“Why are you sorry?”
“You’re right. We shouldn’t be having this conversation when we aren’t face-to-face. Go to sleep, get on theAda Mae, and come back to me.”
Comebackto her.
Had I ever really left?
Violet
WOLVES
“I wanna feel the way that we did that summer night,
Drunk on a feeling, alone with the stars in the sky.”
Performed by Selena Gomez
Written by Tamposi / Wotman / Lee / Rosen / Bell / Gomez / Marshmello
The flush on my cheeks whenI looked at myself in the mirror was a reminder of all the words I’d just told Dawson on the phone. It had been easier to say them to him while he’d been in another country with the entire Atlantic between us, but he was also right. We shouldn’t have had the talk until we were together. Person-to-person.
I granted myself some leniency because I’d just lived through a pretty intense situation. Besides, I couldn’t help the little thrill I felt at the growl he’d had in his voice when I’d talked about having sex with someone else.
I was pretty sure he didn’t expect me to be a virgin—some shy Violet, sitting on her hands—waiting for someone who’d pretty much always made it clear there would never be an us. Yet, I was also sure he hadn’t liked the idea.
I didn’t like the idea of him with other women either, but I was a realist enough to understand it had happened. He’d had women before I’d met him, and likely, enough to fill a whole sports team after I’d left. Dawson had been traveling in pretty exclusive circles. Billionaire playboys and playgirls. A crowd whose major life goal was to top off the summer’s best party with an even better one at a winter chalet.
The idea of he and Jada being a thing had entered my brain a lot over the years we’d been apart. It wasn’t until they’d both denied it over the course of the last week that I’d finally been able to put those doubts to rest. Jada was his informant on top of being my friend…his friend. It would have been pretty messed up for him to sleep with her.
A knock on my bedroom door brought me back to the B&B. To the work I needed to do to prep breakfast for the next morning, as well as the work I wanted to do in the lab.
“Baioretto?” Jada’s voice called.
I opened the door.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked.
“Dawson,” I said, trying to keep my cheeks from flushing.
She smiled. “Well, if anything can make me happy about this entire shitstorm, it is the fact that it’s brought the two of you together. Wait. You are together, right?”
“I don’t know if ‘together’ is what you’d call it. But let’s just say there is the possibility of an us,” I said.
Jada threw her arms around me, jumping so we were both moving up and down.
“My work here is done,” she said.
I laughed, pushing her off and heading down the stairs. She followed me into the kitchen where I began prepping quiches. Some I’d freeze to make the weekend easier.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
I wanted to say nothing, but one look at her hopeful face, and I couldn’t. She needed to keep busy so she wouldn’t run to the liquor cabinet.
I handed her a bag of potatoes and a potato peeler.
“Peel away,” I said.
She looked at the bag doubtfully but took it to the sink.
