She follows me like a lamb to slaughter, all the way into my room. She lets me close the door behind her and toss her jacket onto the bed.
“Sit,” I order.
She doesn’t. She stays in the center of the room, looking around like she’s never seen a guy’s room before. Maybe Jack was a different breed and never let her go over to the house he shares with some of his football buddies.
My room is neat and organized. It reflects my mind. I don’t like chaos, I don’t like uncertainty. And Violet is the biggest uncertainty I’ve faced. She’s unpredictable.
In here, I know where everything is. My desk is clear of papers, notebooks, and textbooks. The pens and pencils sit in a mug that saysNumber One Hockey Babethat was a gift from a nameless puck bunny. A thank you for an orgasm, probably.
The walls are cream, my bedspread quilted, dark-gray and soft. White sheets—I’m not a monster, and I’m not sixteen anymore. Black sheets are a red flag… and I go out of my way to eliminate all the red flags that might make someone run.
Well, not Violet. She had the chance to run because she’s seen past the veneer, and she knows what my family is capable of. When it comes to Devereuxes, you’re either in our good graces, not worth our time, or you’re our enemy.
Violet seems to have the uncanny ability to waver between all of those things. Exiled but worth my time. An irresistible enemy.
“You don’t have any artwork,” she says. “No pictures, even…”
I consider what I know of Violet Reece. I did some digging this week, just simple internet searches that gave me a variety of information. An article in theTimeshad a few quotes from her after a performance ofDon Quixotewith the Crown Point Ballet. She was raised by a single mom who sang her praises in public. Dad wasn’t on the scene, although another search turned up an obituary for him.
Violet was seven when he died.
She grew up in Rose Hill, New York. The same town I grew up in, although we went to different high schools—her the public one a town over, me to an elite private school. She lived in a house that would sell for a fraction of the price of my dad’s in the current market. It’s not a particularly bad neighborhood, but it’s isolated. The homes are old. I took a tour of it on a real estate website, clicking through staged photos. Still, even the real estate company couldn’t completely erase Violet.
She had a purple room with a waterfall mural on one wall. Her two dressers were white with sky-blue tops, the paint chipped and worn. The drawers looked like they had seen better days. Her twin bed was made, the white-and-purple comforter tucked tight enough to satisfy a military drill sergeant.
Where her mother and her went after that is a mystery. But her childhood was in that old house.
I wonder what year she met Willow Reed. Knox thought it was in high school, but I crave to know the details that I can’t get from a search. The first public photo of the two of them wasn’t posted until their junior year. And then there was a slew of them shortly after that, from summer at a pool party, their arms looped around each other’s waists, all the way to starting at CPU together.
Violet was thinner then. Her neck seemed longer, more slender. More breakable. She stood with the same grace that she does now, but there was more self-assurance.
I took that from her. I ground her down into whatever she is now.
And right now, she’s moving toward the one thing I actually care about: a family photo album.
It’s pure sentiment that made me keep it. That made me haul it all the way from New York to Crown Point. There are photos of my mother in there, smiling into the camera. Her on her wedding day, her expression happy and content next to my tall, brooding, asshole father. Her pregnant. Her with me as a baby.
After the wedding day, I couldn’t find another picture of my parents together.
She picks up the leather-bound book and runs her palm over the front. It’s stamped with Devereux on the front, in simple, slanted font. A gift from my cousin on my mother’s side on my sixteenth birthday.
That was the last time I saw anyone from her family.
“Put that down,” I snap.
She doesn’t. She flips it open to the first page, and a photo of my mother and me—one at a water park, if I remember correctly—stares back at her.
Her eyes move as she takes in every single detail, and I’m stuck in the middle of the room. Unable to snatch it out of her hand, unable to order her to drop it again.
She flips the page, and I catch a glimpse of a wedding photo. The cake-smashing one. Candid’s that my cousin printed. I don’t have any professional photos. Nothing father-approved. I can imagine her standing off to the side, raising the disposable camera to her eye. The scrape of the dial, loading the film into place, and the click-and-flash.
The noise rings in my ears, and when she turns the next page, my muscles unlock.
I stride forward and grab it, slamming it shut and dropping it back to its spot on the low bookcase. I grab her by her throat and walk her backward, until she hits the wall. Her eyes widen, and her lips part.
“Don’t touch that,” I hiss.
The breath goes out of her in a quick exhale, and she lifts her hand to hold my wrist.