“Why do you care?” she came back with. This was the Vi I knew. Smart. Sassy. Daring you with just a look.
“I need to know whether I’ll have to send the DEA dogs on a detour or save you from some Russian spy who wants your recipe for free energy.”
“The Saint? Really? You’re tossing The Saint at me?” It was her turn to have lips quirking upward, and I couldn’t help the pleasure I had at seeing the soft smile. So much better than the anger she’d thrown at me in the garage.
The memories hit me like waves on the hull of my boat. Strong and relentless. Violet, in pajama shorts and a tank top that should have been outlawed, sitting cross-legged on the couch with a pillow tucked in her lap, hiding the see-through tank top and the black bra that she had on underneath it, but also pushing up the small swell of her breasts so that they were clearly visible above the pillow’s edge.
She was staring at the screen, completely engrossed in Elizabeth Shue and Val Kilmer’s race from the Russian mafia through the sewers of Moscow. And all I’d been able to do was watch every single expression that crossed her face with my fists balled so hard that the nails had bitten into the skin so I wouldn’t touch her.
“It’s your favorite movie. You watched it half a dozen times that summer.”
I’d said more of the wrong things, because the smile that had been starting to form on her lips went away at the mention of that summer together. Truck and I had just moved out of the Victorian and into the cottage downtown when the termite damage at the B&B had sent everyone scurrying. Mandy and Leena had taken off to Eli’s place, but Jersey and Violet had moved in with Truck and me. The little two-bedroom, one-bath house had been so small we could barely stand with two people in the kitchen.
It was the place where Truck and Jersey had fallen in love. It was the place I’d avoided like the plague so a sixteen-year-old energy ball didn’t cause me to do more things I’d regret in my life.
Now, that sixteen-year-old was a twenty-one-year-old dynamo.
This wasn’t just a distraction.
This was a catastrophe.
Violet
BRAND NEW ME
“It took a long long time to get here,
It took a brave, brave girl to try.”
Performed by Alicia Keys
Written by Conway / Waters / Keys / Sande
Staring up at Dawson, my body burst into a mass of bubbles. Like I’d been sitting on a Bunsen burner that had been slowly brought to a boil. My brain swirled with the possible formulas to explain the response I’d always had to him. I couldn’t deny either of them. The formulas or the reaction.
For a while now, I’d told myself my response had just been teenage hormones and inexperience. But the simmering inside me as the early morning sunshine seemed to bend around him proved how wrong I’d been.
The light turned his dark-brown hair into a multitude of bronzes and deep embers, haloing him in a golden aura. His muscles rippled as he moved. Graceful and sure. Dawson was a thing of beauty. Molded by some unknown force who liked to play jokes on mere mortals.
An undefinable formula.
I wanted to scream at Truck and Jersey for not telling me he was coming. To send a stomping, temper-tantrum-throwing GIF to Leena and Mandy for not warning me. Because it was always better to be prepared to see Dawson. Then, I could tuck away every last strand of yearning I’d once had and lock it behind the door that was labeled Past so that it would never become my Present.
And now I hadn’t had that chance.
We contemplated each other for a few painful seconds, his face an unreadable mask where I’d once known all his thoughts before he even spoke.
He’d brought up The Saint. I’d wanted to be Elizabeth Shue for about a year after that, until I’d first met Raisa, and I’d realized she was the real-life version I would never become. Not because I couldn’t, but because I’d changed. I no longer wanted to be the woman hiding her genius and running from the Russian KGB. I didn’t have any desire to create free energy as Raisa did.
“Vi.” Dawson’s voice dropped, the warmth of it settling over my skin. He took a step closer to me and would have hugged me if the back