Keep Breathing

by Alexia Purdy

  I waited, unsure of what he was getting at. The music from the carousel filled the air around us as the Ferris wheel continued its endless spinning. I was ready to get off, and as we crested the top once again, the atmosphere seemed to be void of air. He always could steal my breath away, and tonight, he was still doing what he did best.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never thought my actions through. You were this perfect woman, and I made mistake after mistake with you. I should’ve held you closer, held you so tight you’d never slip away or want to let go. You have to know that if I could do it again… I would. Not a day goes by that I don’t see your face in my mind and wish I could tell you this. So many times I’ve pretended to say these words to you, hoping that when the day came, I’d be ready.”

  We passed the loading platform, and the Ferris wheel slowed. It was finally over, and they were letting the riders off one chair at time. We’d have to go all the way around again to get back to the platform and exit the chair. From the way the minutes ticked by, it was going to be a long ride around. I pondered just how tragic of a landing I’d have if I jumped off.

  “Seth?”

  “Yes?”

  “What the hell do you want from me?”

  He looked stunned and a little bit more awake from his previously glazed-over look. This made me feel a wee bit sorry for him, but it served him right. Wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve can be a violent, rough ride.

  “I−I….”

  “You said you’re sorry. Okay. Fine. I can respect that. Once we get off this ride, we go on with our lives, and your torment ends. I’m so happy for you.”

  Seth blinked back at me. Confusion swam across his handsome face. His hair was a bit messy from sweating in the heat all day, and my fingers itched to run through his locks. If only he hadn’t screwed it all up, where would we have been?

  The summers in Las Vegas were nothing to joke about. The dusk was a welcome relief from the endless broiler of the sun’s heat. It made some of his spiky blonde hair lay flat in spots, in disarray. Somehow it made him look almost harmless, like a wet dog in need of shelter or a swift hosing off.

  I shook off the caretaker in me. Why did I always do this to myself? Every time someone looked helpless or in need, I was there, picking up the pieces, making it all right. No, not this time. Hell no!

  With a swift movement, his hand was on my wrist, gripping it firmly but not hard. His eyes looked focused, sobered up from whatever fantasy he’d been living in his mind. I was now feeling more aware of his seriousness, like life or death depended on what he was going to say next.

  “Penny, I want another chance. I’ll make it right, I swear. You’ll never be sorry if you give me another chance to love you the way you deserve. I won’t be the fool this time. I’ll be there, no matter what the cost. I swear it.”

  I stopped tugging my arm back, his words shocking me like an ice bath. “What?”

  The sounds of people laughing and the clinks of rings against glass bottles hammered in my head. A headache was growing, and I desperately wanted to hop off this hunk of metal junk ride. In fact, my chest felt like a fire was consuming every bit of oxygen surrounding me. There was no air, and I was afraid I was going to suffocate.

  “Hey.”

  Glancing up, I felt his fingers encase my hand softly and begin stroking my skin. It sent tiny little prickles of pleasure up my arm, melting into my chest as I slowly inhaled. The Ferris wheel jerked again, finally bringing us to the platform. The operator yanked up the metal bar, the steel creaking from a lack of lubricant. Seth jumped out, turned back and offered his hand to help me out. I took it, but not because I couldn’t get out by myself, but because I was still processing every single word he’d spoken. My mind was a jumbled mess, and I needed to think.

  “I−I can’t do this…”

  How does one think when there’s a walking contradiction standing in front of them? My first thought was that I had to turn away and run as fast as I could like a spooked rabbit. Get gone.

  Seth Kingston had bested me once more, and he didn’t even know it.

  Chapter Two

  Seth

  I WATCHED HER walking away, shoving back a stubborn strand of her glossy brown hair. Penny Weldings…the one and only woman I’d ever loved. Even though her reaction was expected, it drove a tiny splinter into my chest. Try as it must, I was still elated to see her again after so long.

  Joss had eyed me suspiciously, making her distaste so clear, I was sweating under her tepid glare. Leah broke up the tension with a simple squeal as she pointed toward the cotton candy stand and promptly dragged her livid mother away. Relieved, I’d turned toward Penny and found her following swiftly behind them, tossing nervous glances back.

  Well…It’d gone better than I’d expected.

  Standing alone in the middle of a crowd filled fair should’ve felt lonely, but I didn’t care. A smile crept up the sides of my lips, and I couldn’t have felt more elated. If there was ever a time I would actually say I believed in fate, this would be it. How much more obvious could it get that I had to see Penny again? She hadn’t changed in the six years since I’d left. The hard look she’d given me as I’d hopped onto the Ferris wheel had been worth it to see her gorgeous face again. I’d dreamed of it a million times, but nothing compared to seeing it in the flesh. The only thing that’d changed was the sad and haunted look looming behind her dark chocolate eyes.

  I should’ve been there to keep such despair from gracing her soul. It was supposed to be me holding her tight in the darkness of night to spare her the pain which accompanied the dulled spark in her eyes.

  A slow, steaming anger bubbled inside me, and I clenched my fists tight. I kept my eyes on the trio as they disappeared around the vendor stall, longing to have joined them. Even the tiniest things such as sharing cotton candy would’ve been better than standing here alone, without her pretty face to stare at anymore.

  I let out a low, tired groan and turned back toward the looming Ferris wheel. It was already turning again, and I could hear the chatter of its passengers as they flew by. My fingers eased, and I relaxed as my thoughts wandered back to Penny’s thin frame sitting so close to me on the worn cushion of the ride’s carriages. What would I’ve given to have taken another ride around in that chipped metal thing, just to have the enticing scent of honeysuckle and citrus waft about me again. It was the same shampoo scent I remembered smelling in my pillows in the early morning hours after she’d raced out of my place to head to home and change for work. The very one which had remained embedded in the pillowcases after we’d split, and the long nights without her brought me nothing, but regret.

  So here I was, walking past the game stalls and around the port-a-potties alike until I reached the exit line where the constant barrage of screaming children, popcorn and corndogs hit me like a freight train. My head hurt with the strain of flipping through all the wrong which had happened between us, so long ago.

  Everything had changed. I wasn’t the same man who’d left Penny utterly devastated as I snapped her heart like an insignificant pretzel. Dodging a large family trying to wrestle a three year old into his stroller as he screeched about wanting a lollipop, I made my way past the barricades before spilling into the parking lot.

  As I slipped into my rental car, I sat in the growing darkness as the sun set over the western mountains. The heat was making me sweat, and my skin stuck to the rubbery pleather seats. Cranking the engine and slamming the AC onto full blast. I closed my eyes as the air turned frigid, and I could feel the salt crystalize on my skin. Penny was different now too, changed and hard with walls higher than the Alps built carefully around her heart and watertight.

  It was going to be a job to break my way back into her life. She’d be fighting me the whole way through, I could already tell, kicking and screaming.

  Would she even consider giving me another try? I gripped the steering wheel until my fingers turned white and flipped on the lights before reve
rsing out of my employee parking spot, courtesy of the permit my cousin had given me for helping him out with his Fairgrounds business now and then. I’d give anything, anything to have her in my life again. She’d been worth her weight in gold, and I’d let her go. So foolish I’d been, so young and stupid.

  As I drove through the hot summer streets of Las Vegas, watching the tourists get drunk and holler at the passing pedestrians as I made my way home. I swore I’d do everything I could to win her back, no matter how long it took. We needed each other, that was already obvious.

  It was going to be one heck of a battle.

  Chapter Three

  Penny

  Several Years ago…

  ONCE UPON A time, I’d fallen in love with the wrong person. He had caught my eye in French class, of all places, during my freshman year of college. I’d already taken four years of French in high school, but figured it’d be an easy A, so I might as well kick back and enjoy myself. Still, I didn’t want to fail my first semester, so this was an obvious choice to cover my international culture requirement.

  Seth Kingston had slipped quietly into the empty chair next to me as I shuffled my binder and pens around. The room was filled with long, white laminate tables, separated into two distinct sections with a worn, carpeted path down the middle to the front board. I remember glancing at him in my peripheral vision, observing how light his blonde hair was, almost as if it had been bleached either by chemicals or by a long, hot summer under the blazing sun. Not a trace of sunburn could be found across his smooth skin, but he wasn’t as pale as some of the guys in the room. Most never saw daylight, having spent the summer before the start of the semester avoiding responsibility and holed up in their rooms or apartments, playing video games and eating munchies.

  Not Seth, though. He’d spend summers at some beach, any would do. His twinkling, indigo eyes studied every crevice in the room and hovered over every face. I was pretty sure he’d memorized everyone’s features in mere seconds, including mine, when I realized he was staring right back at me.

  I flicked my eyes away from his handsome face as fast as I could and bore them into the whiteboard at the front just as the teacher, Ms. Andrews, made her way to the podium. Heat rose, rushing across my face and making the sweat seep from my body. Still feeling the weight of his eyes on me, I shuffled my folders and pens, hoping to look much too busy to be affected by the most perfect specimen of a man I’d ever seen.

  You can imagine how little I heard that first day. It was sheer torture sitting through the endless drone of the teacher’s monotonous voice as she went through the syllabus and spoke French as much as possible, forcing the room to repeat the rolling r’s and use our tongues in ways the English language had no use for. Maybe that was why I loved French so much. It was romantic and sensual in the way it made you use your lips, sway your tongue and made one want to flit the hands into the air.

  It was a fine distraction from Seth, whose name I’d finally gotten to know when Ms. Andrews forced each one of us to introduce ourselves and stand up to the absolute attention of the crowded room, like we were still in middle school or something. Apparently she was the only French teacher at this college, so her classes were jam-packed. The more the merrier. It just meant there were probably twice as many eyes studying the sweat stains on my back than there’d been in my high school classes.

  Never had I ever been so relieved to watch the clock tick to the eleven o’clock hour. Class was only an hour long, but it had felt like an eternity to me. Rushing toward the door only found me caught up in the clog of students trying to escape just as fast as I’d wanted to. The funnel kept me in the room longer, long enough to feel a sharp tap on my shoulder.

  I’d spun around to come face to face with mister dream guy. His eyes looked mischievous while his smile made me wish I had put on more makeup and spent more time in front of the mirror, curling my hair. It was arresting, like time had frozen, as I was slowly pushed along with the crowd toward the hall. His body hovered way too close. In fact, the warmth seeped through my clothes as he bumped into me, pressing his rock-hard body to mine. The people behind him weren’t that patient either and continued to push at us as we inched along. I could’ve died. His breath was caressing along my neck, sending sweet little slivers of pleasure down my spine.

  “You dropped this.”

  I managed to turn and hurried to lower my eyes to his hand. I’d wanted to avoid the embarrassing flush of red which was sure to rush to my face if I’d looked him in the eyes. He’d held out a pink ribbon pen, one I’d bought that morning from a neighbor’s daughter who’d been selling them for breast cancer research. Who can turn down a charity, right? Not me. Especially not since she’d been a Girl Scout, with her gleaming white teeth smiling and wearing her Scouting best threads. I was a sucker for their cookies, too, so that wasn’t any help.

  “Thank you.” I slipped my fingers over the end of the pen, softly grazing his hand as I’d plucked it away from his grasp. I’d felt his eyes as they took me in, as if they already knew me well. I’d made the error to meet his stare right on and couldn’t shake the feeling like I’d stared into those same eyes a thousand times before. This uneasiness made me shiver again, and I had to avert my eyes to even attempt to catch my breath. His closeness had made the air dangerously thin, and my anxiety had slowly slipped from control. All with one meager look in his direction. So gone…so gone…

  “You’re most welcome. You’re Penny, right?” A faded foreign accent framed his words as he spoke, perking up my interest in this guy. Couldn’t hurt to engage in a bit of small talk, right? He was definitely the kind of guy I’d want to know more about. But guys like him were never interested in me. So what would make this any different?

  “Yes. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name….” My brain had decided to freeze in its synapses, sending my tongue tripping over anymore words.

  “Seth Kingston. It’s actually Sasha Seth Kingston, but I thought Seth would be more accepted here.”

  I nodded, relaxing as I let my smile take over. He was dreamy, in every sense of the word. He had a slender build with a touch of huskiness which made me want to run my fingers down his chest, across what probably was a six pack stomach under that cream-colored thermal shirt. It hugged his build quite nicely, and I gulped as I tried to pay attention to walking straight. Faded jeans hung snug at his hips, but were the loose, relaxed fit. He made them look good, that was a definite. I ripped my gaze away from his body, hoping he hadn’t caught me studying him too long. I could feel my long brown hair clinging to my neck, and I wished with every fiber of my being that I had pulled it back into a pony tail. It was darn right unbearably hot with him so close.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too.” His eyes twinkled, like topaz gems teasing their precious intentions. “Hey, I’m pretty new in town, I was wondering if….”

  The spill of the crowd had let out into the wide hallway, and I hurried out the door all the while half listening to him. I stopped in my tracks as his voice momentarily faded, which made me turn back to find that he had stopped to let some students pass before jogging up to join me once more. I had a full view of him now, and it gave me a tickling warm tumble in my belly as I watched him move. He prowled like a predator, very sleek, very dangerous. It made me suck in a sharp breath, suddenly sweating from his approaching presence.

  Get your head out of the clouds. Nothing good will come of this.

  “I was wondering if you wanted to hang out some time…You probably know this town better than I do.” He flashed his disarming smile again, making me want to actually groan out loud and crawl under a rock to hide from the radiance of it. Instead, I swallowed back the dry desert in my mouth and smiled like a fool right back. Had he just asked me out? Nah. Well, maybe….

  “Been here my entire life.” I straightened, wanting to slap myself for sounding so incredibly plain and star struck. “I mean, yeah, I guess we could hang out sometime.”

>   If it was possible for a smile to light up more than his did, I’ve never seen it. “Great! What’s your number, Penny? I could call you. Or email you? I could text you, if you prefer.” Was he nervous, too? Text? Who texts? I needed to get into these fads that I’d so painstakingly avoided until now.

  I tried to answer, but no words came out. I was literally speechless and stared at him like a drooling dog.

  Whoa, nelly, find your words, girl, find ‘em.

  “Uh, yeah. Um. You can call me. You got a pen?” I shifted on my feet, feeling a sudden urge to run and never look back. He motioned toward my hand, still holding the pink pen he’d just given back to me not a moment before. “Right. I mean, got something to write on?” Why was I acting so clueless?

  Maybe I should’ve known better, but at the time, I didn’t have a clue what I was jumping into. If someone had told me it was a vat of boiling oil, I probably would’ve willingly walked into it. I’d have laughed and told them how absolutely full of crap they were. Seth was as hot as they got, but he was harmless, right? Staring into his baby blues and noting his sculpted shoulders where his T-shirt clung to his muscles, I was so done. Might as well wave the white flag right here, get it over with.

  He produced a small notepad and eagerly placed it in my small hand as he patiently waited. He didn’t look nervous. In fact, he didn’t seem at all inexperienced at asking out women, which should’ve sent a huge, blaring alarm ringing through my head. But I was oblivious, and this oblivion made me ignore the signs as I scribbled my number on his notepad, my hand doing it’s little warning of a shake as the numbers came out wrong, and I had to scratch it out and try again.

  Just like that, I’d handed him my heart, and he’d taken it in that tiny scrap of paper, slipped it into the back pocket of his snug jeans—which showed off his rear end in a most indulging way—without a second’s thought. Waving goodbye, he’d headed off toward his next class, leaving me to enjoy the view for just a bit longer. How easily he’d snapped my tiny vesicle of hopes and dreams and hopped away without really noticing the precious cargo he now held in his very grasp.