“What about your Ph.D.?”
She shrugged. “I don’t need it.” She extended a hand to the window and the garage that was visible outside it. “That’s all I need to accomplish the things on my to-do list.”
“Not that I doubt it at all, but just to be clear, you’re really going to cure cancer with an insect in Mandy and Leena’s garage?”
She sighed, frustrated, but I wasn’t sure if it was at me, her, or having to explain herself. “Gave up on bugs solving the cancer problem a long time ago, Dawson.”
It twisted my gut that it was another thing she’d lost. Her starry-eyed hope that she could find a cure that everyone else in the world had overlooked.
“So, what are you doing in the lab?” I asked her.
“Creating a cinnamaldehyde-based antimicrobial.” She spoke matter-of-factly, as if everyone and their brother should have known what the words were that had just come out of her mouth. I was drawn to her, closing the distance. I leaned against the counter again, but this time it was right next to her at the sink where she’d started the water.
The scent of her, like the sweetest of champagnes and honey, hit me. A spiral of hair that had escaped her braid hit her cheek as she purposefully ignored me, looking into the soapy bubbles instead. I reached out, tucking it behind her ear, fingers stalling on the smooth curve of her jaw.
Her body stilled, but her eyes jumped to mine, and I lost myself in lilac waves.
I pulled my hand back slowly. Touching her had always been a mistake.
“I have no idea what you said. What will it do, this…antimicrobial?” I asked.
“Change everything in the organic skincare market. Maybe even the food industry.” She said it with the same confidence that the teenage Violet had once said that beetles were the answer to everything. It eased the twist in my stomach. She was still Vi. Still determined to leave her mark on the world just like she’d left one on me.
She pushed her sleeves up to stick her hands in the soapy water, and that was when I noticed the bruises. One on her wrist, a couple on her forearm, and another on her elbow. Not quite fingerprints, but something close.
I yanked her hands out of the water so fast it stunned us both. “What the fuck, Vi? He’s hurting you?”
She looked down at her arms almost as stunned by the sight as she’d been by my sudden movement. I let her go and headed toward the entryway.
“Is he in your room?” I demanded.
She chased after me, pulling on my arm, halting me before I’d even left the kitchen. “Stop!”
“Those are bruises. On you,” I said gruffly. Anger and pain and hatred filled me. I’d be damned if I’d let anyone hurt this beautiful creature in an attempt to dim her light. Once upon a time, I’d been the one to take her joy and throw it to the sea. That would never happen again. Not on my watch.
“No. I had an accident,” she said quickly, playing with the ends of her braid that had fallen forward again. “A real accident. Not an I’m-being-abused-but-covering-it-with-an-accident kind of thing.”
“You better talk fast,” I said, pushing myself into her space where I could smell not only the essence of her, but also the apple cake and coffee lingering on her breath. Close enough to feel the warmth of her coasting over me. “Talk fast or I’m going to go throw him out of this house with marks onhim.”
“I slipped off a ladder with a box, and he caught me. You know how easily I bruise!”
The memory of us falling off the couch at Truck’s cottage returned, adding itself to the film reel of our past clouding my brain all morning. I’d been tickling her in a desperate attempt to relieve the desire to touch her while still keeping it platonic. We’d been a tangle of limbs as we’d rolled off the couch, and she’d hit her elbow on the coffee table on the way down. It had been barely a touch, but it had left a mark the size of a golf ball on her skin as if fate was punishing her for my touch when it should have been the other way around.
“An accident. Promise me it was an accident,” I croaked out, wanting to believe her, and yet still wanting to bash Silas’s head in.
“It was,” she said, confident, sure. Truthful. My tension eased slightly.
“Violet?” Silas’s voice in the kitchen entryway drew both our eyes.
I was surprised by the continued wave of hatred flying through me, now for a different reason. He’d been the one to catch her. It was ridiculous to be angry that he’d been the one who’d saved her from falling. How many times had he been there for her when I hadn’t been? How many guys had been there for her over the last five years? I loathed the idea of all of them.
The power of those emotions made me realize I had to escape. Just like I’d always escaped when Violet and I got too close. I had to move away before she tipped me upside down.
“You okay?” Silas asked, shoving his hands into his perfectly pressed dress pants.
I wanted to laugh. He was protecting her from me, and I was protecting her from him. This distraction was the last thing I needed.
As if to prove it, one of my phones buzzed in my pocket.
