Breathe Read Online Free PDF Page B

read exasperation.
    Laurie gave me a grin.
    As for me, I was not ever, ever going to kiss Chace Keaton.
    Not until he kissed me.
    If that should ever (please God!) happen.
    Lexie kept speaking as that thought gave me a pleasant shiver.
    “Now, I’m a girl and you’re a girl, we’re all girls.” She lifted a hand and did a twirl to indicate Krystal and Laurie. “And it’s my sworn duty as a girl not to lead you down the wrong path, especially in matters of the heart. But I’ll tell you again what I’ve been telling you now for months. Chace Keaton is into you. Not just into you. Into you in a hungry heart, longing, soul destroying if you can’t have it, put your life on the line to get it kind of into you.”
    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 fucked 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.