Slanting back, I guide her with me until we’re both standing up straight. She looks like she’s going to protest, but I back her up against the wall and lower my lips, licking up the water on her tattoo, just like I wanted to. She moans, relaxing under the touch of my tongue as it travels up her body, taste her flesh until I reach her mouth and crash my lips to hers. Her good hand grips at the back of my neck, pulling me close as my tongue searches every part of her mouth.

‘Luke,’ she groans, her leg lifting up and hitching around my waist. Something snaps inside me and every part of my body wants to be connected to her.

We haven’t had sex since the thing at the police station happened. I’m not sure why, other than it seems like we’ve both been tangled in this emotional web of confusion and trying to figure out stuff.

‘Tell me it’s okay,’ I whisper against her lips.

She doesn’t respond with words, instead rocking her h*ps against mine and moaning. ‘It’s more than okay.’

My fingers slide up her leg, grip her thigh, grasping her tightly as I hitch her other leg around my waist. Her legs open up to me and her arms loop securely around the back of my neck. My lips collide with hers, pulling her nearer, our bodies aligned, but it feels like I need her closer.

She continues to kiss me, biting my bottom lip as I brace one of my hands against the wall and slide deep into her, our wet bodies colliding, our h*ps meeting rhythmically. Steam surrounds us, consumes us, makes it difficult to breath. The feel of her lips … her warmth … the inside of her … watching her head fall back and her eyes gloss over as she comes undone in my arms temporarily takes all the bad away and pushes me toward the edge. Moments later, I join her, struggling to hold us upright. We’re breathless, our chest crashing together with each breath we take.

‘That was …’ She trails off, breathing profusely.

‘Perfect,’ I finish for her.

‘Such a softy,’ she whispers. Usually she jokes when she says this, but now she just looks tired and kind of content.

I want to call her a softy, take the upper hand, because that’s what we do, back but I keep the remark to myself, figuring I don’t want to do anything to ruin this good moment.

A really, really rare, but good f**king moment. If only I could find a way to make more of them.

Chapter 13

Violet

Things haven’t been that bad for the last couple of weeks and that’s saying something. I haven’t heard or gotten any surprise packages from Preston either and the texts have stopped. Mira Price is behind bars for now, something that I’ve wanted to happen since I was five. I’m still dealing with my visit to her on an emotional level, the cast on my arm constantly reminding me of what happened. But it’s strange. I’d been so angry and unstable at the police station, to the point that I’d broken my arm, but as the days go by, it almost feels like some of my internal scars are healing, right along with my broken wrist. I feel like a part of me was sort of set free in my outburst. Seeing Mira in that room, knowing she was there – knowing she’s still there – is a small bit of justice for my parents, if only they could just catch the other person. I know that it won’t bring them back and that’s still another thing I’m dealing with, but after the drowning incident I’m trying to avoid testing my life at the moment, choosing to live life I guess.

The detective called me into the station for a little chat the other day to give me an update, which was basically so he could inform me that Mira was being an uncooperative pain in the ass. He’s kept looking down at my casted arm and then suggested that maybe I should go see a therapist to help me go through this. I’d told him I was fine, since the idea of going and spilling my thoughts to someone is something I never wanted to go through. I remember the looks people used to give me when they found out I’d spent twenty-four hours in the house with my parents’ bodies.

Pity.

Horror.

Fear.

But it turns out I might not have a choice. The publicity of the entire thing has got the University involved and it was ‘recommended’ by my school advisor that I talk to their counselor. Already being on thin ice, I agreed and I have my first appointment today.

The woman sitting behind the desk when I walk into the office is a bit different than what I expected. She’s got fiery red hair, the kind you have to dye to make it look like that. And I can see a tattoo peeking out from the collar of her shirt. She’s dressed in a pant suit though and her hair is pulled up into a bun, like she’s half-business woman, half rebel, which kind of matches the dark but beautiful artwork she’s got hanging up on the walls.

‘Oh hey,’ she greets me when I walk in as if I’m a friend not a client. ‘Violet Hayes, right?’

I nod. ‘Yeah, that’d be me.’

She smiles then leans over her cluttered desk to shake my. ‘I’m Lana. Glad you could make it. Have a seat.’

I plop down in the chair and drop my bag to the floor, a bundle of nerves as I pick at my fingernail polish then start biting at my nails. I’m telling myself to put my walls up, be tough Violet, because this isn’t a safety zone – this isn’t like the time I spend with Luke.

‘So what brought you in here today, Violet Hayes?’ Lana asks as she sorts through a file on her desk.

‘You don’t know that already?’ I put my hands on my lap. ‘Because I’m guessing you do. Everyone knows me. Violet Hayes, creepy girl who lived while her parents were murdered. Stayed in the house for twenty-four hours.’

She smiles up at me, surprisingly not annoyed by my bitchy attitude. ‘Sounds like you’re a tough chick.’

‘No, just blunt.’ This is going to be harder than I thought.

‘Hmmm … maybe … But maybe not.’ She looks down at the folder again, reading a paper that’s inside it. After looking it over briefly, she shuts it and slides it aside before overlapping her hands and putting them on the desk. ‘So other than what the news says about you, what do I need to know about you?’

I give a relaxed shrug. ‘Doesn’t the news tell you enough … tell you what’s wrong with me.’

She gives me a soft smile. ‘I’d like to hear what you think about you, not anyone else.’

I honestly don’t know how to answer her, not used to this kind of situation. ‘There’s not much to know.’

‘Do you have a job?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you go to school. You’ve been really good with attendance up until a couple of months ago. Do you want to tell me why?’

I shake my head. ‘Nope.’

‘Okay then.’ She lets it go easily and I’m relieved that she does – I’ve already heard enough about that from other people. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. ‘And what about boyfriends. Do you have one of those?’

I shrug, the walls I’ve put up starting to chip away. ‘Maybe.’

She appears lost. ‘Maybe?’

‘It’s complicated.’

She nods like she understands, but how could she when I haven’t told her anything. ‘What about friends?’

I fold my arms across my chest. ‘I might have a few of those.’ Maybe.

She mulls over my answer then picks up a pen and grabs a notebook from her drawer. ‘And what about family?’ She starts to write something down.

‘Dead.’ The walls crash down. ‘I’m a foster kid.’

I catch her hesitating, but she quickly recovers. ‘Are you close with any of them?’

I almost laugh. Not by choice, I want to say. Because one won’t leave me alone. ‘Again, no. Adults really aren’t a fan of this.’

She glances up at me. ‘Of what?’

I point at myself. ‘Of a girl that scares the shit out of them.’

She writes one more thing down, then sets the pen and paper aside and focuses on me again. ‘Why do you think everyone’s afraid of you?’

‘Because that’s what they say.’ I’m uncomfortable, my inner demons and addiction clawing to come out and regain control over the situation the only way I know how. ‘I don’t blame them either. It’s creepy what I did.’

She considers what I said for the longest time. ‘You know, regardless of what you think, you’re reaction wasn’t odd.’

I snort a disdainful laugh. ‘I just sat there in the house with their bodies for almost a day. Even I think I’m creepy.’

‘Maybe that’s the problem then,’ she says, reaching for a tin of mints on her desk.

I feel oddly on display for her, like I’m sitting in a glass case and she can see every part of me, inside and out and there’s nowhere to hide. It’s not the most settling feeling and I can’t figure out a way around it. ‘What is? Me being creepy?’

‘No, how you think that about herself.’ She pops a mint into her mouth and closes the tin. ‘Sometimes we hear people say stuff about us so frequently that we start to believe it ourselves, even if it’s not true.’

‘No, it’s true.’ My voice is tight, unable to accept what she’s saying.

She sets the tin aside. ‘We’ll see,’ she says, then picks up her pen and jots something else down. ‘I’d like to see you next week, if that’s okay. Same time and day?’

I want to tell her no, be a bitch so I don’t have to come back and let her analyze my mind, but I find myself muttering okay, then I take the card she offers me before bolting the hell out of that office before she can say anything else.

The more I walk, the more I replay what she said about the problem. That I believe everything everyone’s told me. The more I think about it, the more it pisses me off, like I’m that weak-minded that I just believe what everyone told me. And that’s the thing. There’s only so many times you can get told how unwanted you are, before you start believing it’s true.

I hurry across the busy campus, yellow and brown leaves crunching under my boots as I stomp across the lawn, telling myself I’m not going back even though I agreed. I have a feeling that the next visit is going to go much deeper than our short preliminary appointment and Lana makes me too uneasy, probably because she cuts straight through the bullshit. I can tell I’m not going to be able to be the hardcore Violet with her and just fake smile through everything. I’m going to end up being the unstable one that cries in the privacy of her own bathroom because she so desperately wants to risk her life to turn off the pain, but made a promise to the only person she cares about that she would try not to do that anymore.

And I don’t want to be here.

But really, I do, otherwise I’d have given up already.

Grunting in frustration at myself, I turn down the sidewalk for the Humanities building to go to class. I started going yesterday and am continuing today, which feels like a step in the right direction, whatever that direction may be. I spot a news van on my way there, so I take the long way, going behind the building where there’s a wall of trees blocking their view of me. The media has this fascination with me dating Luke, the son of the women who’s being charged with involvement in my parents’ murders. There have been reporters showing up at the University and at my home. I usually give them my best go-fuck-yourself attitude, but what I really want to say is: how the hell can I answer your question about what’s going on with me, when I can’t even figure that out for myself.

Yes, I like Luke.

To the point that it’s actually starting to hurt when he’s gone.

And my heart leaps when he’s near.

But there’s also this pain.

This pain linked with the idea of losing him.

But I want to be the person I know I can be when I’m with him. A new person maybe.

I think a lot, honestly.

Maybe it’s because I have one less thing to think about. All that time spent thinking about Mira and now I don’t have to worry about her anymore. So much time now to think about what I want.

What do I want?

I just want to be happy.

But happiness isn’t something that comes easy to me and I think I’m going to have to learn how to let it in. But do I let something in that I’m not sure I’ve ever had?

Later that day, my mind is teeter-tottering somewhere between bored as hell and bummed out. I have countless assignments scattered around me on the bed, some make-up assignments a few of my Professors who were kind enough to give me because of my ‘condition’. As if having my parents’ murder case plastered all over the place and a constant herd of reporters trying to get some insight into my head is the same as having an illness. Still, I’m glad I’m getting a second chance, although I did have to drop two classes, but it’s my own stupid fault.

That’s not what’s making me bummed out, though. I took the box out again today, the one with my parents’ stuff, for reasons that are unknown – maybe it was therapy or this dire need to torture myself. I did manage to flip through a few pages of the notebook and discovered that that’s all it was. I guess my mother was trying to start a diary but stopped doing so a few days later, because she died.

I ended up throwing the box under the bed, hearing the contents spill, but not daring to clean them up. Out of sight, out of mind. That’s what I keep telling myself. Then I buried myself into my homework, trying to use it as a healthy distraction instead of what I really want to do, which is wander up to the roof, or maybe knock back something strong and numbing.

‘What are you doing in there?’ Luke strolls into the room and shuts the door behind him. I have some grungy music blasting from my laptop, totally adding to my begrudging mood. I’m holding a marker in my hand and using it as a doodle tool to draw on my purple cast instead of working on my assignments. My hair’s braided to the side, no makeup on, and I’m wearing a tank top and boxer shorts, a real hot mess.