Kristen Ashley - Breathe

Fuck. The kid was killing him.

“Good,” Chace muttered back, his voice thick.

Miah held on. Chace did too.

Then Miah whispered, “Your hair.”

Chace opened his eyes. “What buddy?”

Miah leaned back but didn’t let go, looked up at Chace with his red eyes and kept whispering, “Your hair. Lion’s hair.”

Chace didn’t get it but forced his own smile and replied quietly, “Okay.”

Miah let him go, Chace’s arms dropped away, Miah’s chin quivered but his eyes didn’t waver from Chace’s when he whispered, “You’re my Aslan.”

Aslan.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Holy fuck.

The words like a sock in the gut, Chace’s chest got tight and he crouched in front of Miah saying the only word he could think to say, “Buddy.”

“I’m gonna be Peter.” Miah was still whispering.

“Good choice,” Chace whispered back, forcing it through the sting in his throat.

They held each other’s gazes, Chace having no fucking clue what to say or do.

Then Miah whispered, “’Bye, Aslan.”

Holy fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“’Bye, Peter,” Chace whispered back.

Chace watched him pull in breath, look up at Faye then he turned and walked to his grandparents.

Chace moved to straighten and barely got his feet when Faye was in his space, her front pressed to his side, her arms wrapped tight around his middle. He slid an arm around her shoulders, Silas and Sondra moved close and they watched Miah, Becky and their family get into their cars.

They called good-byes, they waved and they stood in Silas and Sondra’s front drive and watched as they drove off and they kept watching until there was nothing to watch anymore.

Faye moved first and when she did it was to get up on her toes and find his ear.

“Told you that you were a hero,” she whispered and Chace closed his eyes but she wasn’t done. “I’m not the only one who thinks so, Aslan.”

He turned into her, pulling her fully into his arms and burying his face in her neck.

He held tight.

She returned the favor.

They felt Silas and Sondra silently move away.

As he held her, feeling her body rock quietly with her tears, her wet hitting his neck, he held strong but he knew she could feel his own wet against the skin of hers.

And he didn’t give a fuck.

I barreled up the steps and didn’t bother inserting the key because I knew Chace was inside my apartment already.

I threw the door open, saw him in my kitchen, head tipped back taking a long draw from a bottle of beer and, as his eyes slid to me around the bottle, his chin dipping down, I shouted, “It’s a girl!”

He dropped the bottle and asked, “What?”

I slammed the door, raced to him and threw myself in is arms with such force, he rocked back on a foot.

“It’s a girl. A girl! Lexie and Ty had a little girl. Her name’s Ella Alexi!” I cried, jumping up and down, taking him with me since my arms were around him and one of his was around me.

He grinned down at me, muttering, “Good news, darlin’.”

“The best!” I exclaimed as I stopped jumping. “Ten fingers. Ten toes. Krys says she’s got black fuzz on her head, already full of curls. I bet she’s adorable.”

“I bet.” Chace kept muttering through his grin.

I shook him in my arms and shared, “I can’t wait to meet her.”

Chace was still grinning and muttering when he replied, “I bet that too.”

“Krys says half-price tequila shots in celebration,” I informed him.

“Only Krystal would celebrate the birth of a child with half-price tequila shots,” Chace noted and I smiled into his face because this was crazy, hilarious and true.

“Can we go?” I asked.

“Drink tequila?” Chace asked back.

“Yeah.”

“You drink tequila?”

“No.”

“Ever?”

“Um… maybe twice in college but, since then, no,” I told him.

“Then… yeah. Absolutely.”

I felt my brows draw together at his weird, firm answer. “Absolutely?”

“Baby, you happy and drunk, your place a couple of blocks from Bubba’s and your bed ten feet from the front door, the answer to that is yeah… absolutely.”

I felt my womb contract and bit back my suggestion that Chace, as he’d be buying since he wouldn’t let me, should hit the ATM prior to us going out.

Instead, I got up on my toes, touched my mouth to his and moved away while asking, “Dinner first?”

“Yep,” Chace answered. “What’re we having?”

I opened the door of the fridge and pulled out the packet of hamburger, replying, “Packet tacos.”

“Works for me,” he muttered.

I set to work while Chace got me a glass of wine. Then I kept working while Chace sat on my counter and I took sips of wine and I told him my other good news.

“Library Board called. I have a meeting with them next week. The Town Council has allocated more funding to the library and they’ve told me when we get it we’ll get new computers and they’re giving me a ten percent salary adjustment.”

“Not on par with Lexie and Ty havin’ a healthy baby girl but still, good news, honey,” Chace commented, I looked to him and gave him a big smile since he was also smiling at me then I turned my attention back to the taco meat.

“Faye,” he called when the meat was browned and I’d added the water and seasoning.

I looked back to him. “Yeah?”

“Turn it down,” he ordered and I dipped my ear to my shoulder.

“What?”

“Come here.” He kept ordering and my head straightened.

“We’re close. I just have to slice the lettuce and tomato,” I told him.

“In a minute, turn it down, we got a problem.”

Oh jeez.

I didn’t like this.

We hadn’t had a problem in a while.

It was Saturday, three weeks and then some since we’d met Becky.

Miah and Becky were back in Wyoming and, from daily reports, they were settling in, doing fine, seeing a local counselor and bonding with their grandparents as well as their aunts, uncles and cousins. They were living with their Mom’s parents with their Dad’s visiting daily. In fact, they had dinner together every night.

This meant the kids were surrounded all the time by people who loved them and showed it.

Good stuff.

Miah was still reading and doing a lot of it and I knew this because he called at least once a week to tell me what he read, what he thought about it, what he was planning on reading next and asking my thoughts on what he should add to his list to be read. He was still also playing his video games and I knew this because he called Chace at least once a week to talk to him about the games, his scores and other boy to man stuff.

At first it was weird getting used to a communicative Miah. But since he pulled his thumb out of the dam, there was a lot to flood through. It was like there was never a time when he didn’t speak. He could gab for half an hour nonstop and if he was really excited about something, that shone through.

He seemed to be really excited about a lot of things and that way regularly.

Great stuff.

I missed him. Mom and Dad missed him. Chace missed him. But it was clear he was flourishing. So that helped us to be able to cope with missing him.

Anyway, we were all planning on taking a week’s vacation to drive up there and spend some time with them. This was my idea and I wasn’t certain how Chace would feel, our first vacation together, spending it with my parents, a couple of kids and four people we didn’t know very well.

Chace thought it was great idea with one caveat.

“We get a hotel room, baby, in a hotel where you’re parents aren’t staying.”

Apparently, there would be other activities during our vacation.

Hotel room sex with Chace. Another something new.

Another something to look forward to.

More good that had happened was that Mary Eglund had slunk away, resigning from the City Council after her sister’s felonious activities had become public knowledge and, already disliked, she was now reviled. This was because she, one of the only people to have contact with Enid Eglund, didn’t see her sister’s insanity and do something about it or find she was abusing two kids whose mother her sister murdered. But instead she spent her time being annoying and telling people how to live their lives when she should have been taking care of family business.

Rumor had it her house was on the market.

She wouldn’t be much of a loss to the community.

Her sister, on the other hand, was currently enjoying her stay in a hospital for the criminally insane somewhere in Wyoming. I didn’t like this, Chace didn’t either. What she did to those kids, I felt, deserved worse punishment.

But there was no denying she was seriously, fraking ‘round the bend. She’d been deemed unfit to stand trial and pretty much fit for nothing but loads of meds and incarceration amongst a bunch of other folks who were as tripped out as she was.

I didn’t like it but I didn’t dwell. She was locked away, perhaps not the way I’d prefer but she was still locked away and no longer a threat to anyone.

So there it was.

Onward from the slightly bad was further good.

Valerie had spent the weekend before visiting and except for a couple of times where she got nervous and fidgety, these being when she first met my parents when they came over to Chace’s for dinner, it had been a really good weekend.