She never has. One of the things I love about her.
Violet’s watching one of those twenty-four-hour news channels where eight million things are being scrolled at the bottom. Half of the screen shows an anchor. The other half aerial shots of what looks like a school.
I take off my boots, slip off my jacket and place it on the post at the end of the bed. Violet leans forward and I climb up and lie beside her, pulling the blankets up to cover us. Violet scoots into me, and when I hook an arm around her waist, her back becomes flush with my chest.
Her sweet scent envelops me and I breathe in deeply, wishing every moment could be like this. Mirroring her, I prop up my head using my hand and watch the TV. “What’s going on?”
“Another school shooting.”
Damn. “How bad?”
“It happened. That’s bad enough, isn’t it?”
True. “I’m sorry about Eli.”
“I’m sorry for the people who died. Sorry for their families. Sorry for the ones who survived. They said that the school should open again late next week. Everyone can head back to school and be normal. Just like that. Normal by next week.”
Just like we’ll need to start living life again.
We’re silent. Listening to eyewitnesses, watching the same footage being played over and over again. It’s one of those things that once you see it you wish you never saw, one of those things that can never be undone in your mind, yet looking away never feels like an option.
“Did you hear that when Eli called the police an Amber Alert was created for us?” Violet says. “Everyone in the county knows we were kidnapped. Everyone at school will know, too.”
Great. Coach ought to love this. He was already giving me shit for my loyalties being torn between the team and the Terror. This won’t help.
“How do you think they handle it?” Violet keeps her eyes glued on the screen. “The people who’ve been through shootings before. Do you think they go back to school and everything’s normal because that’s how other people think it should be, or do you think they just show up and fake it, hoping one day the faking becomes real?”
“I don’t know.” I don’t know how to go thirty seconds without replaying Violet in point-blank range of a man itching to pull the trigger. Don’t know how to make my heart not pump like I ran a marathon. Don’t know how to quit the twenty-four-hour adrenaline rush.
“That’s what I’m hoping for,” she says. “I want to fake normal until normal becomes real again.”
Until normal becomes real again. Not even sure what that would feel like anymore.
Violet rolls and rests her head against the pillow. Her silky red hair fans out around it. It’s tempting to capture a lock and rub the strands in my fingers. Tempting to lean down and kiss her. Tempting to try to forget all the nightmares waiting for me when I close my eyes by losing myself in her warmth, curves and softness.
Hunger darkens Violet’s blue eyes and it’s as if she’s become a reader of not only my mind but my heart as she reaches up and brushes her fingertips along my face. Heat seeps into my veins, and as she slowly pulls away, I capture her fingers and rest our combined hands on her stomach.
“How’s the buzzing?” I ask.
“Gone. But that should bother me.”
“Why?”
“We didn’t work the first time around and our problems didn’t disappear.”
They didn’t, but I don’t feel like chasing my tail. At least not tonight. “Can’t we just be?”
“Can we?”
“Only time I feel slightly human is if I’m around you,” I admit, “and I think you’re feeling the same way about me.”
“Are you going to patch in? Because I can’t be an old lady. I can’t be treated the rest of my life the way Dad treated my mom and how Eli treats me. I deserve better than that.”
“Your dad worshipped your mom.”
“But that didn’t stop him from doing that body shot off that girl. It would kill Mom if she ever found out.”
The muscles in my neck tense and I try breathing out the anger. We had this argument a hundred times, and the last time, she broke up with me. “You think I’m the guy who could do body shots off somebody else if I’m committed to you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is Mom and Dad worked because she stuck her head in the sand. That’s what being an old lady requires. I’m not that girl. For better or worse, my dad raised me differently than that.”
He did. Frat raised Violet to be a force of nature. A hurricane that looks beautiful from space, but can be a monster once it hits landfall. Am I going to patch in? The question hangs over my head like a machete.
Violet raises her eyebrows until they disappear behind her longer bangs. “Ignoring our problems won’t make them go away. We’re playing a dangerous game, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know how many more hits I can take.”
“You want me to walk away?”
“No,” she says quietly. “I never wanted you to walk away. I need you, but I don’t know how to be with you. You need me, but you don’t know how to be with me either. Not while you still want to be a part of the club. I broke up with you so you wouldn’t have to choose and I’ve tried to treat you badly since so you would never regret my decision.”
A swirling of hurt and anger in my gut. “Why can’t I have both? You and the club?”
“Besides the fact that being blood-related to members alone almost got you killed?”
I can’t win that argument. Can’t make her see that the blame should fall solely on the Riot.
“Because the club demands trust, loyalty and respect and I demand the same. I deserve that and you deserve someone who can be happy with the scraps you’d be willing to throw them after you swear your allegiance somewhere else.”
Don’t know why, but while I’m sure that was a statement meant to make me hurt, it makes me feel like I can breathe. There’s hope. A small sliver, but it’s still hope and I’ve got to offer something—a gift, a sacrifice, something for her to hold on to while it feels like we’re falling through a hole so deep that we’ve forgotten how to stand.
“Eli met with the Riot.”
Violet turns off the TV and the only light left in the room is from the utility pole in the yard. “What did you say?”
“Eli and the board met with the Riot. That’s what they told me in Church. He said Fiend and the others with him went rogue. That Skull and the rest of the Riot had nothing to do with our kidnapping. The Riot are working with the police and are also looking for Fiend.”
Violet blinks repeatedly. “They’d never patch you in if they knew you were telling me this.”
She’s right, and if I was a full-fledged member, they’d kick me out. “Are you going to tell on me?” I give a halfhearted grin and Violet’s mouth mirrors mine.
“Is that a dare?”