I shake my head, biting on my lip so hard I nearly draw blood. “One of these days when you say something like that to me, I’m going to take the situation and make you follow through with what you said.”

She relaxes back against the counter, folding her arms. “Oh, I wish you would.”

My body burns with a controlling urge to touch her. I’ve felt it a lot of the last few weeks and Jesus she knows how to push my buttons and make it worse.

“You think I’m kidding.” She moves forward to scrub the dishes in the sink, facing my direction. “But I’m not.”

I watch her as she turns the water on and begins rising off a pan. She’s smiling to herself and I start to get to my feet, ready to finally give in to my needs or hers—it’s becoming hard to tell anymore. I’ll take her back to the room and give her what she keeps teasing me about. But then my phone starts to ring.

“Saved by the bell,” she singsongs with a grin on her face.

“Oh, this isn’t over,” I assure her, retrieving my phone from the pocket of my jeans. “I’m starting this right back…” I frown as my dad’s name appears on the glowing screen. He’s been trying to reach me a lot recently, probably because the wedding’s getting nearer.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Violet asks, putting the pan in the dishwasher and then bumping the door shut with her hip.

“I guess,” I mutter, hating that getting a simple call can ruin the entire vibe of the night. I hit talk, putting the receiver up to my ear. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” my father says, sounding desperately cheerful. “You haven’t been answering my calls.”

“That’s because I’ve been ignoring them,” I say with honesty as the rumble of the dishwasher fills the apartment. Violet leaves the kitchen and goes into the bathroom, shutting the door, taking her cute ass with her, along with the good and lightness in me.

He pauses, struggling for words. “Look, Luke, I’m so sorry about my reaction when you asked if you could move in with us,” he says. “Sometimes I don’t know how to be a father and I just say stuff, not really thinking beforehand. But I should have said you could move in with us. I’ll even give you my bed.”

“I’m good.” I pick up the beer, needing the taste of it. I take a large guzzle, but it’s not enough. Too mellow and weak. Too sober and unstable. Switching to beer was such a bad idea.

“Luke, I’m really trying here,” he says. “I know I wasn’t part of your life for a while, but I want to be now.”

“You’re really trying.” I laugh harshly in the phone as something snaps inside me, the last fourteen years shoving me down farther and farther and I’m too sober and can feel it all. “Trying would have been calling me up more than ten times over the last fourteen years. Trying would have been not leaving me and Amy with Mom and her craziness.”

“You’re mother’s not crazy.” He sighs. “She just struggles with stuff.”

“No, she’s f**king crazy and you’re f**king crazy for thinking she’s not.” I snap. Literally snap. All the stuff I’ve been holding inside me spills out as rage flares through me until all I see is white.

“Luke you will not talk about your mother that way,” he says. “Yes, she has problems but we all do.”

“You’re seriously defending her and you don’t even get it.”

“Then explain it to me. Please.”

“Do you have any idea things that she did—made me do? Do you have any idea at all the stuff that I went through… she made me shoot her up, you know. Inject heroin into her veins,” I hiss, balling my hands into fist, wanting—needing the silencing burn of Jack or tequila, but instead I settle for ramming my fist against the coffee table. A few of my knuckles pop and the wood scrapes a layer of skin off. It hurts, but not as much as thinking about the past. “When I was eight, she made me crush up her co**ine, made me let her hold me while she passed out. She made me do everything with her like I was a pet. She never let me breathe. She ignored Amy.” I breathe furiously, fighting to get oxygen as I throw the empty beer bottle across the room and it shatters against the wall. “She didn’t give a shit when Amy died. She f**king screwed up my life so God damn badly that I have to control everything just so I won’t remember how much she controlled me…” I trail off as Violet walks in front of me, standing between the television and the coffee table. Everything gets silent as she takes in the glass around her feet.

“Luke, oh my God, I didn’t—” my dad starts to say.

I press end, hanging up on him. He calls right back and I shut off my phone, tossing it onto the table, my eyes never leaving Violet. As usual, I can’t tell what she’s thinking which means I’m going to have to ask.

“How much did you hear?” My hand is shaking but my voice comes out even. I know she already knew some of the stuff, but she pretty much heard a replay of my entire sad, stupid, worthless life. Now she knows just how pathetic I really am.

“Everything.” There’s an unreadable look in her eyes as she takes a deep breath. She contemplates something and I can’t take her silence. I feel like I’m about to explode.

“Violet, just say something,” I say, sounding panicked and pathetic. “Please.”

“We should probably clean up the glass before Seth and Greyson come back,” she tells me. “Although, we could just leave the mess for them to clean up.”

“Violet I…” I drift off as she tiptoes over the glass and climbs over the table beside me. Then she laces her fingers through mine and kisses my scraped knuckles softly. After she kisses each one, she looks up at me with her round green eyes, then stands on her tiptoes and plants a soft kiss on my lips. I relish in the taste of her as my hands slip around my waist. I’m confused why she’s okay with this, about what she heard, about the fact that she walked into a living room covered with glass, but then I remember everything she already knows about me; how she stopped the fight at the strip club, how I told her about my mom making me shoot her up. She knows more about me than most and she’s still here, kissing me and letting me be close to her.

So I kiss her back with force and passion, because I need to be with her, need to get the rage inside my chest out. I kiss her with hunger as I scoop her up in my arms and carry her back to the bedroom, bumping into walls and the door before I finally lie us down on the bed. She groans as I cover her with my body and start sucking on her neck, kissing her jawline. I only pull back to peel her shirt off, her ni**les perking as soon as the air hits them. I take her in as she helps me take off my shirt and the she traces her fingers along the tattoos on my ribs and chest as she just stares at me with an almost mesmerized look in her eyes.

“Do they mean anything?” she asks, her finger sketching over the lines of a tattoo on my side.

I shrug, my fingers knotted in her hair. “I went through this phase where every time I was feeling shitty, I’d get a tattoo.”

“You have a lot.”

“I felt shitty a lot.” I pause, running my finger down the back of her neck while my other hand travels up her rib cage, across the dark lines of the tattoo. “What about yours? Do they mean anything?”

She peers up at me through her lashes. “The stars do.”

My fingers land on the spot where I know the stars are inked. “What do they mean?”

“I got them to remember my parents.” She shrugs. “I read somewhere once that stars represent our dead ancestors or something weird like that.”

I start to say something, but she covers my mouth with her hand. “Just kiss me.”

Even though it feels like I should say more, I kiss her instead, leaning my weight into her and pulling her back onto the mattress with me. I kiss her neckline, her collarbone, the spot on her chest where her heart beats. Then I suck her nipple into my mouth, allowing all the sexual tension I’ve been holding in to flow out of me. She moans, her knees coming up to my h*ps as she grips tightly onto my shoulder blades, muttering something about doing it harder. Good God, just kill me now.

I do what she asks and move to her other nipple, sucking harder until I can’t take it anymore. Then I pull away and slip her shorts off, chucking them to the side, along with her panties. Violet may love to be tough but as she lies na**d underneath me I can tell that she’s nervous and trying to hide it. It makes me hesitate and I’ve never, ever hesitated.

Before I can say anything, though, she reaches forward and undoes the button of my jeans. Then her hands slide down beneath my boxers and her lips part as her fingers brush my very eager, swollen cock.

“I think we…” I trail off, loosing focus as she begins to rub me. My muscles unravel like knotted ropes as I groan. Before I know it I reach the point where I’m either going to have to stop her or settle for a hand job. With a lot of effort, I reach down and tug her hand away, and then I kick off my jeans and boxers. I grab a condom from my back pocket then throw my jeans on the floor, returning my body over hers. She has this excited look in her eyes, that I’m not sure how to interpret or if I should even try to interpret.

I start to open my mouth to ask her if she’s okay with this, but she leans up and smashes her lips against mine before I can utter the words. I lose focus of everything else and before I know it I’m sliding into her. She’s tighter than I’m used to which means I have to go slower than I’m used to. I grab a fistful of the sheet, fighting to take my time, inching into her gradually, but she opens her legs and arches her back, taking over, meeting me halfway. Suddenly I’m inside her all the way and I still, trying to stifle the urge to pin her down and take over. Time slips by as the connection between us builds, along with the overwhelming emotions that are consuming me.

Controlling me. But in the end I move slowly because it’s not about my control. It’s about her. It’s all about her. Every movement, every breath, the way my heart beats fiercely in my chest, is all because of her.

Violet owns me.

Violet

I’m not even one hundred percent sure why I take things as far as I do, but once he’s inside me, there’s no turning back, so I open my legs and let him sink all the way in, despite how bad it hurts.

I’m trying not to quiver at the feel of him filling me, but it’s difficult. It feels so unnatural, yet natural at the same time because it makes me feel safe and not alone. Like he’s supposed to be in me, which is weird and I’m sure not a normal thing for someone to think the first time they have sex.

Luke stays still inside me forever, my hands braced on his tight back muscles, his head tipped down by my neck as he grabs on to the sheet. He’s throbbing inside me, his skin is warm and he smells like beer, smoke, and the musky scent of cologne. It’s a scent that’s started to wear on me over the last few weeks, but in this unfamiliarly good way, like him, the idea of him and me together.

I’m trying to hold myself together, but the urge to move is heating at the inside of me. Everything’s so still. Too still. Then he starts rocking and it sends an ache deep inside me. The ache only seems to build the more he moves, sinking deeper and deeper inside me as he breathes on my neck, trailing kisses up and down my skin, until finally he places his mouth over mine and he immediately slides his tongue into my mouth, kissing me harder as he thrusts into me harder. I lose my breath as the ache turns into something else, something wonderful that rip all thoughts out of my head. I tip my head back, my br**sts pressing into his chest as he glides his hand down my back, forcing me closer as I gasp breathlessly for air.

He groans against my mouth as I cry out something I can barely comprehend, falling and flying at the same time, just like I always imagined myself doing. I clutch him, refusing to let go until I come back, adrenaline slamming against me with so much force I can barely think straight. He gives one last thrust inside me, our h*ps connecting completely before he slows down and his body jerks underneath my palms. Then he stills inside me. Our skin is damp, hearts slamming against each other. There’s no room between our bodies as he holds on to me and I clutch him, not sure why I’m holding on anymore other than it seems like when I let go the wonderful things I’m feeling will disappear.

Finally, after a while, he slips out of me, kissing me before flopping over in the bed. He drapes one arm over his head as he uses the other to guide me toward him until I rest my head on his chest. I can hear his heart beating unsteadily as his lungs expand for air.

“Are you okay?” he finally asks, sounding breathless, on the verge of panicking.

I nod, pressing back my content smile even though he can’t see it in the darkness that’s settled in the room, but it’s weird being happy. Plus the smile is a real one, not my fake one I always show people. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, seeming self-conscious. “Everything’s fine? Even after… well everything.”

I glance up at him, propping my chin against his chest. “Everything’s fine, Mr. Stoically Aloof, now would you relax?”

“I’m relaxed,” he insists. “I’m just making sure you are—that you’re okay with me.”

“I’m perfectly fine with you and with what happened,” I assure him. And I am. For a moment, everything is absolutely perfect.

* * *

“Would you shut the f**k up?” the guy shouts as the woman sings to herself over and over again. “We need to get out of here.”

“Lean into me. Lean into me. Take. Help me. I need to understand. Help me. I can’t do this without you,” she cries as he holds her weight in his arms.