Breathe Page 12

  I stared at him.

  Then I asked, “You know all of that about a homeless man called Outlaw Al that I’ve been living in this town near to my whole life and not only never heard of, but have never even seen?”

  Chace shrugged off his jacket, tossed it on the island, moved to me and got close. I shivered when he lifted a hand and his eyes watched it pull the hair over my shoulder before it moved to curl around my neck. His eyes came back to me and he kept telling me about Outlaw Al.

  “I know, you give it to him, he’ll give his cats wet cat food but he prefers tuna. As for himself, canned corned beef, Vienna sausages, Spam, chili, ranch-style beans, Shambles’s day old baked goods and Colt 45.” His lips tipped up and he finished, “Your Dad wouldn’t approve but no roughage.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “He told me and when I give him shit, he gives me orders for shit he actually likes. So I buy him shit he actually likes because, homeless or not, he dumps it if he doesn’t like it.”

  “You buy Outlaw Al food?” I whispered and learning this knowledge, seeing the sleeping bag, the bags of food. Knowing about the cameras on the library and the all out effort to find one, lone runaway boy that Chace was spearheading even though he supposedly handed off to Frank. With all that, I could swear that Ella Mae was singing “Holding Out for a Hero” straight in my fraking ear.

  “Me, Frank, Betty and Krystal,” he answered and Ella Mae muted.

  I blinked then asked with disbelief, “Krystal?”

  His lip tip turned into a full-fledged grin, he bent so he was closer to me and he shared, “She’s hard on the outside and that’s the God’s honest truth. Tough as nails. No one gettin’ through unless Krystal herself opens the gate. But inside, honey, always on the inside of anyone, you’ll find something else. Some people let you in right away. Some people you gotta dig. Some people never let you in and give you a show that’s a total lie. Some people, like Krystal, you gotta earn a place inside. And Krystal’s inside is soft and sweet and good.”

  “Has she let you inside?” I asked quietly.

  “Not for thirteen years. Then, six months ago, I came home after a day that was shitty for me when the rest of the town was celebrating huge, walked through a slew of reporters to get to my door and found her sittin’ in my dark living room. She broke in at the back. She was drinking my vodka. The first thing she said to me before she poured me a glass neat was, ‘You done good, Keaton.’ We shared a shot in silence and she climbed out my bedroom window. I’m not sure that’s inside but I think, with Krystal Briggs, that’s as good as it’s gonna get.”

  “With Krystal Briggs, I think that’s huge,” I whispered, his grin turned to a smile and I got lost in it before he turned away.

  He went to the bags. I pulled myself together and went to the cutlery drawer.

  My ears perked up when he said, “Anyway, some of this shit isn’t for our kid. It’s for dessert.”

  I grabbed forks, knives and the bottle opener, asking, “Dessert?”

  He was pulling stuff from the bags and taking it to my fridge as he answered, “Chocolate peanut butter sundaes.”

  That sounded awesome.

  “What’s that?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at him moving around my kitchen (and liking what I saw) while setting out the silverware.

  “Ice cream, loads of syrup, a huge whack of peanut butter, whipped cream, ground peanuts and cherries. My Ma used to make ‘em for me.”

  Simple but undoubtedly amazing.

  I mentally subtracted one slice of pizza from my evening’s intake and added another “whack of peanut butter” to my dessert intake as I reached for the bottle of wine he’d put on the counter.

  I was preparing to open it when I found my hands empty of wine and corkscrew and my head tipped back to look at Chace to see he had both.

  “My Dad didn’t teach me a lot. One thing he did teach me was that a woman doesn’t pour her own drink,” he explained.

  Ella Mae started singing in my ear again.

  “Oh,” I mumbled.

  “Set out the pizza, baby,” he ordered gently. “I’ll take two slices to start.”

  “Okay,” I kept mumbling then set out the pizza.

  I hefted my booty on a stool while Chace poured my wine. He set the glass by my plate, grabbed a bottle of beer out of the six pack, put the rest in the fridge, used the bottle opener end of the corkscrew to open his beer then he joined me at the counter.

  I stared down at the pizza taking it in for the first time. It appeared to be meat lovers in the way that Outlaw Al liked canned meat. That was to say I saw pepperoni, sausage, bacon, hamburger, ham, pancetta and what appeared to be chorizo. It also had mushrooms, olives and peppers.

  I was celebrating the fact that I was still only twenty-nine and had yet to suffer from heartburn as I nabbed the parmesan cheese and started sprinkling.

  It hit me we had silence as it hit me I was the hostess at the same time it hit me that it was kind of important Chace found me interesting. Part of being interesting was being a good conversationalist. We’d never really had problems talking but we’d also never been in a normal situation that would require normal conversation.

  I was suddenly nervous again.

  Therefore I started talking.

  I did this to my pizza as I cut into it.

  “You said your Dad didn’t teach you much. Are you two not close?”

  “I hate him with everything that’s me.”

  I blinked at my fork spearing the pizza and my knife sawing at it, turned my head and looked at Chace to see he was not a fork and knife pizza person. He had the slice in his hand and he was chewing.

  “You hate him?” I whispered.

  Chace swallowed and aimed his eyes at me.

  “With everything I am.”

  “That’s, uh… definite,” I noted.

  “Yep,” he agreed then bit off another mouthful of pizza.

  I went back to mine, muttering, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

  I’d forked it into my mouth when Chace asked, “We gettin’ to know each other?” And I looked at him again.

  I chewed and nodded.

  He nodded back and kept talking. “Then that’s somethin’ to know about me. Hate my Dad. Tight with my Ma but she’s sensitive. A little flighty. She forgets shit, gets wound up about it, gets clumsy, breaks things, gets wound up about that then she takes a pill or has a drink, lies down for a while and it’s all good again. It’s just her. When she’s not like that, she’s sweet and loving. She does a lot of charity work because she likes it and means it. It isn’t a way to pass the time and get in the society pages. She genuinely wants to help. She doesn’t have a lot of friends not because she’s not friendly. But because she doesn’t have the constitution to put up with people that are full of shit, users, manipulators or backstabbers and there’s a lot of those in her circle. So she focuses her energy on people who matter and give good energy back. She isn’t stupid but she doesn’t always do rational shit and most of the time it’s funny but some of the time she gets herself jacked up, which also gets her wound up.”

  He took a bite of his pizza chewed while I watched, swallowed while I watched then finished.

  “She loves me, I love her. I don’t get to spend the time I’d like with her ‘cause she lives two hours away and my father is an asshole so if he’s there, I’m not. And she makes fuckin’ good sundaes.”

  “Well, there you go,” I said quietly and he grinned.

  “There you go,” he mumbled and took another bite of pizza.

  I turned my attention back to mine and had shoved some in my mouth when he asked, “Your folks?”

  I looked at him, chewed, swallowed, put my knife and fork down and grabbed my wine. After I took a sip, I put my elbow to the counter, held my wineglass aloft and answered.

  “My Dad is awesome. He’s wise. He’s funny as all get-out. He loves me. He loves my sister. He loves my brother even though he wa
nts to kick him up the backside a lot. And I love him. My Mom is also awesome. She’s wise but in a quieter way than Dad. Same with her being funny. She loves me. She loves my sister even though she wants to wring her neck a lot. She dotes on my brother which I’m no psychologist but I think that’s why he does stuff that makes my Dad want to kick him up the backside a lot.”

  “Where do you fit?”

  “Middle,” I told him. “My sister, Liza, is three years older. My brother, Jude, is three years younger.”

  I took a sip of wine while Chace grabbed his second slice and asked, “Why’s your Dad wanna kick his ass?”

  I put the wine down and went back to my pizza, answering, “Well, he doesn’t anymore. Jude joined the Army a year ago. Dad went to the Catholic Church when he enlisted and did a hundred Hail Marys in gratitude and we’re not Catholic.”

  I heard Chace chuckle, shoved pizza in my mouth, turned my head and smiled at him while chewing.

  “So why did your Dad wanna kick his ass?” he amended his question.

  I swallowed and told him, “Because Jude was a pain in his and everyone else’s. I love my brother. He’s a fun guy. He’s the fun guy. But he takes zero responsibility for anything. He got kicked out of college. He got fired from his first three jobs. He’s lived in four states in six years. He’s had seven thousand girlfriends. All of them nice, sweet, smart and beautiful and any of them we met, the family loved them. A winning combination that’s hard to find. But Jude tossed them aside like they were skanky, drunken, one-night stands he picked up at a Blue Oyster Cult concert when he was blotto and woke up to a fifty-three year old woman who’d been drinking a bottle of vodka for breakfast and smoking three packs of cigarettes a day since she was thirteen.”

  Chace’s body was shaking, his mouth was grinning and his voice held a deep tremor of humor when he remarked, “That’s quite a description.”

  “I read so I have a vivid imagination,” I explained.

  “No,” he replied quietly, his voice holding a different kind of tremor that sent a thrill gliding over my skin. “You’re Faye so you’re cute.”

  “There’s also that,” I said, going for breezily but it came out wheezily.

  His hand shot out, hooked me behind my neck and I found my body moving toward his as my eyes stayed glued to his until they were forced to close when his head descended and his mouth touched mine.

  As fast as it happened, his hand clenched into my neck, guiding me back to settle on my stool and he let me go.

  But the beautiful tingle of his lips brushing mine remained.

  He took a bite, chewed and swallowed. I sawed off a bite, put it in my mouth, chewed, swallowed then went after my wineglass.

  “So Jude’s good?” Chace took us back.

  I nodded, returned my glass to the counter, grabbed my pizza crust, gnawed off a bite and looked to him to see he was reaching for another slice.

  I swallowed and kept sharing.

  “He took to the Army. Called Dad, they had a man to man heart to heart and Jude explained stuff to him. Apparently, Jude needed discipline. He really likes it. He wants to be career Army. Non-com officer. And we’re not talking Corporal but a Sergeant Major. He’s really into it. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Dad did a stint in the Marines, was really proud of it and talked about it all the time while we were growing up. Jude was big into sports so he knew how to be on a team, follow the lead from a coach but still be a leader within the team. I guess his last rebellion was joining the Army, not the Marines but Dad isn’t complaining.”

  I took another bite of crust as Chace asked quietly, “You worry about him?”

  I shook my head while chewing and swallowing and answered, “Funny, less now than I did before. Before, he didn’t have a squad of brothers at his back. Now he does. That doesn’t mean I don’t worry but I’m happy Jude found something he’s into, a place he fits, a place he belongs. So I focus on that.”

  “Smart,” Chace muttered and I gave him a small grin and went back to my crust.

  Chace fell silent and I did too. This had the unfortunate effect of making my mind wander. Where it wandered to was that he stated plainly he hated his Dad and he also immediately jumped all over helping the boy. I worried there was a correlation there and I worried through half my second slice.

  “Gone quiet,” Chace murmured and I pulled in breath, put my cutlery down, grabbed my wineglass and looked at him.

  Before taking a sip, I asked, “The cameras, Chace, a good idea but does CPD usually expend those kinds of resources for an unknown kid they don’t know what’s happening to him?”

  “Feed tapes will go to the interns because they need shit to do. Cameras are not CPD’s. They’re a buddy of mine’s. So it isn’t CPD resources being used since they aren’t paying the interns.”

  “You seem to be going all out for a boy you don’t know,” I noted quietly and cautiously as I set my glass aside and his eyes came to me.

  Then his body turned to me.

  “So are you,” he noted back quietly.

  “Dad says, a wrong is just wrong no matter who’s doing it or who it’s done to. If you know someone’s doing wrong, you do what you can to right it. If you don’t, you’re no kind of person he’d want to know. And I want to be the kind of person my Dad wants to know.”

  “Right,” he replied but said no more.

  “So that’s why I’m doing it. Why are you?”

  His brows went up slightly and he answered, “Faye, honey, I’m a cop.”

  “But you’re going all out,” I reminded him. “Are things, um… slow at the Station or something?”

  He grinned, leaned slightly toward me and said, “No. I’ll admit, I’m not goin’ all out for this kid just because I’m a cop. I’m doin’ it because it means somethin’ to the town’s pretty librarian.”

  I held my breath as my heart fluttered and Ella Mae started singing in my ear.

  “Now,” he continued, “what I’d like to know is what you were really asking.”

  Laurie said care, honesty, generosity and forgiveness.

  I didn’t know if what I was going to ask fit into any of those except “honesty” but I hoped it also fit into “care”.

  “You hate your Dad,” I said gently.

  He shook his head, leaned closer and put a hand to my leg, sliding it up so his pinkie pressed against the bend in my hip and I tried to focus on his words and not his warm hand on me or where it was when he spoke.

  “My Dad’s a dick. Lookin’ back at my life, he was hard on me, too hard, hard in a way I’d never be to a kid but I was not mentally abused. He’s got a way he sees life and men and how they conduct themselves and we do not see eye to eye on that. That’s okay when you’re a kid. But when your son starts becomin’ a man and he doesn’t do one fuckin’ thing to lose your respect, you should give it to him including respecting the points of view he’s developing and the ways he’s beginning to look at the world. My Dad didn’t do that. He wanted me to be who he wanted me to be and refused to accept anything else. I guess I’m like him in that way because I refused to be anything else but the man I wanted to be. This meant we clashed. I skipped a grade and left for college when I was seventeen. Never went home again for more than a week or two, even for summers, found jobs that would take me away. This was because he never quit pushin’ it. I never quit pushin’ back.”

  “That doesn’t sound fun,” I whispered because it really didn’t and I didn’t like it that he grew up like that.

  “It wasn’t,” he agreed.

  “I’m sorry.” I kept whispering.

  “I am too,” he replied then carried on. “Got worse as I got older because he never got over it. He hated me bein’ a cop. Still does. Came to visit in order to tell me just that. Not regular but more than once and once was one time too many. Life happens, shit happens and it came to my attention more of the man he is and it’s not good. He cheats on my Mom. He does it repeatedly. He’s done it since the beginning. I�
�m not down with that.”

  I pressed my lips together to hold back the words that hit the tip of my tongue and Chace, exhibiting again he could read my mind, read it.

  I knew this when his hand went away from my leg but only to go under my stool and yank it his way, twisting at the same time so I was facing him. Then he pulled his stool closer to me, his legs splayed wide so they surrounded mine, his hands came to either side of my neck and he pulled me to him so our faces were close.

  I put my hands on his (very hard, fraking heck) thighs because I didn’t know what to do with them then I didn’t have to think about it because he spoke. When he did, he did it quiet, gentle, honest, scary and sad.

  “Things go good between us, one day I’ll share in full about all the shit that’s gone down with me including me and Misty. But you live in this town, it’s a small town and it is not lost on me that people talk and a lot of that talk the last six years has been about me and Misty. What you have to know now, us startin’ out, knowin’ or thinkin’ what you do about me and her and how I behaved, wonderin’ if you wanna take a chance on me is that I didn’t love her. I married her because I had to and it’s gonna sound whacked and confusing as all fuckin’ hell but I did it to protect my mother. Misty knew, goin’ in, because I told her, that I had no intention of being a husband to her in any way.”

  His fingers gave my neck a squeeze and he leaned even closer to me before he kept going.

  “Any way, baby. We didn’t sleep in the same bed. I didn’t kiss her good morning or goodnight. We didn’t eat dinner together. I didn’t tell her when I was goin’ or when I’d come home. I didn’t make love to her, not once after we were married. Before it, I had her but what we did was never makin’ love. There’s a difference and she never got that from me. I told her straight up our marriage was a piece of paper. She wanted that out of the deal she bargained for and she got it. But she didn’t get me. As far as I was concerned, she was a roommate I didn’t like much.”

  When he stopped talking, I felt it necessary to comment so I did.