another fabulous lamp with a delicate, etched crystal vase I’d bought for a song because it didn’t work but I bought it because I knew my Dad could fix it. And he did.
Nothing matched, not even the stools around the kitchen counter. I had random, quirky bits and bobs here and there, decorating surfaces and walls. If I had to give the look a name, I’d call it “Distressed Mountain Girlie Kickass Chic”.
And I loved it.
Which was good, I thought as I wandered to my couch, snatched up my iPod and threw myself down on it on my back, since I spent so much fraking time in it.
I stared up at the ceiling, smelling my candle burning (apple) and snatching up one of the many packs of gum around my house, unwrapping a piece and popping it into my mouth.
Bubblemint. I loved the taste, rejoiced when I discovered it, was addicted to it and chewed it all the time, even after midnight on a Thursday while I lay on my couch wondering what on earth I was going to do with the rest of my life.
It was likely that tomorrow Lexie, Laurie, Krystal, or a mixture of them or all of them would be in the library. Not to mention they could bring the rare but plausible additions of their other friends, Wendy, Maggie, Stella, Betty, Sunny, Avril, Amber, Jazz, Kayeleen, or God forbid, the crazy Twyla who scared me more than Krystal.
I’d been blowing them off now for a week, telling them I was busy with library stuff. Seeing as we were having increasingly frightening but strangely vague funding issues, this, thankfully, was not a lie. But it also meant thei
Laurie and Krystal had told me that word was buzzing through town, which meant Bubba’s biker bar and Carnal Spa then reaching out to the moon, that I’d gone to the Station and talked to Chace.
Word was, from their sharing it with me, correct. That word stated that I had gone in to make a report. Chace and I had been behind closed doors for ten minutes. Chace had stalked out, looking pissed and immediately went to his SUV. Then I had wandered out moments later looking like I’d been slapped and quickly exited the premises without looking back.
At this news, I’d lied and told them it wasn’t true at all. I told them about the boy I’d seen (and killed two birds with one stone by asking them to look out for him and call me if they saw him) and that was why I went there. Nothing had happened. Chace was looking into it and in the meantime I’d given Frank Dolinski a book and an artist had sketched a (very good) picture of the boy. All this done while Chace was absent from the Station.
They didn’t buy it and although I had to admit I liked that they came around, I knew the pressure would increase and I wasn’t looking forward to that.
But being the librarian in a small town wasn’t nine hours a day, Tuesday through Saturday of fun and laughter. Them coming broke up the day. They were funny. They were open, real and, unlike me, normal. And they liked me which felt nice. It wasn’t like I didn’t have any friends. But all my friends from high school had either moved away or were in committed relationships so I didn’t have much in common with them. We spent time together, just not very much. My other friends were accessed through a computer keyboard.
So it felt nice to feel like a part of their group.
I just didn’t want to share about what happened with Chace.
Maybe I would, one day, when it didn’t hurt so much to think about it. Maybe I’d invite them over for dinner and margaritas and we’d get hammered and I’d spill the beans.
That sounded like a good idea. An open, real, normal thing for a girl who had a life to do. Have her girls over, dinner, drinks, drunkenness and confessing your most mortifying, painful life moments so they could tell you all men are losers and make you another drink.
I popped my earphones in and since I should be winding down rather than gearing up, which was where my thoughts were taking me, I put on a one of my unwind playlists.
This worked until it came up in the queue.
Ella Mae Bowen’s rendition of “Holding Out for a Hero”.
Lying there like I did all the time, alone, late at night, in my kickass but lonesome apartment, her beautiful voice filled with longing, singing words I’d never really listened to, hit me like a bullet tearing clean through my flesh leaving a raw ache in its wake.
I didn’t even try to control the tears that filled my eyes. I didn’t feel the sting of them in my nose. I just let them fall as the ceiling above me went watery and the longing in Ella Mae’s voice, the beautiful yearning of the words ripped me to shreds.
I’d seen Chace Keaton at sixteen years old, incidentally, Ella Mae’s age when she recorded that song, and I convinced myself I found my hero and he was always there, just out of reach.
But he wasn’t just out of reach and if I kept hoping, kept reaching, eventually his fingers would close warm, strong and firm around mine.
He was just plain out of reach.
He lived in the same town but he was miles and miles and miles away.
When Ella Mae was done, I played her again.
And again.
Then again.
Then, tears in my eyes, I got up, blew out the candle and walked to the distressed, whimsical set of hooks Dad had mounted by my door. I grabbed my long, pastel green scarf and wrapped it around and around my neck, this pressing the chords of the earphones to the skin under it.
I replayed it as I grabbed my pine green wool pea coat, tugged it on, maneuvered the iPod around while I buttoned it up, nabbed my mittens that matched the scarf and pulled them on. Then I grabbed my keys.
I listened to it playing as I pulled open the door and walked out, locked the door, shoved the keys into my pocket and took off down the stairs that led to the back alley and my Cherokee.
I replayed it as I rounded the side alley and walked swiftly, shoulders scrunched, arms held up in front of me, hands clasped, through the fierce, arid cold that dried the tears on my face.
I replayed it when I turned off Main Street and walked through the quiet, dark streets to the elementary school. I listened to the words yet again as I slipped through the opening in the chain link fence and headed to the playground.
I was listening to it when I stopped at the swing set, lifted my mittened hand and rested it on one of the high swing set poles and dropped my head, pressing my forehead against my mitten. Listening and aching and knowing that there was nothing worse in the whole, wide world than the death of hope.
And I was listening to it when a hand wrapped firm and strong around my bicep but I also heard my low, surprised cry ringing in my head if not in my ears when I felt the touch and that hand didn’t hesitate to whip me around.
Then I stared up at Chace Keaton’s angry face.
What the frak?
I blinked up at him and I did this twice before I realized his mouth was moving.
He was talking to me.
“What?” I asked, automatically talking very loudly over music he couldn’t hear.
His head jerked, his eyes narrowed even as they moved all around the vicinity of my head. I felt his hand leave my arm then suddenly Ella Mae was gone because he’d lifted both his hands and pulled out my ear buds.
Then I heard him growl, “Jesus, it’s worse.”
I wasn’t following. I hadn’t gone from denying my lonesomeness to understanding it to the core of my being, letting go a dream, feeling that ache throb through me, beating at me in a way I knew I’d feel it forever to standing in the cold in the elementary school playground staring at an angry Chace Keaton.
“What’s worse?” I whispered.
“You, takin’ a walk alone in the dark of night in a town full of bikers who like to get drunk, rowdy and laid and doin’ it with your ear phones in and music so loud you couldn’t hear someone approach even if he was wearin’ a fuckin’ cowbell.”
He was right, of course. I could actually hear Ella Mae now and the ear buds weren’t even in my ears.
Quickly, with my thumb, I paused my iPod but I replied to Chace, “Bikers are friendly.”
“No, Faye, they’re not.”
“But, I’ve been living here my whole life and so have a bunch of bikers. They are.”
“Yeah, the ones who live here don’t shit where they live. The ones who come here from other places don’t give a fuck where they shit. ‘Course, this would mean that something happened to you, the local bikers would have to throw down, seeing as someone harmed one of their own so wherever they tracked the others to, all hell would break loose. After you created that nightmare, in the meantime, you wouldn’t be doing too fuckin’ good.”
“You curse a lot,” I whispered and his head jerked again just as his eyes narrowed again.
“What?” he clipped.
“Nothing,” I muttered and bit my lip.
His eyes dropped to my lips then sliced back up to mine.
Suddenly my hand was caught in a strong, firm grip and tugged while he stated, “I’m walking you home.”
Since his hand was tugging mine and his body was tall, lean and muscular and it was moving, I had no choice but to follow it.
But I did protest as my feet moved double time to keep up with his long strides, “That’s okay. Really. It isn’t far and I won’t listen to music.”
He stopped abruptly, jerking my hand which made me stop abruptly and he bent his neck so his handsome face was an inch from mine.
His eyes were angry.
No, furious.
I stopped breathing.
“I’m… walking… you… home,” he said low, slow, each word deliberate.
I did the only thing I could do. I nodded.
His face started to move back then his eyes narrowed again and, to the further detriment of my ability to breathe, it got even closer. His eyes moved over my features then they came back to mine.
“You been cryin’?” he asked, his voice low still but now soft.
I stared up at him and it hit me that he’d pulled us closer to the sidewalk where there were streetlamps so he could see me.
“No.”
There it was again!
Another lie!
Chace called me on it and he did it again in that low, soft voice that made his normally deep attractive voice deeper and far, far more attractive.
“Honey, I got eyes.”
I really liked it when he called me honey. He’d done it twice now and both times felt like gifts.
Of course, he probably called everyone honey if they were female. So it wasn’t a gift. It was throwaway. Meaningless.
I pulled in breath and straightened my shoulders.
“Okay then, Chace. I have been crying. But the fact I have and the reasons why I was are none of your business. So if you’re fired up to do your duty as an officer of the law and make sure I’m safe then walk me home. But, if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll pass on the interrogation.”
“There’s the backbone,” he muttered.
“What?” I snapped.
“Nothin’.” He was still muttering as he moved away, yanked on my hand and we started walking again.
I wanted to ask what he was doing roaming the streets in the middle of the night but I didn’t. I wanted to ask where his SUV was since I scanned for it as we walked through town in the cold and didn’t see it but I didn’t do that either. I wanted to ask him to let go of my hand but I didn’t do that either.
I just walked at his side with my hand held firm in his big, warm one and I promised myself I wouldn’t do anything stupid and dramatic. Like let my emotions and a beautiful, soul-wrenching song send me out into the night on an ill-advised walk. Which did nothing to clear my head seeing as I listened to the song that was wrenching my soul repeatedly while I did it.