Violet gave my hand a squeeze, bringing me back to the present. The service was over. Everyone rose, and Dad, Amelia, and I tossed flowers into the hole in the ground. Dad sobbed behind his hand while one of his brothers, Uncle Greg wrapped an arm around him. Amelia stared vacantly—still cocooned in shock. Good. Maybe it would stick around, and she’d get through these first days without feeling the enormity of it.
At the reception at our house, Uncle Tony handed me a beer and I drank it. Then another. Figures in black drifted from room to room, talking in low voices and eating the food Dazia had arranged to have brought in. I think the earth would have stopped rotating if she hadn’t been there to keep it spinning.
Hours oozed past and finally, the guests started to depart. Family headed back to their hotels. Violet sat beside me in a corner of the living room.
“I want more than anything to stay with you as long as you need me, but I have a plane to catch.”
“I know you do.” I smiled weakly. “You’ve postponed your trip long enough.”
Violet was heading to Baylor, Texas to begin her med school career. She was supposed to have left days ago but stayed for Mom. And for me.
Unlike some fuckers I could name…
I wasn’t drunk but getting there. I took another pull from my beer.
“You look like you could use some sleep. Your dad’s fine,” she said when I started to protest. “He’s with your uncles and Dazia took Amelia to bed a long time ago.”
The house was nearly empty. When everyone left for good, that emptiness was going to swallow us whole.
I got to my feet a little unsteadily and walked Violet to the front door.
“Thank you for being here. Through all of it. You took…” My throat tried to close. I swallowed the tears down. “You took really good care of her. She loved you.”
“I loved her too,” Violet said, tears shining in her deep blue eyes. “I think everyone who knew her did. She was extremely loveable. And so are you.”
Not loveable enough. Not enough to make him stay.
“I mean it,” Violet said, reading my doubt. “You and I started out on a weird path, but I’m so glad we got a friendship out of it, River. Let’s stay in touch, okay? When you get sad, call me. Any time. Day or night. And I’ll do the same when I’m missing Miller. It’s not the same kind of missing, obviously. But maybe we can help each other through the bad nights.”
“I’d like that,” I said gruffly. I engulfed her small body in my arms. I didn’t use a sling anymore, but I was careful not to scratch her with the fiberglass cast wrapped around my left wrist.
She hugged me tight and then kissed my cheek. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
“Have a safe flight, Violet.”
I closed the door and stepped back into a living room that was littered with food plates, glasses, and a few beer bottles. Party residue. Laughter and loud talk came from the kitchen. It sounded like my uncles were getting Dad good and drunk.
“Stellar idea,” I muttered and found a mostly full bottle of Heineken on our coffee table. I took it with me upstairs, draining half of it on the way.
Inside my room, I sat heavily on my bed, the beer bottle in my hand, shoulders slumped. The silence was too loud. Since the night we’d left the hospital, I’d been playing music and reading until three or four in the morning. I’d read until my eyes drooped and pass out when my head hit the pillow so I wouldn’t lie awake in the dark, thinking.
Remembering.
I loosened my tie and started to take off my jacket, and that’s when I smelled it. Him. Clove-laced smoke, cedarwood cologne, vodka.
Slowly, I turned my head. He was in all black, leaning against my dresser. His silver hair gleamed, and I’d never seen his eyes so green. Like the peridot gem but red-rimmed and glassy instead of hard.
Fucking beautiful bastard.
I hated how my heart crashed against my chest, beating for him. I hated how my blood heated and moved faster through my veins, burning through the numbness, awakening the feelings that had been sedated.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I seethed. “Now? You’re here now?”
Holden had no time to answer. A wave of turbulent emotion swelled and crashed in me, and I rushed him, grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and slammed him against the wall, our faces inches apart. My eyes burned as they bore into his.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Holden faced my murderous, feverish glare unblinking. “Saying goodbye.”