Kristen Ashley - Breathe

In other words, he saw sheets because Faye wasn’t in bed with him.

He sat up and turned in order to angle out of bed but stilled when he saw her on her couch. She was wearing his sweater, her knees to her chest under it, stretching it out. She had on a pair of bulky, thick socks. Her neck was twisted, her chin resting on her arm which she had laid along the back of the couch, her eyes aimed out the window lit by the first kiss of dawn.

She looked her usual cute but he also saw something in her profile he’d seen on her face before, once. Something he saw years ago. Something he didn’t remember until he saw it just then.

It was one of the few times they’d been in the same place at the same time and she’d caught his eyes for brief seconds before she quickly looked away then moved away.

It was right after he’d married Misty.

It was sorrow.

The memory, what he now knew it meant and her look sliced through him like a blade just as her head turned and her eyes caught on him.

She bent her neck, rested her cheek to her knee but held his gaze.

“I love this town,” she whispered.

“Come back to bed,” he whispered back.

“Lived in it most my life, left to get educated, came back as quick as I could.”

“Back to bed, honey.”

“I want to go places, see things, do things but always come right back here.”

“Bed, darlin’.”

“You saved this town.” She kept whispering and he felt his entire body get tight.

“Faye, baby, come back to bed.”

“I don’t know what secrets you hold but whatever they are, I’ll always believe you saved my town.”

“Come to bed, Faye, or I’ll come and get you.”

“You need to save him, Chace.” She was still whispering, her cheeks getting red and not because she was embarrassed but because she was fighting emotion.

Chace was done.

He threw back the covers, stalked to her, plucked her out of the couch and carried her back to bed. He planted her in it, joined her there, pulled the covers over them and gathered her in his arms.

She shoved her face in his chest and one of her hands under his body so both of her arms could close around him tight.

“If he loses his hands –” her voice was thick, scratchy, hard to hear.

“Stop it,” he ordered gruffly.

She sucked in a breath that broke and Chace pulled her closer.

Last night, Sondra and Silas had still been at Faye’s when he got there because they’d arrived minutes before. They all shared a drink and talked quietly in Faye’s seating area before her parents felt comfortable with the state of their girl and left him to see to her.

Close, long hugs were exchanged between Faye and her Mom and Dad. Chace got a shorter one, but a close one, from Sondra and a firm handshake with a couple claps on the arm from Silas.

After they left, Chace had poured Faye another glass of wine and opened himself another beer and she’d interrogated him about what he found and where it was.

He’d told her nothing and, as she kept at it, reiterated she didn’t need to know.

When she gave up, she did it by looking in his eyes and saying quietly, “I already know just because you won’t tell me.”

She likely didn’t and therefore he was glad she gave up.

He got her another drink. To relax her and in an effort to perk her up, he told her he’d watch the show she’d been begging him to watch.

It worked. She gave him a small smile and even acted a little excited as she sorted out the TV. She also fell asleep halfway through the episode.

Chace, however, didn’t. Luckily she fell asleep before he had to admit that, although it had an edge of geek, the show about two brothers who were on a self-appointed mission to save the world from a variety of phantoms, demons and monsters, whose best friends were an angel who wore a trench coat and a redneck who always wore a beat up baseball cap, wasn’t all that bad.

She woke slightly when he moved to take them to bed. So she groggily got ready and joined him there then slid straight back into sleep, curled close.

Chace didn’t follow her for long hours.

Now was now, Chace holding Faye in his arms while she struggled against tears.

He tipped his chin down and against her hair told her, “Honey, let it go. Nothin’ wrong with tears.”

“If he wakes up, I don’t want him to see my eyes red and face blotchy,” she replied, her voice still thick which meant her throat was still clogged.

“When he wakes up, Faye, all he’s gonna see is pretty. Trust me, he’s a guy, I’m a guy, that’s all we see.”

She shook her head as best she could seeing as her face was in his chest then she tilted her head back and caught his eyes with her brightened ones.

“Stop being sweet,” she whispered.

Never, he thought, caught in her crystal blue eyes.

He pulled her up so they were face to face.

Then he offered her an out.

“You want something to think of, not the vast pile of shit that all of this is?”

“Please,” she answered softly.

“I don’t know his story. I don’t know who his people are. How he got where he is and how he is. I also don’t care. We gotta think about how we’re gonna engineer this situation so he goes from where he is now to somethin’ good. I don’t mean possibly well meaning foster carers because there could be a ‘possibly’ in that. I mean somethin’ good. That goes without saying that if CPS gets him and can’t place him in foster care, he doesn’t go to a fuckin’ home for boys.”

Her entire face brightened and she stated immediately, “I’ll take care of him.”

Chace knew he’d get that.

So carefully, gently, he told her, “That isn’t going to happen.”

“Chace –”

“Faye,” he cut her off, “I’m a cop on a recently cleaned up local police force. I can finesse this but I gotta use that finesse above-board in a way questions won’t be asked and that kid gets what he needs. And, baby, I know you’d give him what he needs but right now you do not have the ability to do that since you live in a one room apartment over a flower shop.”

Her nose scrunched up because this point was valid but she didn’t like it.

She still gave into it.

“Right.”

“I got room but I’m also a single man who’s got a girlfriend who spends the night and, I’ll repeat, the finesse I gotta use has gotta be above-board so I can’t just take a kid under my wing without goin’ through certain motions. And my sleepover girlfriend might be frowned upon if I do.”

“Mom and Dad,” she said immediately.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Or Krystal and Bubba or Tate and Laurie.”

“Or Boyd and Liza,” she threw in.

“Right, or Sunny and Shambles,” he suggested.

“We need to make calls,” she whispered.

“We need to make calls.”

“Who first?” she asked.

“Your Mom and Dad.”

She grinned, the sorrow shifting totally out of her face. “They’ll say yes.”

He already knew that.

“Yeah,” he murmured.

Her grin turned into a smile. “They’ll be great with him and we can see him all the time.”

He knew that too.

“Yeah,” he repeated.

“I’ll call them now.”

He twisted his neck, looked at her alarm clock then looked at her.

“It’s just going six thirty.”

“They’ll be up.”

“Will they be up and in the disposition to discuss takin’ on a kid when they not too long ago got their house all to themselves?”

“Yes,” she replied immediately.

He figured that was true too.

“Give me a kiss then grab the phone.”

She smiled even bigger so he felt it on her lips when she gave him her mouth.

When he broke the kiss, she moved in to give him another light one before she rolled out of his arms and reached for the phone.

Chace rolled out of bed and moved to the bathroom.

By the time he walked out, she was sitting at the side of her bed, off the phone, her dancing eyes came direct to him and her mouth moved.

“They said yes.”

Then she smiled big.

Chace smiled back.

Then he walked to the kitchen and made his girl breakfast.

“Chace, I get you but I haven’t had time to assess the situation fully yet. What I already know –” Karena Papadakis started.

She was a Child Welfare Officer and she was standing with Chace outside the Critical Care Ward.

“He’s a deacon at the church,” Chace cut her off to say. “She designs the Sunday programs. He mows the church lawn. Seriously, Karena, Sondra Goodknight won’t even let her twenty-nine year old daughter say ‘frak’, a made up curse word from a Sci-Fi TV show. They’ll do good by this kid.”

He’d already told her he wanted her to place Malachi with the Goodknights and she was rightly and not surprisingly balking due to procedure.

“They’re older,” Karena replied quietly.

“Yeah. They are. Which means they’ve already raised three kids so they know what they’re doin’. One of those kids is the Mom of two boys. One’s the town librarian who has a Master’s Degree. The last one’s in the Army serving our country,” Chace returned.

“They don’t have foster certification,” she told him.

“Then get it for them,” he told her.

“It would require home visits, foster parent classes –” she began.

“The state he’s in, Karena, he’s not gonna be discharged tomorrow,” Chace pointed out. “You have time and what you already know about that kid and the more you’ll find out, I know you, you’ll bust your hump to fast-track it.”

He was not wrong about this. There were people who found jobs. Karena Papadakis found her calling. Her caseload wasn’t exactly light but it also wasn’t what a person in a similar position in a city would be. This gave her plenty of time to do her job the way she’d probably break her back to do it even if her caseload was double. And that was, with care.