Chapter 37 Violet
VIOLET
Icouldn’t stop staring at the twins’ birth certificates. More specifically, the names of their parents, written in little black, nonthreatening letters that gave away no sign of the cruel, horrible people they were.
How they had created the two children who currently sat on the floor at my feet, X in the middle of them, reading from a stack of books he’d brought over earlier in the day, was baffling to me.
“Again!” Ari shouted when X finished the fifth picture book for the second time. Then she quickly added, “Please.”
X didn’t complain. He just nodded. “Yes, ma’am. You got it. Which one first? Giraffe Attack or My Daddy Snores?”
“All of them.” Will inched closer to X, though he was practically already on top of him.
X looked like he wanted to pull the kids onto his lap and give them the affection they so clearly had never felt before, but we were all trying to take things slowly with them, moving at their pace, letting them know affection and touch were there if they wanted it but only on their terms, never ours.
It had been the hardest week of my life. All I wanted to do was scoop them up and smother them in love. I saw so much of myself in them, shared all the same traumas they had, and I just wanted to make it better for them.
I would. I had made that vow in my heart the moment I’d seen them there, covered in filth and too skinny to be healthy. But it would take time, and I had to be patient.
A wave of nausea swept over me, hot and thick, taking me by surprise.
X caught sight of my expression and stopped mid-sentence. “You okay?”
I still hadn’t told anyone about the baby. I kept trying to. Every day I had woken up, convinced that today was the day I would tell them.
Then the day slipped away, turning into night, and my mouth still couldn’t find the words.
I knew why.
I was living in a dream. One I hadn’t even acknowledged until I was in it.
I was surrounded by these men I loved and two children, who had come out of their shells a little more each day.
Watching them realize they were safe and loved, watching them begin to heal, did the same for the wounded child inside me who had lived her own horror in that house.
But this one, this tiny shack in Saint View that was too small for this many people, was a bubble I never wanted to leave.
I didn’t go to work, because work was out there, in the real world, where bad things happened. I soaked up every second of being inside these walls where it felt like nothing could touch me.
Not Toby’s death. Not the fact Nyah was gone, probably dead, and the only person who knew where her body was now slept six feet under himself. Out there were the police and the prison and the reminder I had taken a life and should be in jail for that crime.
If I thought about it for too long, my hands shook and sweat beaded on my forehead.
But then Ari laughed, or Will smiled, and the guilt fell away.
I’d spent my whole life trying to be good.
Letting go of that and realizing that life wasn’t that black and white and living in the gray was new. I wasn’t scared for my soul. I wasn’t worried that killing Travis would scar me for life.
I was only scared the police would find out and I’d be taken from this bubble, where everything felt right.
But that knock on the door didn’t come, and day by day, I put my faith in the men I’d chosen to keep me safe.
“I’m fine,” I promised X. “Just need a bit of air, I think.”
He nodded. “Okay, but if you’re sick, I take no responsibility for it this time.” He elbowed the twins in unison. “It was probably these two gremlins, picking up bugs at school and bringing them home.”
Ari dropped her mouth in indignation. “My school has no bugs, X!”
I hid a smile. They’d only started at the school a few days ago, both of them incredibly eager to go.
Though they were a bit older, they’d been put into the kindergarten class so they could catch up on what they’d missed.
They didn’t realize they should have been in the grade above, and they were in the same class as my brother’s twins.
Madden and Will had become fast friends, both of them a little hyper and talkative.
Remi and Ari had been more standoffish, but I’d smiled when I’d picked them up yesterday, and the two girls, now cousins, had walked out holding hands.
Ari and Will were like sponges, their brains never stimulated in any way until now, and Ari in particular had talked at length about every detail of her classroom and teacher, and there was a spark in her eyes that hadn’t been there when we’d found them in that house.
It didn’t surprise me that she wouldn’t hear X talk bad of a place she clearly loved.
“No?” he asked. “No bugs? What’s this then?” He wriggled his fingers at her, imitating a spider about to tickle her belly.
She shrieked with laughter and ran away, her annoyance with him bad-mouthing her school clearly forgotten.
I got up. “No bugs or oysters. I just need some air. I’ve got my meeting at work in thirty minutes anyway, so maybe I’ll walk there.”
X stopped mid-step, pausing their game of chase. “I’ll drive you, especially if you don’t feel well.”
I waved him off. “I’ll be fine. The walk will do me good.”
He crossed the room as the kids whined for him to keep playing, but his gaze was all for me. He brushed his lips over mine. “If you change your mind, you’ll call one of us?”
I kissed him back. “I promise. But I already feel better.” It wasn’t a lie. The nausea came and went in waves, and so far I hadn’t even thrown up, so I was feeling pretty lucky overall, apart from the nagging worry that I would be arrested and lose it all.
But I wasn’t going to confess that to X. I said goodbye to the kids and let myself out of the front door. Levi and Whip leaned against the ice cream truck, standing so close their arms touched, despite there being more than enough room to stand apart.
Levi held his phone out, the call on speaker so they could both hear it.
They looked up as I approached, and I caught the end of their conversation.
Dax’s familiar voice was on the other end. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. But it might be a while. King is going to continue your apprenticeship in the meantime.”
Levi caught my hand but continued his conversation. “I understand. I really fucking do, and don’t think this is about me. I’ll be fine with King. But, Dax, fuck, man. What are you going to do?”
Dax heaved a sigh and shrugged. “I can’t just sit here, hoping she’ll return. I need to know what happened. I need to go search for her or something.”
Levi bit his lip, and when he didn’t say anything, Dax went on. “I love her, man. What the hell else am I supposed to do? What would you do if it were Violet?”
“Burn the world down until I found her,” Levi agreed without a second of hesitation. He squeezed my fingers, like he was reassuring himself I was still there. “Go. Don’t worry about the shop. We’ll do whatever needs doing until you return.”
He ended the call.
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. “He still doesn’t believe she’s dead.”
Levi shook his head. “We have no proof she is. No body.”
“Travis said…” We all knew what Travis had said.
Whip sighed. “I hate seeing Dax like this. I think we should go out to the dump site again and make sure Nyah’s body wasn’t added since the last time we were out there. If Travis killed her in the days before we killed him, he still could have had time to add her body to his and Paul’s collection.”
Levi shook his head. “I reckon they were storing bodies somewhere else first. And Travis moved them when he realized it would fuck with us.”
Whip screwed up his face. “You’re probably right. But those women out there, unidentified… It doesn’t sit right. We need to bury them properly at the very least. What’s left of them.”
I shuddered at the knowledge those women’s bodies were still there, with nothing we could do to give their families closure.
Alerting the police to their whereabouts would mean pointing them at evidence of crimes we’d committed too.
We could move them, but they would all be in various stages of decomposition.
My stomach rolled again at the thought of the horrifically messy job, and I doubled over, clutching my belly.
Both guys lurched for me.
“Vi?” Levi asked, panic in his voice. “What’s going on?”
I told myself to tell them. But I was clammy and going to be late for work if I didn’t get a move on. So I waved them off and forced myself to straighten. “Nothing. Just a bit of heartburn or reflux or something. Nothing to worry about.”
Neither seemed convinced.
I ignored them. “I’ve gotta get to work.”
“I’ll drive you,” Whip said instantly.
“Or I can take you on my bike,” Levi offered. Then grimaced. “Though taking corners on a bike if you aren’t feeling great might not be the best idea. Whip, you take her.”
I tried to argue with them, that I really wanted the walk, but the nausea didn’t pass as quickly as it had earlier, and suddenly the ride to work felt like a great idea. Especially since I was going to be on my feet for the rest of the day.
I kissed Levi goodbye, and Whip opened the door of his car for me. I climbed in, instantly rolling down the window so I had air.
We drove in silence, my stomach too queasy for me to make conversation.
Of course I had to feel the worst I had yet on the day I had to go back to work.
But I couldn’t delay it any longer. Francine was going to fire me if she had to cover my shifts for another week.
She’d been very understanding about my abrupt need to take a week of personal leave, but when I’d called her it had sounded like the sort of forced polite you had to be, rather than true concern for whatever was going on in my life.