Breathe (5 page)

As for me, I was not ever,
ever
going to kiss Chace Keaton.

Not until he kissed me.

If that should ever (please God!) happen.

Lexie kept speaking as that thought gave me a pleasant shiver.

“Now, I’m a girl and you’re a girl, we’re all girls.” She lifted a hand and did a twirl to indicate Krystal and Laurie. “And it’s my sworn duty as a girl not to lead you down the wrong path,
especially
in matters of the heart. But I’ll tell you again what I’ve been telling you now for months. Chace Keaton is
into you.
Not just into you. Into you in a hungry heart, longing, soul destroying if you can’t have it, put your life on the line to get it kind of into you.”

My heart skipped a beat at these words but she was not done.

“I know. I felt that for Ty and I still do. He feels it for me and I’ve been seeing it in his eyes since the beginning. At first, I didn’t get it. You need to get it faster than I did. Learn from me. I see it in Chace when he looks at you. He’s got issues. You help him deal and give him a little somethin’ somethin’ while you do, trust me, this is a tried and tested method and it works. I’ve done it and Laurie’s done it. Now it’s your turn. And, if he’s fucked up, which he is, the shit that has gone down, he can’t help but be it’s going to have to be
you
who puts yourself out there.”

She took in a breath, leaned across the counter to me and grabbed my hand before she finished.

“And I swear, honey, I would not lead you wrong.”

Again, no way I was ever going to kiss Chace Keaton until he kissed me.

But something else she said captured my attention.

“What’s gone down?” I asked softly and, as she’d been doing for months when this subject was broached, she leaned back, let me go and closed down.

This time, after what Chace said to me in the wood, the fact that he was at the wood at all, the way he was yesterday morning, the mixed messages that he was giving me, making me want to run at the same time I wanted to wrap my arms around him and absorb his pain, for the first time I pushed it.

“You can’t expect me to put myself out there if I don’t know what I’m dealing with,” I informed her.

“That right there is a good point,” Krystal backed me.

“And what she’s dealing with is Chace’s to share,” Lexie returned.

Krystal disagreed. “You gotta give the girl something.”

“She has it,” Lexie retorted. “His wife was murdered. He didn’t like her much but still, he’s a good man and no one deserves that. And that’s coming from me, a woman who intimately knows that Misty Keaton was the worst kind of bitch there is. And he’s been working alongside scum for years. That shit will mark a man.” Her eyes came to me. “And that has marked Chace. Help him heal his wounds then get past the scars. Don’t delay, honey. Neither of you are getting any younger and I promise, you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. That lost time, if you take your time. Or if you never do it at all, the loss of something beautiful you never had that was something you yourself let slip through your fingers.”

It must be said, she made a case for throwing myself at Chace Keaton.

Still, I was never going to do it.

Nevertheless, I was forced to lie again just so we could stop talking about this.

“I’ll think about it.”

Lexie smiled huge.

Krystal closed her eyes.

Laurie made an “eek!” face that she quickly hid when my eyes hit her and she gave me a reassuring grin.

They left shortly after and when they did, they left me with visions of throwing myself in Chace Keaton’s arms and kissing him.

This did not make it easy to focus on the work I had to do.

But I still saw him when he came in.

Sandy blond hair but this was at a guess seeing as it was dirty. Not dirty,
greasy.
It wasn’t a day or two of missing the shampoo bottle. It was a whole lot more.

His clothes weren’t any cleaner. And they hung on him. This was not hard to do considering he was skin and bones.

His pallor was marked, too. It was February in the Colorado Mountains therefore cold and there was always snow on the ground. Even so, the sun shown regularly so the cold gave you rosy cheeks but the sun still could kiss your skin if you spent any amount of time outside. And most of the citizens of Carnal had been there awhile. The cold and snow didn’t stop them from doing much, inside or out.

My guess was, he was nine, maybe ten and I figured it was a good guess. The Carnal Library was the only one in the county. This meant folks from Gnaw Bone and Chantelle came there even if it was a ways away. Also, the schools of Carnal, Gnaw Bone and Chantelle took field trips to my library so I’d seen a lot of kids. And, last, my sister had kids. And one was nearly nine, about that boy’s size, his height but my nephew was a lot better fed.

He’d been coming in for a few months, once or twice a week.

And more than twice, I’d seen bruises. Once, around his jaw. Once on his cheekbone. Once around both wrists.

He always slunk in, eyes to the ground, shoulders hunched, thin, beaten up coat way not warm enough for this weather hanging on him, obviously trying to be invisible.

And he stole lbooks. One or two each time he came, whatever he could shove in his coat and take away.

I hadn’t made a big deal of this because, with regularity, books not checked out were in the return bin in the morning and I’d put one and one together and made the two that he wasn’t stealing them, he was borrowing them. Just not the normal way. And I’d tried to approach him on several occasions to tell him all he needed to do was apply for a library card. But the instant I got near, he shuffled away, darted between rows of books and eventually raced out.

The first time this happened, I thought he wouldn’t come back. But he did.

This meant he liked his books like I liked mine. And clearly he didn’t have the money to get them at a shop. So he got them the only way he could.

I didn’t get why he didn’t get a library card but at the same time I did.

Something was not right with that boy.

And today it was less right. I knew this because, even though he ducked his face away and headed straight to the short flight of stairs that led up to the fiction section, I saw he had bruising on his cheekbone
and
around his swollen eye.

This made me forget about Chace Keaton.

It also made me forget about the decision I made some time ago that I’d let him borrow as he felt he had to do it. He returned the books, it was no skin off my nose. And clearly they gave him something he needed enough to brave stealing them (essentially) and going out into a world filled with people that scared the heck out of him. I knew this because I was a librarian, I was a woman, I was five foot six and I was no threat and still, he ran away from me. Sure he was stealing my books (essentially) but also, he was not.

But seeing that black eye, I was reminded of something my Dad said.

“A wrong is just wrong no matter who’s doin’ it or who it’s done to. You know someone’s doin’ wrong and even if it has not one thing to do with you, you do what you can to right that wrong. You don’t, you’re no kind of person or, at least, no kind of person I’d wanna know.”

These were words Dad lived by.

This was also a philosophy that meant him living in Carnal with what had been going on for as long as it had been going on had made his life a living hell.

He’d lodged formal complaints (twelve of them) against the Carnal Police Department. He’d also encouraged others to do the same, blatantly and with intent, even going so far as to go to their house and have a chat (or chats, plural, if need be) if he heard something not right had gone down. He’d also visited Mick Shaughnessy, the head honcho of the Police Force in Gnaw Bone and a buddy of my Dad’s, about how he could intervene and he did this more than once (in fact, five times that I knew). He’d further told Arnold Fuller, the dirty cop ringleader, the police Captain then the Chief of Police, and now a dead man (literally), exactly what he thought of him on more than one occasion both publicly and privately.

As well as all this, even though everyone agreed, Dad was one of few who speculated openly and widely (in other words, to all who would listen, including Mick Shaughnessy) about the fact that Ty Walker was extradited to stand trial and then went down for a crime my father was certain (and he was right) Ty didn’t commit.

And last, my Dad had been pulled over and had more tickets than any other citizen in town and once had been arrested for drunk and disorderly when he was neither. And all this happened because he did all of the above.

Every single ticket, as well as the arrest, he fought loudly, boisterously but not always successfully.

But he never gave up.

And I knew, looking at that boy, wrong was being done to him. I also knew, with his eye swollen shut, I had to stop doing the little I was doing, letting him get away with stealing books (essentially) and I had to start doing something more.

I searched the immediate area, noted no patrons were close to approaching the check out desk and I skirted it to move out into the library. Cautiously and quietly, I moved up the steps then, like a super-sleuth, feeling more than a little idiotic, I rounded the shelves and stopped. Hiding my body, I peeked just my head around the side to check the aisle to see if he was there.

I found him three rows in.

I pulled my head back, pressed my back into the side of the shelf and took a deep breath.

Then I peeked just my head around again and called softly, “Please don’t run. You aren’t in trouble.”

He was squatting to the bottom shelf, a book in his hand and his head snapped around and up.

It was then I saw the full extent of damage to his face.

Not only a black eye, swollen shut, and a bruised cheekbone but a swollen, painful looking nose and a gash on his lip that glistened, not because it had been treated with ointment but because it was gaping and exposing flesh.

My stomach clutched, my frame froze and my throat closed. He dropped the book, shot up straight and dashed down the aisle the opposite direction from me.

At his movements, I came unstuck, quickly turned on my boot and raced down my side, clearing the shelves and seeing him darting down the stairs. No,
jumping
down them three steps at a time, taking him down in two big jumps that made my heart jump with him because I feared he’d harm himself.

“Please! Stop! You’re not in trouble!” I shouted. “Promise!” I kept shouting as I ran down the steps after him. “I just want to talk!”

Out the door he went and out the door I went after him, down the sidewalk to town.

The pavements were cleared, my boots had low heels and I belonged to McLeod’s Gym. I didn’t do those boot camps they had at McLeod’s because they weren’t at times I could attend (not to mention, I’d heard about them and they scared me). But I did go four times a week to spend half an hour on the Stairmaster, treadmill or rowing machine.

“A body takes care of itself or a body finds they don’t have a body no more.”

This was more of Dad’s wisdom. So I took care of mine.

This meant, I might not be ready to attempt my first Iron Man, but I wasn’t in bad shape.

Even with all this going for me, I was no match for the boy. He sprinted three blocks gaining more and more, darted around the corner into town and by the time I darted around it after him, he’d disappeared.

I stood there, breathing slightly heavy, my gaze scanning the area to find any trace of him but he was gone.

“Darn,” I whispered, hoping I didn’t scare him into never coming back at the same time knowing that was not all I should do.

He was nine or ten and regularly beaten by someone. Bullies or, God, I hoped not, family. I knew it. And I had to do something about it.

I stood in the cold without a coat, my breaths coming out in visible puffs, my mind sifting through my possible next steps.

First, I had to get back to the library. I was the only one on which meant there was no one there except patrons.

Then, I could do two things.

One, I could call my Dad, tell him what was happening and lay the problem on his broad shoulders, knowing he’d look into it then promptly do something about it.

Two, I could be a grown up, not call my Dad to hand over a burden that wasn’t mine but was all the same and I could go to the Police Station, report what I’d seen and hope they’d do something about it.

The problem with that was, Chace Keaton worked at the Police Station.

The boy’s nose, eye, cheekbone and lip came into sharp relief in my mind’s eye and I closed my actual eyes as I sucked in breath.

I opened them and turned back to the library knowing what I had to do.

I should note, not liking it.

But knowing it.

* * * * *