Breathe (Colorado Mountain 4)

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 f**ked 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.”