Holding Her Breath (Indigo) Read Free Page A

for the photo of her grandparents on their wedding day. The photo that he and Kelly’s mom had spent hours digging through old shoeboxes full of photos to find. The perfect prelude to a New Year’s Eve or a Valentine’s Day proposal. He hadn’t yet decided which. Now he wouldn’t have to.
    Kelly cleared her throat, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Amy is coming over to help me pack. I want to get out tonight. Make this as quick and painless as possible.”
    Chace had to laugh. “This isn’t ripping a bandage off a scratch, Kelly. Nothing about this is quick and painless.”
    “Don’t. This is already hard enough.” She walked over and put a hand on his shoulder.
    He shrugged away from her. “Don’t touch me. Ever. Again.”
    “I do lo—”
    “I swear, if you say it? I’ll put my fist through a wall,” Chace said, standing up and walking over to the wall near the balcony as if readying himself to carry out his threat.
    Kelly ran a hand through her long brown hair, settling it back behind her shoulders. There was a knock at the door. Kelly went to answer it. Chace folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall.
    Kelly opened the door and a petite blonde with a round face and short hair walked into the room. Kelly’s friend, Amy. She dragged two boxes in with her that were almost bigger than she was.
    “Hi, Chace.” Amy gave him a sympathetic smile. The kind of smile you’d give someone if they’d lost their best friend.
    “Hey,” Chace said, kicking at the carpet with the toe of his gray sock.
    Kelly took the boxes from her and set them on the couch. “Did you bring more?”
    “Yeah, there are some more in my car. I brought those crates you asked about, too. I found them in my garage.” Amy handed her car keys to Kelly.
    Kelly nodded and headed out of the door.
    Amy walked over to him. She twisted her wedding ring around her finger and looked up at him and down at it alternately. The look she gave him reeked of guilt. Amy was the only person who knew Chace had planned to ask Kelly to marry him.
    “Did you know?” he asked.
    “I knew about him, but she told me that it was over.” Amy looked over her shoulder. “She said she’d broken up with him for the last time, and she was all about you. Otherwise, I would have told you when you told me you were going to ask her to marry you. I swear.” She looked up at him with pleading brown eyes, as if willing him to believe her.
    Chace nodded, letting his brown hair fall into his eyes as he looked down at the carpet.
    “She told me this morning that he told her he couldn’t live without her. That if leaving his wife was what it took to get her back, he was going to have to do it. I’m sorry.”
    He looked across the room. “Yeah. Me, too.”
    “Really, you’re better off not being in this mess.” Amy put a hand on his arm.
    “Would have been nice to have a warning about the kind of mess I was in.”
    “I couldn’t—I couldn’t say anything. Kelly made me promise. We’ve been friends since first grade.”
    He nodded, swallowing thickly. He knew it wasn’t Amy’s fault. The one he really needed to blame was downstairs getting boxes out of Amy’s car. He walked over to the bar counter that bordered the kitchen and slipped on his shoes. He grabbed his keys from the counter.
    “Where are you going?”
    He shrugged. “Somewhere. I can’t be here and watch you two pack up her things.”
    “But what if we don’t know what belongs to who?”
    “She can take whatever she wants. She’s already taken the most important thing anyway,” Chace said. He shuffled toward the front door. He grabbed his coat from the back of the sofa on his way there.
    “I’ll text you when we’re done.”
    Chace shrugged and walked out to the breezeway. When he heard Kelly’s high-heeled black leather boots clicking past, he didn’t even look up.
    “I still want us to be friends,” Kelly said.
    Chace kept walking, pretending she hadn’t just