We do and someday I’m going to kick Oz’s and Razor’s asses for not giving us time alone.
“It’s not like you would find privacy anywhere anyhow,” Razor says like he’s reading my mind. “In case you haven’t figured it out, Pigpen and Man O’ War are on a ten-minute rotation of checking in on us. Their instincts are telling them that this is bigger and badder than their wildest guess.”
The local police arrested Eli and Cyrus this afternoon on charges of speeding and resisting arrest. Neither of them broke either of those laws, but it’s the only way Detective Barlow could talk to them without tipping the Riot’s hand of what’s about to go down.
I didn’t know that was going to happen. In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t know. Not sure I could have seen this through thinking my grandfather and uncle would be sitting behind bars with their reputations on the line.
But then Violet shifts and her long, silky hair slides against my arm. I turn my head, nuzzle my nose behind her ear, inhale her sweet scent and brush my lips to her skin. She cuddles closer, which is almost impossible with how she’s sitting on my lap.
Across the yard, the clubhouse is lit up against the black night and pissed-off. Pigpen’s been tearing through the cabin, the yard, the clubhouse like a toddler on the warpath. No one besides me, Razor, Oz and Violet understands why Eli and Cyrus were arrested. Until the Riot make their move against Eli and are thrown in jail, no one can know why.
The four of us are in Violet’s bedroom at the cabin. Oz and Razor sit at opposite ends of the window seat. I’m cradling Violet on the bed. Like a calming pendulum, she brushes her fingertips slowly up and down my arm. It’s a reminder that she’s safe, that we’re alive, that we are together.
We’ve been quiet since Louisville. Violet wore a recorder, she got the information the police needed and now we wait for the Riot to mess up and the police to do their job.
Violet watches the fish Justin gave her swim in slow, methodical circles in the glass vase she placed him in when she returned to the police trailer. It was the only thing she could find in the cabinets that would work.
“Why are you keeping it?” I whisper in her ear, but Oz and Razor glance over. The room is too quiet and we’re all too hypersensitive from today to not hear even the most hushed sound.
Violet lazily lifts one shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“Have you considered it’s bugged?” Oz asks.
She smiles and one by one, including Oz, we all smile, too. It’s been a long day and we’re full of paranoia.
“Forget I asked,” he said.
“Never,” she replies. “I will remember and remind you of that question until the day I die.”
Until the day she dies. I wrap my arms tighter around her and she places her head on my shoulder. There’s no humming anymore, and as long as she’s around, there won’t be. “Seriously, why keep the fish?”
“Justin let me pick it out. There were over a thousand fish and this one spoke to me.”
“That’s a Siamese fighting fish,” Razor says. “Those are highly aggressive. The males will kill one another. Females sometimes will, too. I had a buddy once tell me that if you put a mirror up to the tank that the fish will kill itself trying to fight its reflection.”
From the slight tilt of her lips, she already knows all of this and I kiss her temple. Violet picked the fish that best describes herself.
“It’s a reminder,” she whispers to me, but she’s aware Oz and Razor hear.
“Of what?” I ask.
“That there are some fights worth fighting and some fights that need to be let go. And that sometimes I need to really take a good look in the mirror before I react.”
“I need one of those fish,” Razor mumbles.
She giggles, then sighs. “Our English paper is due tomorrow.”
School. Somehow that feels a thousand miles away. So do football games and pep rallies, dances and homework. “Have you written yours?”
“Nope.”
“You two mean you can’t figure out which path to take?” Razor says teasingly.
I know what path to take, and the way Violet kisses my neck, she knows, too. It’s not the one most travelled. It’s not the one least taken. We don’t need a path when we’re confident enough to set our own course in the thick woods.
“Remember you promised me boring,” she says. “And I think we should start with blueberry pie. I like blueberry pie. I want to eat it until blueberries are running through my blood.”
“I, Chevy, do promise you, Violet, a life that is as boring as we can possibly create.”
She smiles and I’d do anything right now to have her alone, roll her under me and kiss her in very not boring ways.
Rumbles of motorcycle engines and we don’t move. Due to the arrests, guys from other chapters have been driving in all night and evening. Oz watches the yard, then he stands. “It’s them. It’s Eli and Cyrus.”
Violet hugs me and I hug her back. She’s aware, like me, that they’re going to want answers.
Violet
AFTER ELI STALKED into the cabin and saw the four of us there, he raged out of the cabin and ordered every single person to leave. It didn’t matter how long they had driven to get there. He didn’t care who had what position on the board. He didn’t care about anything. Eli came across like a man whose mental wires had crossed, causing a nuclear reactor meltdown.
Then after two hours of him stalking around the place to confirm there was nobody around, he yelled at us to go to Church and we did. All four of us scuffling over like puppies with ears back and tails between our legs.
It isn’t lost on me that this is the first time I’ve been officially invited to Church. It isn’t lost on me that I might be the very first woman to have that invitation extended. But I don’t revel in the win, at least not now. Eli’s a little too hotheaded and heading to crazy for me to do anything more than stare at the wooden table in front of me.
Eli yelled. A lot. The yelling I expected and could take. The extremely silent and intimidating stare from Cyrus unnerved me.
“Do you have any idea how much danger you were in?” This time I’m pretty sure he’s shouting just at me and not at the overall group. “I thought you were smart. I thought you had enough common sense to keep yourself alive.”
I’m not fighting back. None of us are. We went behind their backs, behind the club’s back, but not one of us regrets it.
“Why, Violet? Why would you do all this? I understand now that you didn’t feel safe. I understand that we’ve got a security problem, but why the hell didn’t you find a way to tell me? Just me?”
Eli stops yelling and I glance up from my possibly hours-long stare at the table to meet his eyes. His questions until now have been rhetorical, but from the way he’s standing with his hands on his hips and glare firmly planted on me, he wants an answer.