For months now, I’d pushed those sorts of images aside, determined to believe that Silas’s smooth-shaven skin was better, but my body knew the truth.
“We don’t have to work on the same project to support each other. To love each other,” Silas said, but I heard the concession in his voice. The giving in.
“You shouldn’t have to give up what you want to be with someone,” I told him.
He nodded slowly, agreeing when he didn’t want to agree.
The back door opened, and Leena leaned out. “Hey, Violet, before you come in, can you get the extra bowl of fruit salad from the refrigerator in the garage?”
“Sure!” I hollered back and got up.
Silas followed me. I opened the side door of the garage, walking without thought to the refrigerator that Mandy and Leena used for overflow. I’d just taken the bowl out and turned around when the sink by the door caught my attention.
I twirled, taking in the whole space. The natural light from the dormers above the car doors. The gardening tools hung from the walls on neat pegs with metal shelving. It was neat and tidy. A big space that fit the minivan Mandy and Leena shared these days with plenty of room to spare.
It was plumbed and had electricity. With a good sterilization and some plastic, I could easily make it into exactly what I needed.
“Vi?” Silas asked, leaning on the doorframe.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Can you see it?”
“See what?” he frowned.
“The lab I could make here!” I couldn’t keep the excitement from my voice. It flipped the switch inside me that had been low and pensive back to joyful expectation. Raisa was right. I could absolutely, one hundred percent, do the initial proofs for my antimicrobial in a homemade lab. I didn’t need millions of dollars. I might need a few thousand. It would empty my nest egg and max out my credit cards, but I could absolutely do it.
Silas’s eyes widened as he took in the space himself. “Sure. I guess you could…but…why would you want to?”
Relief and joy hit me at the same time. The weight of indecision that had been hanging on me since getting the third rejection from the nanoparticle lab committee lifted.
“I’m not going back. To Stanford. To the doctoral program. I’m going to make my antimicrobial and sell it toGrâce Charmante. Right here. Right from home.”
“Are you really serious?” he asked, confusion and disappointment littering his tone.
“Yes. If Mandy and Leena let me, I’ll do it here. If they don’t, I’ll figure something out.” I didn’t have a clue where I could get another space as good for pretty much free. The cost of the equipment and materials was going to stretch me to the limit as it was. I couldn’t afford rent on top of it.
Coming back for Dad’s funeral hadn’t impacted me in the normal way losing a parent should have. It hadn’t made me cry and grieve for a dad I’d never see again. But in the end, it still had changed everything.
Dawson
DEATH OF ME
“Another day, another battle.
We all have a cage to rattle,
This just might be the death of me.”
Performed by Daughtry
Written by Christopher / Daughtry
The noise of the party driftedthrough the villa, the music and voices filling the space, echoing through the enormous house. With two levels designed around a central courtyard, it looked more like a home on the Mexican Riviera than the coast of Spain. Built to keep the place cool long before the central air-conditioning had been installed, it was full of tile floors and adobe walls layered with expensive art and furniture.
This was the third party Jada had hosted since Dax and I had won the race to Morocco and back. Catered food and a full-service bar had appeared out of nowhere each time Jada snapped her fingers. The cost of it made me want to toss my cookies. I should have been used to it by now after five years of tagging along with my friends, but somehow, my blue-collar roots continued to show up.
Jada was dancing in the middle of the room with a trio of women. A bottle of champagne was in one hand, eyes heavy with alcohol?and maybe more. Ever since Ken’Ichi had shown up in Tarifa, there’d been an extra wildness to her. A carelessness that had filtered into every movement she made.
My eyes flicked across the room to where Dax was trying not to watch Jada. He was surrounded by members of the Italian and Spanish yacht clubs. We’d been schmoozing them all week, spending cash like it was water. Greasing the wheels, my father would have called it. Bribing them, others would have said. All I knew was that we needed them to approve our race as a legitimate attempt at theConquistar de la Atlánticacup or it was all for naught. Dax was winning that battle, dollar by dollar.
