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  “No,” he denied, his eyes turning hazel with pain. “You’re the same Violet deep down. You’re just hurting, and you’re trying to protect yourself so you refuse to let her free. You’re hiding behind the girl I’m looking at right now. The one who says fuck the world and everyone else, so our sweet little Vi can hide from how badly she just wants to curl up and cry.”

  I hated that he was right, and I hated that I was still crying even though that was the last thing I wanted to do. “I…” I fought back a sob. “I’m so tired.”

  He wrapped his arms around me. “I know, sweetheart. It’s okay. You can rest now.”

  But this kind of tiredness wasn’t going to go away with rest. It went all the way to my soul. I could have slept a hundred years and still woken up exhausted. I knew because I found myself sleeping all the time. During and after school. I didn’t hang out with anyone except to go to stupid parties because all I did was sleep. And it didn’t help. I was still so exhausted, it was a chore to just keep my eyes open most of the time.

  I didn’t argue with him, though. He didn’t understand, and I wasn’t sure I was even able to make sense if I tried to explain it. Instead, I let him put me in his vehicle and drive me home. Along the way, he went through a drive-thru to get me food and coffee in an attempt to sober me up.

  “You’ve lost weight,” he grumbled as he stuffed a fry in his mouth while he drove toward Santa Monica.

  “Is that why you got me the extra large fries?” I shoved a few into my own mouth, not caring that I was chewing with my mouth open. This was Lyric I was with, after all. I didn’t have to have manners with him because he sure as hell didn’t have any when he wasn’t with any of the parents.

  “Look,” he said as he shifted lanes. “All I’m going to say about all this drinking you’re doing is this.” He glanced at me for a moment to make sure I was paying attention and then focused on the road again. “Uncle Drake started drinking hard-core at a really young age, from what I’ve heard. Look what happened with him, Vi. He destroyed his liver, and your dad had to donate part of his own to save him. Do you want that to happen to you?”

  “I only drink at parties,” I excused. “Not every day.”

  “For now. That could change. I don’t want you to start having a problem.” He blew out a heavy exhale. “And what’s with you and Stephen? If I hadn’t stepped in the way, it looked you two were about to be all over each other.”

  “Why does it matter?” I asked before taking a huge bite of my burger.

  “Because I care about you. I don’t want to see you get into trouble, Vi. You were drunk, and I’m not confident you would have remembered to make a guy protect you.” He grimaced. “I know you’re not on the pill or anything. Luca told me that a while back. Not to mention, Stephen is my roommate. I don’t want to have to kick his ass for touching you.”

  “It’s not really any of your business if I want to have sex with a hundred guys or not, Ric. And you have no right to judge when I know for a fact you’ve been dicking around since you were barely fourteen. So, you worry about yourself, and I’ll do the same.” I chewed angrily at another few fries, glaring out the passenger side window. It was dark out, and the moon was absent. The clock on the dash said it was just after midnight, which meant I was already late for curfew. I was going to be grounded, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. It took too much energy, and I had none to spare.

  “I’m not judging you, Violet. I’m fucking worried about you. I’ve seen the Insta pictures of you at other parties. Drunk and in the lap of some guy who doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as you.” He caught my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I know it’s to hurt Luca, but are you really making yourself feel any better doing that shit?”

  “Like I said, mind your own business, Lyric.”

  “You’re fucking making it my business,” he exploded. “Showing up to a damn college party. Drinking. Nearly ending up in the lap of my roommate. I care about you, Violet. You’re like a sister to me, and I love you. It hurts me to see you like this, and all I want is for you to be okay.”

  “Well, sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not okay!” I snapped. Tossing my half-eaten food back into the paper bag, I fought back my tears. “I don’t know how to be okay anymore. I…” A sob broke free, and I lost hold of my control. “I’m lost and I’m exhausted and everything hurts. And as much as I want to, I can’t find my way out of this.”

  Chapter 29

  Luca

  My hands shook as I scrolled through all my social media feeds, dreading what I would find but unable not to look. It was Saturday night, so I knew Violet was out. Like always, she hadn’t replied to any of my texts, and the single voice mail I’d left earlier in the day hadn’t been returned. I’d know she wouldn’t; she never did.

  But I still had to try.

  I still had to let her know how sorry I was, how much I loved her, and how fucking much I missed her. She didn’t want to hear any of that, but I needed to tell her regardless.

  It had been a hell of a day. I’d woken up to Megan’s mother texting me that she’d lost the baby the day before. Megan wasn’t allowed to text me because she’d gotten more and more unhinged lately, to the point that I couldn’t leave the dorm without her there.

  Some days, she was manically happy, and she would throw her arms around me and talk a mile a minute. I would tell her to get lost, and she would laugh almost hysterically, as if I’d said the funniest thing in the world. Other days, she would ambush me as soon as I stepped outside, so angry it was like she was possessed or something. I would tell her to leave me alone on those days too, but instead of the psychotic laugh, I would get physically attacked.

  There was no in-between. And after the last time she’d gone off on me, leaving my face scratched up from her nails when I couldn’t get away from her fast enough, Aunt Emmie had gotten a restraining order against her for me.

  Since then, all communications we had regarding her pregnancy were through her mother, who had made Megan return home once she’d realized how unstable her daughter was. That had made my life a little less stressful, because even with the restraining order, I’d still seen Megan all over campus. She seemed to know exactly how far five hundred feet was just by eyeballing it, because campus security and the local cops couldn’t do anything to her the two times I’d called them because of it.

  She’d basically been stalking me up until her parents had shown up and told her she was going home.

  Once Mrs. Hawthorn told me Megan had miscarried, I’d felt an instant wave of relief. It was over. I didn’t have to deal with her anymore. But then I’d felt a moment of guilt. I didn’t wish a miscarriage on any woman. I was just so damn glad not to have to raise a kid with someone I didn’t like, let alone love.

  By five in the morning, I was still wide awake, lying in my bed sweeping through Instagram and Facebook. But I figured if there were no pictures of Violet when it was already two hours past her curfew on the West Coast, then there likely weren’t going to be. Blowing out a relieved breath, I rolled over to charge my phone, only for it to ring.

  Seeing it was Violet, I felt my heart move into my throat, and my hands began to shake. Gulping in a deep breath, I prayed I wasn’t dreaming and lifted it to my ear. “Baby?”

  “H-hey,” she murmured, and I could hear the tears in her voice. “Did I wake you? I wasn’t really thinking about the time difference.”

  “No. I was just lying here thinking about you,” I told her honestly. “Are you okay? You sound…” I could hear her sniffling. And I knew I was most likely the reason.

  “I’m not okay,” she whispered, and my own tears filled my eyes. “I don’t know how to be okay, Luca. I hate you and I miss you and I think I might still even love you and I just want to stop feeling like the world is upside down.”

  “I’m sorry, Vi. So sorry. I know I can’t tell you that enough, that it won’t make anything better for either of us. But I
am sorry from the bottom of my heart, baby.” I swallowed the lump trying to choke me.

  “I know you are,” she said with a shaky exhale. “But I don’t know if I can ever forgive you. I trusted you with everything, and y-you b-broke me.”

  “If I could change what I did, I would without hesitation. I would give up everything in the blink of an eye if it could fix this.” My tears fell down my cheeks, and I scrubbed my fist across them. “You were right. I am still too immature. I hate that I let you down and broke your heart. All I want is for you to be happy.”

  “I don’t know how to feel happy anymore. That feeling seems almost alien to me these days.” She groaned as if in physical pain, and the sound was like a kick to the gut. “I’m so tired all the time, Luca. But sleep doesn’t help because I wake up even more exhausted than before I closed my eyes. Sometimes I think I’m just in a really bad dream, but the pain that makes my entire body hurt reminds me this is my new reality.”

  “Vi…” But I didn’t know what to say to that. There were no words to make it better for her. I was the reason she was going through this, and I had no idea how to fix it for her.

  “I just want it to stop,” she sobbed. “Please, Luca. Please, make this pain end.”

  “I wish I could, baby,” I choked out. “I wish…”

  “I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  Something in her voice had goose bumps popping up all over my body. Fear like I’d never felt before made my heart stall in my chest. “What does that mean, Violet?”

  “I just want to stop hurting,” she whispered.

  “Violet, where are you?” I stood up, needing to pace. Anxiety was twisting in my gut, making me sweat as nausea lifted into the back of my throat.

  “Home.”

  “Where at home?” I tried to keep my voice calm. She wouldn’t really harm herself…would she?

  “Bed.” She released a heavy exhale and then laughed softly. “I’ve been having these crazy thoughts lately, Luca. Thinking about Lucy and why she would always hurt herself to make the noise in her head stop. When we were little, she tried to tell us why she did it, but I didn’t understand. I still don’t, if I’m being honest.”

  “Baby, you’re scaring me.” I couldn’t think straight. She was talking about Lucy’s cutting, and it terrified me. My sister was still in therapy for self-harming herself when she was in her teens. It was something she continued to struggle with, but as far as I knew, she hadn’t harmed herself since before she’d married Harris.

  “Don’t be scared. I’m not going to hurt myself.” Her sobs filled my ear, and I dropped down weakly onto the edge of my bed. “But I was thinking about it. And not just hurting myself. I wanted to make this pain go away, Luca. It’s exhausting, and I’m so fucking tired of hurting.”

  “Baby—”

  “I found my crafting kit in the back of my closet, and I got out that sharp as hell precision knife. Remember how I sliced my finger open with it when I first got it? You were only eleven, but when I started to freak out because I was so scared, you calmed me down and took such good care of me.”

  “Violet—”

  “I remember how it sliced through my skin like it was butter. So sharp that it took a moment before the pain kicked in. I’d never seen so much blood, but you grabbed the hand towel out of my bathroom and wrapped my finger. Your hands didn’t even shake. At least not then. Later, when it was over, you cried so hard it broke my heart. But first, you picked me up like I weighed nothing at all and carried me downstairs to the moms and told them I needed stitches.”

  I closed my eyes, the memories flashing through my head. “I remember.”

  “Tonight, I thought about how easy it would be to just let that knife slice through my wrists and be done. There would be no more pain. I wouldn’t have to miss you and hate you and love you. My heart would be free, and my head could just shut the hell up.”

  “Oh God, baby. Please—”

  “I just sat here in bed, looking at that knife and missing you more and more with each beat of my heart. Wondering if you would cry harder than you did when I cut my finger if I died.” She breathed in raggedly and slowly blew it out. I wanted to tell her of course I would cry even harder if she died. If she wasn’t somewhere in the world breathing, then she might as well kill me too. But I couldn’t speak. It was like my vocal cords were paralyzed, and I couldn’t even make my throat work.

  She released another shaky breath. “But then I realized I was missing a guy who never really existed except in my head. I’d built you up along with this world we were going to create together until it was all I could see. You and me and our future was my endgame. And I started to get pissed at myself. Not just because you turned out to be someone I didn’t even know, but because I was so focused on you and us, that somewhere along the way, I lost sight of me.”

  “I’ll take your anger at me over the fear of you hurting yourself, Vi,” I told her as I slowly let out the breath I’d been holding.

  “I’m not mad at you, dumbass.” She released another soft laugh, but at least she wasn’t sobbing. “I’m mad at myself. How did I get so caught up in you that I forgot about myself?”

  “I don’t know, babe. Maybe…we’ve been so focused on the future that we both forgot to think about the present.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed in a quiet voice. “Maybe that’s exactly what I did. Maybe that’s why this hurts so much. I stopped living for today…and myself…a long time ago.”

  “You need to talk to someone about this, Vi,” I urged, blinking back tears, wishing I were beside her so I could just fucking hold her. “Right now, these are just thoughts. But what if tomorrow you decide to act on them? Hurting yourself isn’t the answer. I love you more than life, but I’m not worth you harming yourself in any way.”

  “Oh, I’m well aware of that,” she muttered, and my lips tilted up with a half grin even as my heart broke a little more. “But yeah, I’m going to talk to Mom in the morning. Ask her about maybe starting therapy or something.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “But I need you to do something for me,” she whispered.

  “Anything. You know that.”

  I heard her inhale and slowly let it out, as if preparing herself for what was about to leave her lips. My fingers tightened around my phone as I waited for her to speak.

  “I need you to stop calling and texting me. I keep telling myself I haven’t blocked you yet because I want to punish you, but I think it’s more because I’m not strong enough to break this last connection to you.”

  “Vi…” I wasn’t sure I could give her what she was asking. Letting her go was impossible.

  “Please,” she cried. “I know it’s not easy for you. But I need you to do this for me, Luca. I’m not strong enough to do it on my own, and right now, not seeing your name on my phone every hour, not hearing your voice when I give in and listen to your voice mails every night, that’s what I need to hopefully start healing.”

  I closed my eyes but not before my tears started to fall. “Okay, Vi,” I choked out. “If this is what you need, I won’t call you anymore. I won’t text you. I-I’ll give you as much time as you need.”

  It wouldn’t be for forever, though, I promised myself as I slowly put my phone on the nightstand after she said goodbye.

  I would give her the time she needed to heal, but I wouldn’t give up on us. I wasn’t going to let this be the end of our forever. She was the other part of my soul, and I was only going to be half alive until she was mine again. Until then, I had to be patient, let time mend what I broke, and pray that she would eventually give me a second chance.

  And I wouldn’t fuck it up ever again.

  Chapter 30

  Violet

  In my family, we were so close because we rallied behind one another when someone was going through a crisis. We also liked to think that we learned from one another’s mistakes.

  I wasn
’t so sure that was true, exactly, because I’d seen many of my cousins making the same mistake over and over again. But maybe that was just my opinion and not a fact. Still, when I told Mom about what happened the night before, she didn’t start screaming and hiding all the sharp objects in the house.

  She pulled me into her arms and told me everything was going to be okay, and then she did the one thing everyone in our family does when they don’t know how to fix something.

  She called Aunt Emmie.

  If Aunt Dallas had been home instead of in New York with Shaw, Mom probably would have called her first because she was the one we all turned to when there was a health emergency, even if it was a mental health issue. But there was no one like Aunt Emmie. If she couldn’t fix something, then it was most likely unfixable.

  She arrived shortly after, and with Mom and Dad on either side of me, we decided what was the best course of action for getting me the help I needed. If I was honest, I’d scared myself pretty badly the night before. The only thing that had calmed me down and got me through until Mom woke up was talking to Luca. I didn’t want to think about why I’d called him and not gone straight to my parents when I’d started having those dark thoughts about just ending things. I didn’t want to analyze how much more important he continued to be to me than anyone else. At least, not yet.

  One day, I promised myself. But that day wasn’t this one.

  I told the three adults everything, leaving nothing out. Not even the drinking and the boys I’d been making out with to help numb the pain I was in constantly. When I got to how I’d thought about just ending things—not just cutting myself, but taking my own life—we were all left sobbing.

  “You…” Mom stopped and took a ragged breath before forcing a smile for me. “You did the right thing telling us, sweetheart.”

  “Yeah, honey,” Dad murmured, his face so pale I was a little worried he might pass out. “We can get you the help you need now.”