“You need to tighten security.”
He roughed out a menacing sound. “Think I’ve got it covered.”
Dude was a badass, but this wasn’t the time to get cocky.
“The two witnesses went missing,” I told him.
Silence shocked through the line before he uttered a hushed, “Shit.”
“They’re cleaning their tracks.”
“Knew they would, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“We just have to push through and get them there safely. See it through. Only goal I’ve got.” He issued it like a promise.
“We will,” I said, resolute.
Sure of where I stood.
After that?
I would burn.
I knew I would.
Violet might hate me now? But when all was revealed, she was going to curse my existence.
Didn’t matter.
This was the due that I owed.
“We can’t fail them,” Kade murmured, his worry coming through.
“And we won’t.”
That face flashed through my mind.
A splash of Violet lighting up behind my eyes. Color and life. That little girl at her side. Regret flashed and flared. Blinding my sight in my darkened room.
“Stay safe,” I grated, “and keep me updated if you see anything out of the ordinary.”
My mind flashed to the shadow I’d hunted in the night.
That uneasiness taking hold. Rooting itself deep.
“I will, brother.”
I ended the call and clutched my phone in my hand, feeling like I was being skinned alive.
Walls too tight. Closing in. Everything I’d been running from gaining speed. Beating and thrashing.
Could feel a tornado approaching and getting ready to touch down.
A force that would annihilate.
Jagged rocks slayed my throat, and I tried to swallow around them.
Unable to sit still for a second longer, I grabbed my favorite guitar propped on a stand near the wall, the one I took with me everywhere.
Music was my only solace in the middle of this. Funny how it’d been what’d started it in the first place.
The culprit.
My love of a song clouding sound judgment.
I sank onto the floor and leaned against the bed. I propped her on my lap, my fingers playing across the strings as my left hand curled around the worn neck.
My head dropped back, and I closed my eyes, and I searched through the disorder for a melody.
For peace.
Every shade of Violet came rushing back.
Her eyes and that mouth and her sweet, delicate hands.
Body I wanted to get lost in forever.
Bliss.
My eternity that I would never touch.
The words gusted, swept in like a soft breeze through a meadow.
I closed my eyes
I fell into a dream
Watching through a looking glass
Nothin’s what it seems
Shards of ice
Cold, bitter bliss
That’s what I get
For stealing that first kiss
My eyes slowly opened, my gaze on my fingers that played along the frets. I reached out and touched it, the tiny violet tattooed on the inside of my left wrist. No matter where I went, whatever faraway place.
A distant land.
A darkened room.
Lost in a trance.
She was there.
Ten
Violet
It turned out, I was just getting myself deeper and deeper.
“Wallflowers would be honored to host your wedding,” I whispered into my cell, silently cursing myself for agreeing. But how could I deny her when Emily had just spent the last twenty minutes asking for something and apologizing for it at the same time?
Asking for something she shouldn’t when her request made complete sense.
The logical choice.
The only choice, really.
Which was why telling her yes was the only answer I could give.
The problem was, I had no idea how I would get through this.
I’d already been faltering. Running into Richard far too often. The man remaining in the distance but watching me through the space.
Showing up in random places.
Watching from afar.
Those eyes intent. His spirit unrelenting.
We hadn’t actually spoken since the run-in at the grocery store, but still, I felt as if he were picking me apart, piece by piece, sifting through the wreckage for something salvageable.
Which I was nothing but a fool for even thinkin’ it. For even letting the speck of a thought infiltrate my mind—the thought that he might want reconciliation rather than seeking our complete destruction.
Emily exhaled in relief from the other end of the line, but in it, I could still hear her concern. “Are you sure? I know it can’t be easy for you.”
I released a blustery sigh of indifference. “We host weddings here all the time. How could I refuse my best friend?”
By being sane and reasonable, that was how. But I guessed I wasn’t either of those things.
I was a glutton.
A masochist.
Begging for the heartache.
Emily started to ramble, “You don’t know what this means to me, Vi. I wanted to get married in my hometown, and there isn’t a more gorgeous setting than Wallflowers. I mean, I tried to find someplace else, but it was clear they couldn’t pull it together on such short notice. Besides, nothing else compares to Wallflowers. Not even close. It’s going to be perfection,” she gushed. “The first time I saw it, I fell in love. I can’t imagine a better place to confess my love and my forever than under that tree.”
Cut. Cut. Cut.
I didn’t think she had the first clue that she was slaying me.
“It’ll be perfect. We’ll make sure of it,” I promised.
“Are you sure we can pull it together? I know three weeks is short notice, and I’m sorry for that. But under the circumstances…” she trailed off.
“We can make it work. I promise.”
Even from the distance, I could feel the gratefulness in her demeanor. “You are truly the best. I…” She hesitated, then murmured again, “I know how hard this has to be for you. I’m asking so much, and I know I don’t have the right.”
“Don’t say that. You do have the right. I love you like a sister.”
I guessed the hardest part of it was that I’d lost both my sisters at the same time. Not that Emily hadn’t tried to keep in touch. That she hadn’t reached out. But there’d been too much strain at that time. Too much pain.
Everything was raw and aching. The wounds fresh and ripe.
With the way thinkin’ about Richard felt right then, I wondered
