“I think this is a very good idea.”
“Are you sure you’re up for the challenge?” I asked as we left the hospital behind and headed for my car.
“Question is, are you?”
My response was a hard and demanding kiss that she returned, life and love and joy filling us. I went to put her down, and she wrapped her legs around my waist, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I set her on the roof of the Aston Martin and lost myself to every stroke, every touch, every beautiful sensation that was Violet. To the champagne life that her belief in me?her love for me?promised.
Violet - Eighteen Months Later
NEVER BREAK
“It's bigger than you and me
It's one plus one equals three
When we talk about forever.”
Performed by John Legend
Written by Atweh / Wells / Legend / Mclldowie
Cesium is an extremely volatile alkalimetal. When it comes into contact with water, it reacts to form cesium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. This reaction occurs so rapidly that a bubble forms around it, forcing it upward and exposing it to more water which ignites the hydrogen gas. This cycle repeats until all of the cesium disappears.
I’d once been water. Dawson had once been Cesium. Now, we were what remained. The cesium hydroxide after the dangerous gas had evaporated out into the universe. What was left of us could still burn. Could still raise havoc to those who touched us, but not to each other. Together we were a unit that stored energy. It zipped along us. Inside us.
I stared at the ceiling, writing the chemical reactions in a formula in my imagination, wondering what we would be if another chemical was added to our equation. I’d thought I was pregnant. Not that we’d been trying. Not that we weren’t being careful, but I’d been really late, and that never happened. Whereas Jersey’s female body parts had been anything but normal, mine had been the epitome of average.
But after worrying about it for a few days, I’d started my period. For the five days of my cycle, I’d shuffled through a range of emotions that came from knowing I didn’t have a baby growing in me. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Dawson, when I told him everything. Now, I just didn’t know if it was sadness, relief, or a weird mixture of the two that had settled over me.
Spooned up against my back with his arm around me, Dawson groaned, body tensing, squeezing me. “Vi!” he cried out, still asleep.
A nightmare. We both had them. Dawson’s were always of me in the car after we’d crashed off a cliff. Mine was always a park on a dark night with a bullet that hadn’t grazed an arm but had found purchase in his heart.
I rubbed his arm and pushed my rear end into him before littering every piece of skin I could reach with kisses. His breathing changed, getting shallower and shorter at first before slowing as he came awake. He buried his face in my neck, placing a kiss there.
“I’m here. I’m okay,” I said softly.
I turned in his arms, continuing to kiss his bare skin. Neck. Chest. Lips.
“What’s wrong?” I asked because he usually only had the nightmare when triggered by something in our lives.
He brushed the hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. “You tell me.”
“W-what?” I asked as my heart stuttered before picking up pace.
“I’ve been waiting for you to talk to me. Something has been circulating in that brain of yours for a few days now. You’re not planning on leaving me for Joel, are you?” He said it with a tease, to get a reaction out of me. I pushed my heavy braid back and tried not to roll my eyes.
Joel was the round, bubbly lab tech who worked for Jada and me. He was usually found wearing headphones and listening to true crime podcasts or romance novels. He was efficient, kind, and smart, but he wasn’t the love of my life.
Since moving to San Francisco and buying both a high-tech lab facility and a condo with views of the bay, Dawson, Jada, and I had become a team. He was a silent but equal partner. Jada and I were the brains and beauty of the operation. Together, we’d landed a deal withGrâce Charmanteand Whole Foods that was changing everything for us.
“I’m not Joel’s type,” I told him. “It’d be more you leaving me for him than the other way around.”
He chuckled. “I know.”
I swept the curl off his brow. He needed a haircut. It was longer than it had been in the entire time we’d been together. Darker now that he spent less time on the water and more time in the office—his office with Dax at Armaud Racing and our office atForce de la Violette.Dawson had become quite the entrepreneur.
He still consulted with the FBI, but he wasn’t on the regular payroll. After a year of working for the San Francisco office, he’d finally turned in his badge. The politics of the day-to-day were not for him, but he also liked to keep his thumb on the pulse of theKyodaina. I wasn’t sure any of us would ever completely feel safe, but for now, Jada’s dad had proven the truth of his words. There had been no retribution after Ken’Ichi.
