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.