“Everyone can be a hot mess sometimes. Trust me.”

“Yeah, I know, but I hate making people have to take care of me.”

“I’m sure Luke didn’t mind, Violet,” Greyson assures me. “In fact, he probably kind of enjoyed it, seeing as how he’s in love with you.”

“We’ve had this conversation way too many times,” I remind him. “Luke’s not in love with me. We just have… well, I don’t know what we have but it sure as hell isn’t love.”

“You sure about that?” he questions cynically. “Because I think you just don’t want to admit that he is, because you’re afraid—afraid of letting someone feel that way about you.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Mr. Therapist,” I utter quietly. “Besides, I don’t even know what love is.”

Silence stretches between us, the awkward kind. We’ve talked a lot but I’m usually pretty closed off so I think my openness about my emotions shocked him. “Violet, I—”

I cut him off. “Hey, can I call you back? Luke just walked in.” A lie, but I’m not ready to have this conversation with Greyson yet and probably never will be.

“Yeah, sure.” He seems hurt like he knows I’m bullshitting him, which shows how much he knows me. “Call me back, though, okay? I worry about you.”

“Yeah, absolutely,” I say and then quickly hang up, my heart racing inside my chest as I fight to catch my breath. “I don’t even know what love is? Really Violet? I need to start keeping my damn mouth shut,” I mumble to myself, sitting down on the edge of the bed and letting my head fall into my hands. For a brief instant, I try to remember what it felt like to be loved by my parents, what it felt like to be hugged, cared for, feel warm on the inside instead of hollow and cold. Surprisingly, my thoughts drift to Luke and when he calmed me down last night, right in the middle of a panic attack. No one has ever gotten me to do that before, or better yet has even tried to calm me down.

As I’m lying there, trying to sort through my emotions without wanting to fling myself out the damn window, my phone vibrates from inside my pocket. At first I think it’s my stalker texter but then I realize the phone is actually ringing this time. When I see Detective Stephner’s name flash across the screen, relief washes over me as I answer it.

“It’s about damn time,” I say to him as I put the phone up to my ear. “I was beginning to think you were intentionally avoiding my calls.”

“I’ve been busy.” Something in his voice throws me off a little. It’s not that he’s being rude so much as he sounds anxious.

I sit up straighter. “Busy with what exactly?” I ask curiously.

“I can’t tell you yet, not until we know for sure,” he tells me with a hint of remorse. “But as soon as I can, I will.”

My heart hammers deafeningly and I’m seriously starting to worry it’s going to leap straight out of my chest. “Is it about my parents? Did they find evidence against Mira? Or did they find the other person who did it?” My words are rushing out of my lips a hundred miles a minute as the possibilities stream through my head. Is this it? The moment I’ve been waiting for? Is justice finally going to happen after all these years?

“Violet, calm down,” he says like it’s something so easy to do. “I can’t officially discuss anything yet, but like I said, as soon as I can, I’ll call you.”

“That’s not fair,” I gripe. “You shouldn’t have called me until you could talk to me.”

He sighs tiredly. “I called because you called me, remember? You left a message about getting some texts again.”

“Oh yeah.” The adrenaline surging through me makes my voice uneven. “At first I thought it was another reporter, but they know stuff about me that a reporter wouldn’t unless they were stalking me.”

“Give me the details,” he says and I start yammering off what’s been going on and even read him all the texts.

“Can you forward those to me?” he asks when I’m finished yammering. “I’d like to have a copy.”

“Of course,” I reply, already on it. “You’ll get them in just a second.”

“I want to put a trace on your phone too,” he says as I put the phone on speaker so I can still hear him, but work the message section. “See if we can track the number the texts are coming from.”

“It comes up as unknown, though.”

“Doesn’t matter. It could still be traceable.”

“How long will something like that take?”

“It all depends, but I’ll get working on it as soon as we hang up. And if you get any more texts call me immediately.” He gives a reluctant pause. “Violet, I have to ask about Luke. Are you really with him right now like the texts are saying?”

“Yeah… it kind of just happened.” I suddenly feel guilty about it, especially with the way he says it, like he’s disappointed. “There was some stuff going on and… Look, I know who his mother is and everything but he’s not a bad person.”

“I never said he was,” he states. “I was just wondering where he was in case we need to get ahold of him for some reason.”

“Oh.” I give another long pause, knowing there’s no point in asking, but I can’t help it. “Can’t I have like a tiny detail about what’s going on?”

“I’ll try to call you in the morning,” he says, disregarding my question. “And make sure you’re with someone at all times. I don’t want you wandering around by yourself until we figure out where these texts are coming from.”

“Okay, I will,” I tell him, frustrated that he still won’t spill the beans about whatever’s going on, even though deep down I know he can’t without getting into some serious trouble.

“Good.” He hesitates then adds, “And Violet, just try to relax. I have a feeling some good things are going to be happening soon.”

I think it’s his way of giving me a hint, that whatever’s going on is a good thing. At least that’s the way I’m choosing to take it. And by the time I hang up with him, I feel a little lighter, like maybe soon I’ll be able to breathe again without the weight of life pushing down on me, for the very first time in almost fourteen years.

Chapter 13

Luke

Things were going good. So, so good. Violet and I were finally talking and I felt like she was really opening up to me. But I should have known it wouldn’t last. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after all this time, but I guess I’m a slow learner. Shortcuts. There’s always risk when it comes to them.

The good day had been plummeting to begin with the more the hours went on. It started out when I was reading more of Amy’s journal and found something so f**ked up, I couldn’t even process it. The reason Caleb raped her. And reading about it nearly tore me to shreds.

I was never supposed to find out about it, My sister Amy had wrote across the lined paper, the black ink smeared as if she’d been crying and the tears had dripped down to the pages. The rape was supposed to be part of the deal. My mother owed a debt to him for drugs and had offered me to Caleb against my will and Caleb had more than gladly took up the offer, but only if he could have sex with me without my consent. Just like that, my mother sold her daughter, like a pimp sells a prostitute. I was at a party when it happened. I remember Caleb had his eyes on me the entire time, everywhere I went that night and it bothered me enough that I left the party early and went home. I knew his reputation that he liked to be rough with girls, get them drunk and take advantage of them. He also sold drugs to my mother—I remember thinking that a lot that night and how sad it was because he was so young to be in so deep. My mother, well she hadn’t always been that way, not until my father took off and then she kind of went off the deep end, getting high all the time, her mind slipping further and further away from her. I think she might have had an underlying mental disorder to begin with and all the crack and heroin just made it worse. Maybe that’s what Caleb’s problem was, because why would someone ever want to do that to another person? Why would he want to follow me down the hallway and grab me from behind… when I tried to scream, he covered my mouth with his hand. All the lights were off in the house and Luke’s door was shut, so he couldn’t hear my muffled cries as he dragged me toward my room. But my mom could—she could see me when she walked out of her room, the light blinding behind her as she peered into the hallway right before Caleb got me inside my room. She’d been wearing her robe and had this weird look on her face, relief maybe.

“Be quiet,” she’d told Caleb as she’d tied up her robe. “I don’t want you waking up her brother.” Then she’d turned back into her room, closed the door, and let Caleb drag me into my bedroom, gag me and tie me up, then rape me over and over again until every part of me died inside.

My soul died that night and I’m hoping that my body will soon follow because being here is just too hard… too painful.

I was about in tears when I’d finished reading it, but Violet had woken up and I forced myself to pull it together. But I noticed the date n the entry of the corner when I was shutting the notebook. Two days before Amy took her own life because she couldn’t deal with the idea of living anymore in the darkness that had taken over her mind.

It made me want to throw up. How could my mother do that to her own daughter? But the real f**ked up thing was that I wasn’t even as surprised as one might think and it makes me worry just how many ‘surprises’ are in store for me in the future.

Thankfully, through all of this, I managed to keep my shit together long enough to get me out of the house and away from Violet. I’d left the house, thinking things couldn’t possibly get worse, until my uncle Cole up and decided that he wanted to cheat too and without warning me. The bosses of The Warehouse caught on to what we were doing and I guess it wasn’t the first time it happened with Cole.

That’s when they come down and drag him toward the back room. I’m right in the middle of a winning hand and just like that, there’s all this commotion. Cole puts up a fight as two guys grab an arm and pull across the open warehouse. I’m getting to my feet, trying to figure out what to do, whether I should go after him. When a large, over weight guy with a thick neck, dressed head-to-toe in black comes up to me.

“Follow me,” he orders and when I hesitate adds, “It’ll be worse if you don’t.”

Grinding my teeth, I set the cards down on the table and follow the guy as he makes his way past the poker tables toward this back area hidden behind a steel wall. By the time I get there, the two guys that hauled my uncle off are beating the shit out of him, one holding him by the arms while the other rams their fist into his gut, face, arms—everywhere.

“Hey,” I start to protest when I’m shoved face first to the floor by a heavy set of hands and end up bashing my face on the concrete. The taste of blood fills my mouth and my jaw starts to throb as I go to push to my feet, but a foot comes down and holds me in place. They take my wallet out of my pocket, I’m sure to take all the cash I have in there. It’s not everything, but it’s enough that I’m in deep trouble. Not too mention all I won tonight is gone.

“And if you come back here again,” one of the guys says to Cole as he slams his fist right into his face. Blood spurts from his mouth and lands on the floor. “Greford won’t let you walk out of here.”

The foot moves from my back as they let go of my uncle and he falls to the floor, unable to even hold his head up. I push up and start to head to him, when one of the guys comes at me.

I shove him back roughly. “Don’t even f**king think about it. This has nothing to do with me.”

“Oh you think so,” the guy says snidely. He has this gnarly scar going down his eye and this sick look in his eyes as he wipes some of my uncle’s blood off his chin. “You come here with a cheater, you’re declared a cheater. Rules of the game.” Then he cranes his arm back and punches his fist into my jaw, right on the side that hit the concrete.

Instinctually, I react with a ram of my own fist, hitting him right in the side. It shocks him a little and then suddenly I’m being held back and the scar guys sucker punches me three or four more times before he lets me go.

My whole body hurts, but the pain is minimal to the reality of the situation. My uncle unconscious, no money, no way to pay Geraldson back.

“Now get your damn asses out of here,” Scar guy says and then spits on the floor in front of me before leaving with the other guys.

Stumbling to my feet, I stagger my way over to my uncle, bruised, beaten, and broken, ready to give up. When I roll him over, he looks dead—bloody, his face swollen, his nose a purplish blue. But then he opens his eyes and gives a cough. “Well, damn. That sucks.” No apology. No excuses. No nothing.

Annoyed and sore as hell, I help him to his feet and get him to the car. He gives me the keys, unable to drive with one of his eyes swollen shut and I hop in the driver’s seat and drive back toward the house, my mind racing a million miles a minute. Fuck, I’m fucked. This is the thought that’s running over and over in my mind as I drive.

“Should I… should I maybe take you to the emergency room?” I finally ask, feeling my own body ache with the need to be treated.

He shakes his head, turning toward the window, mumbling, “There’s a warrant for my arrest and the last thing I want to do is get caught.”