Chapter 32 Willow #2
Lying still starts to make me feel antsy, so I slip out of bed, holding my breath and creeping out of the room as silently as I can, careful not to wake any of them.
The house is silent as I move through it, and I step outside onto the small porch, taking a deep breath of the crisp morning air. I’m still wearing oversized men’s clothes, and I wrap the big shirt a little tighter around myself.
There’s still dew on everything and mist rolling over the fields, and it’s such a different view than what I’m used to. In Detroit, even in the nicer area I moved to, there are always horns honking and the sound of people in the distance.
It’s so quiet here, and that’s somehow soothing and unnerving at the same time. I feel exposed without the chaos of the city to cloak us.
Movement in the field startles me, and I squint, going tense before I see that it’s just a little rabbit hopping its way across the grass, heading for the distant tree line.
I watch its progress, letting out a slow breath—then I jump again when the door opens behind me.
I turn to see Vic stepping out onto the porch. He looks sleep rumpled, his hair and clothes a mess from spending a night in the chair, and he blinks in the early morning light before coming up to stand next to me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, voice pitched low, but somehow still loud in this early dawn stillness.
“I thought you were still asleep,” I murmur back.
He shrugs. “I noticed you getting up, and when you didn’t come back to bed, I thought I’d check on you. It’s not really safe to be out here alone.”
“Oh.” I make a face. I’m still not used to being on the run. “Sorry, I’ll be more careful. Thanks for coming to check on me.”
He nods in acknowledgement of my words but doesn’t take his gaze off me. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Right. Of course Vic would notice that.
“I’m okay,” I say finally. “I just couldn’t sleep anymore. I had weird dreams, and once I woke up, I was too wired to pass out again.”
He makes a quiet noise. “I know that feeling. And yesterday was a long day.”
“God, it really was. There’s so much going on, and my brain feels like it’s all over the place. I don’t know what’s going to come next, and it makes me feel like I’m staring over the edge of a cliff, about to jump off… with no idea where I’ll land or if I’ll survive the fall.”
“You’ve been through hard times before and survived them,” he points out.
“Yeah. But somehow this feels worse, because it’s my own flesh and blood doing it. My grandmother—my last living relative—is the one posing the threat this time. I hate her so much, and when I think about all the awful things she’s done, I wish I’d never met her.”
Vic is silent for a second, and I wrap my arms around myself, half because of the chill in the air and half because I need the comfort of it. I can feel him watching me, but I wait to see if he’s going to say anything else.
When he finally does speak up, his voice is even softer, and he sounds like he’s almost unsure of what he’s saying. “If she hadn’t turned out to be a murdering sociopath, would you feel differently? Would you have been happy being part of her world?”
I wrinkle my nose a little as I think.
“I don’t know. When she first showed up at that hospital, I was so glad to have found my family.
Someone who could tell me about myself and my parents and all those gaps I’ve had since I was a little kid.
But at the same time, I feel so stupid now for even considering wanting to be a part of Olivia’s life.
It’s so superficial and fucked up. I never would have fit in there, and I was just kidding myself, thinking that I could. ”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be loved and accepted, butterfly. You’ve never known your family, and she was a chance to change that. It doesn’t make you stupid for thinking it might work out. Or for wanting it to.”
There’s so much understanding in his voice that it makes a lump rise in my throat.
Of course he knows how I feel.
He knows all about wishing that a toxic relationship with a family member could be better.
Ransom might be the Voronin brother I felt the most safe with at first, but Vic and I have always had a strange bond that knits us together—from that very first time when we talked about peanut butter in his kitchen, to now.
He makes me feel safe, both because I know he’ll do anything to protect me, and because he listens to me.
I can be vulnerable around him without worrying that he’s going to judge me or use it against me.
He gets things about me that the others don’t, and even though we’ve had plenty of long conversations on the phone, I sometimes feel as if I don’t even have to say anything for him to understand what I’m thinking.
“I keep thinking I should have known it wasn’t going to work out the way I wanted with Olivia,” I admit softly. “The only time in my life I’ve ever felt truly accepted and like I truly belong—”
“—is with my brothers,” Vic finishes for me. “I know.”
I shake my head, frowning at him. “No, not with your brothers. I mean, not just with them. With all three of you. Your brothers and you.” I move a little closer to him as the morning breeze ruffles his hair.
It’s a bit longer than his usual short cut, as if he hasn’t had time to trim it recently.
“Do you know what I was thinking just now?”
He shakes his head, his face impassive.
“I was thinking that no one has ever made me feel as seen as you do. That we have a bond I didn’t expect, but that I’m so happy it exists.”
“I make you feel seen because I literally watch you all the time,” Vic mumbles, his hands clenching and unclenching as if he’s not sure what to do with them.
I huff a breath, taking another step toward him. “That’s not what I mean. You watch me, yeah, but you also see me. It’s different. I can tell you things, and you understand where I’m coming from. You seem to understand parts of me that I never even understood myself.”
“Butterfly…”
His voice is very soft again as he whispers the nickname he gave me somewhere along the line, and he stares at me like he couldn’t look away if the house exploded right next to us.
“Why didn’t you come upstairs last night?” I ask. “Why didn’t you come watch?”
The question has been sitting in my mind since our conversation and the loaded moment we had in the kitchen. He’s watched me with his brothers before, so there was nothing stopping him from coming up and witnessing all of it.
But he chose not to. He stayed in the kitchen, even though I could tell he was turned on by what he’d heard us doing.
Vic’s eyes flash, and the same thing I saw in them last night flickers through their depths.
It reminds me of a piece of flint being struck—a spark that flares and dies over and over until one day it catches, turning into a flame.
When that flame inside him lights, what will happen?
That thought makes my heart beat faster, and I stand still, not looking away as my question hangs in the air between us.
“I wanted to,” he finally admits, his voice raw. “But if I had, I… I wasn’t sure I could’ve just watched.”
My eyes widen, a rush of heat pouring through me.
The admission that he would’ve wanted to join in with his brothers makes my heart beat faster, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him why that would’ve been a bad thing. But before I can get the words out, the door to the house bangs open, making us both jump.
“Ah. There you two are,” Ransom pokes his head out, stifling a yawn. “We gotta get moving. Task master Malice says it’s time to go.”