Chapter 8 Violet
VIOLET
Voices in the hallway outside my apartment woke me, and for a long moment, I was confused as to why it was so dark in my room at this time of morning.
Only to realize I had slept the day away and night had fallen again.
The front door to my apartment jiggled, the voices muffled, but someone was clearly trying to get inside.
My heart rate picked up, and before I’d even properly woken up, I reached beneath my bed for the baseball bat Toby had put there years ago, just for situations exactly like this.
I’d asked why the hell he was giving it to me?
I wasn’t going to be any use against an intruder.
Then we’d both realized the alternative had been him being the one with the bat, which was laughable considering the man had screamed and run around like a headless chicken at the sight of a spider.
So I’d taken the bat, stashing it beneath my bed, praying like hell I’d never be in the situation where I’d need it.
So far, I hadn’t.
But apparently, my luck had run out.
Because someone was definitely trying to break into my apartment.
“Don’t worry, Omelet. I’m armed and dangerous.”
I jumped at the voice next to me in the darkness, my brain taking too long to remember it was X. I breathed out slowly, reassured by his presence.
And then curious. I had the baseball bat. I knew he didn’t carry a gun. What the hell was he armed with? Had he brought another freaking knife into my apartment?
I flicked on the light.
He was sitting upright in the bed, his attention focused on the door, his body primed for action.
My vibrator clutched in his hands like a bat.
“Oh for God’s sake, X.” I threw the actual baseball bat at him. “Would you go already!”
He dropped the vibrator and took it from me, leaning in to steal a quick kiss. “In my defense, if I’d known you had that under your mattress, we could have gotten a whole lot kinkier last night.”
I shoved him. “X! There is no point being in love with a psychopath if you can’t even take care of a couple of street thug home invaders!”
He gave me a look like I was being incredibly insulting and then launched himself out of bed.
I followed tight behind him, creeping along the hallway and then through the living room to where the doorknob twisted and turned uselessly, thanks to the deadbolt Levi and Whip had installed.
It was only as we reached the door that I realized he was still completely naked. “X! You have no clothes on!”
“Well, that’s their punishment, isn’t it?”
Seeing X naked wasn’t much of a punishment if you asked me. But that was kind of beside the point.
X cleared the sleepy gravel from his throat. “You can just be on your merry way now! We’re awake, we’ve called the police, and we are naked!”
I rolled my eyes.
He was the only naked one. At some point during the night, I’d put on the shirt he’d given me the day we’d met, snuggling up in it with him wrapped around me so it would smell like him again.
“Who are you?” a voice called from the other side. “This apartment isn’t yours! Now I’m the one calling the police!”
X snorted, but I recognized the voice and lunged for the door, twisting the deadbolt and flinging it open. “Judy!”
The small dark-haired woman on the other side blinked at me in surprise, her slightly taller, though still-not-as-tall-as-me husband standing behind her. I threw my arms around Toby’s mom, and she quickly relaxed in my embrace, hugging me back.
I grinned at Toby’s dad over her shoulder, and he smiled back affectionately.
But his eyes held a sadness I’d never seen in them before.
Mine probably did too.
“I’m so sorry,” was all I could get out. It didn’t even begin to cover the vast, gaping hole inside me that opened up any time I was reminded of my best friend.
Judy patted my back. “Violet, are you aware there is a naked man in your apartment with nothing but a frying pan to cover himself?”
I cringed and glanced back at X, who had indeed grabbed the frying pan Whip had used the other morning to make us breakfast. He’d left it on the countertop to dry after he’d washed it.
And now X was defiling it with his junk.
I was going to have to buy a new one.
I gave Judy a strained smile. “Uh, yes. I am aware. X, meet Judy and Warren, Toby’s parents.”
He grinned sheepishly. “I normally wear less frying pans when meeting parents.”
They both gave him a disapproving look.
He grimaced and jerked one thumb toward my bedroom. “Maybe I’ll just go down here now.”
He spun on his heel, and I tried to hold in a laugh at his naked ass leaving the room.
I turned back to Judy and Warren, ready to explain, but Judy gave me a disappointed frown. “Must be nice for you, having a lovely time while our son is dead.”
I froze to the spot, her sharp, biting words cutting right through me. I was so shocked I couldn’t even speak, let alone defend myself. Guilt roared in my ears, screaming that she had a point. I’d spent the last couple of weeks bed-hopping with gorgeous men.
While Toby lay in a morgue somewhere, waiting on a coroner to release his body for burial.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Judy passed me by, beelining for Toby’s bedroom that I hadn’t touched since that night.
She didn’t make eye contact though.
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. Toby’s parents had never had a problem with me when he’d been alive.
We might not have been close exactly, but we’d definitely been friendly.
They’d been warm and welcoming when he’d taken me back to their place for Thanksgivings and Christmas dinners because I had no family of my own to go home to.
It had always just been me and Toby. They’d accepted me because I was an extension of him.
Now, by the way his mother was acting, that was over.
It just felt like another part of me had been ripped away.
Warren squeezed my hand after his wife disappeared into their son’s room. “It’s not you. She’s just struggling with her grief. We just need to get some clothes from his room. His body has been released, so we’ve organized the funeral.”
“Oh,” I said quietly.
He let my hand go and followed his wife into Toby’s room.
I leaned heavily against the wall, staring numbly at the closed bedroom door. The sounds of their grief echoed back, her sobs, his comforting words with a voice so broken it brought tears to my eyes.
X found me there but said nothing, just wrapped his arms around me from behind. We stood there like that until the door opened again and Toby’s parents emerged, Judy’s arms full of her son’s clothes.
“We’ll let you know when the funeral is.” She sniffed, her gaze not meeting mine, but her voice a little less harsh than before.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said pathetically, knowing it wouldn’t help.
They’d lost their only child. There was no consoling them.
She gave a curt nod. “And I for yours.”
Those few simple words went a long way to easing the guilt building inside me. I saw them to the door and locked it behind them.
I’d thought I’d been doing okay with my grief, but seeing them made me realize I’d just been keeping myself too busy, too distracted, to feel it.
It all rushed in like a freight train of destruction.
X moved to Toby’s door. “I’ll close this.”
But I shook my head, striding across the room. “No. I need to face it. I can’t keep ignoring he’s gone.” I swallowed hard. “I can’t afford this place by myself. I need to box up his things so I can get a roommate.”
Just saying those words out loud crumpled the last tether I had on my grief. I choked out a sob but pushed on anyway, stepping into Toby’s bedroom.
X followed close behind me, not giving me any personal space, and I was grateful for it.
Toby’s room looked like it did most days.
The bed a tangled mess of sheets and pillows and blankets because he didn’t believe in making it just to get back in a few hours later.
Brightly colored clothes were flung around, like he’d tried them on, dismissed them, and then sent them flying.
Various posters hung on the wall, advertising his varied interests, from LGBTQ support to the urban photography he’d come to love in the past few years since he’d found a decent camera at a pawnshop and come home claiming he was going to be the next Andreas Gursky.
It had surprised us both when he’d actually been good at it.
I picked up his camera from his bedside table, accidentally knocking off a pile of black-and-white printed photos beneath it. X knelt and picked them up for me, his attention catching on them.
He sat back on his heels and flicked through the images. “Damn. These are really good.” Then he shrugged. “At least they look good to me. I don’t know anything about photography.”
I didn’t really either, other than what I’d learned from Toby.
I took the images as he passed them to me, studying each one, taking my time on the details he’d somehow managed to bring out.
I smiled at the places around Saint View I recognized.
“The Dead End should have this printed on their wall. Place looks better in this photo than it does in real life.”
The greasy diner on the main strip of Saint View was a cheap, run-down place but popular with the locals nonetheless, mostly because of the prices.
But Toby’s image, taken at night, with the lights on behind the grubby glass windows, and shadowed silhouettes of people moving around inside had captured something beautiful about it.
I shifted through the other photos, taking in the familiar sights, all taken at night. The strip club. Dax’s tattoo shop. Psychos. Even Clean Sweep, nestled in between other stores in the worst part of town.
X paused, staring down at one photo.
I waited for him to pass it in my direction, but he bit his lip.
“What?”
“I don’t think you’ll want to see this one.”
Of course, that only made me want to see it more. I reached over and plucked it from his fingers.
My stomach sank.
It was the warehouse where Toby had been killed.
A lump rose in my throat, and just as quickly, I was ripping the image up, tearing the paper into tiny slivers, destroying the horrific image over and over again until the pieces were confetti-sized.
X said nothing, just let me do it, until it was out of my system.
“I guess that explains why he had maps of that part of Saint View downloaded onto his phone,” I said quietly, my brain fixating on that memory of the night he’d died, rather than any of the other horrific events that had happened after.
“I’d kind of thought maybe he was dealing drugs or something in this area.
He always had extra money. More than anyone makes working as a nail technician.
He said it came from photography, but I helped him print and frame the only photo he ever sold to a collector.
That wasn’t an everyday occurrence. When I saw those maps on his phone, I definitely thought they were of his drug-dealing territory. ”
X shrugged. “Did you ever see him with drugs?”
I shook my head. “No. Never. I didn’t even really consider it until that night.”
“So maybe he was telling the truth? Maybe he was selling digital downloads?”
“I guess so. It doesn’t matter now anyway.” But it was a relief to no longer have the idea lurking in the back of my mind. Whatever money Toby had earned would go to his parents. “Do you think they’ll want all these photos?”
X kept flipping through them, his brow crinkling as he took each one in.
“X?” I asked again when he didn’t respond.
He glanced up. “These aren’t all landscapes.”
I peered over his shoulder and stared down at the image clutched in his fingers. Two men in an alleyway, deep in conversation about something, their expressions pinched and angry.
I frowned at the intense photo in grainy black and white. X passed me a few more, all of the people seemingly unaware they were being watched through a lens. One man featured in a lot of images, but there were probably a dozen different faces, in various places around the backstreets of Saint View.
A sinking ball of dread filled my stomach. “What are these?”
X’s lips pressed together in a tight line. “Nothing good.”
“They’re drug deals, aren’t they?”
X squinted at me. “Could be weapons deals. Could be women.” His upper lip curled. “Or children.”
The photo slipped from my fingers. I shook my head and whispered, “Is this what you meant when you said you were sorry? What the hell were you doing, Toby?”