Still, I’m a logical man. Always have been. I’m not making accusations without proof. A part of me doesn’t want to look for the truth, because what I may find could end something beautiful before it’s had time to begin. I don’t want to be the one who pulls the trigger and kills that fate, so I do what I never do.
I procrastinate.
I delay until Violet limps casually from the room, trying hard not to look like she’s fleeing.
Carter shoots me an irritated look as I shoulder him, making his drink spill when I turn. Elliot is mining down to the second level of the program, so absorbed in his glory he doesn’t look in my direction as the people part like the sea for Moses to let me through.
As for Gus, I can’t face him. If I do, I may kill him. If he believes Elliot wrote that program, he doesn’t deserve my respect. I’m yet to decide what to do with Elliot. When I have proof.
Violet is slower than most people when she wears sneakers. In heels, she doesn’t make it to the foyer before I catch up with her.
She gasps when I wrap my fingers around her upper arm.
“Going somewhere, Violet?”
She licks her lips, glancing over my shoulder as if she’s gauging how long it will take for someone to come to her rescue if she screams. “I’m just going outside for some air.”
“Bored of the party already?” I ask, my tone mocking.
She sounds breathless. “Yes.”
“All you had to do was say so.” I search her eyes, willing it not to be so. “I would’ve taken you home.”
“Okay then.” She looks at where I’m gripping her. “You’re hurting me.”
I let her go. My fingers are imprinted on her skin, five white indents that fade as she rubs her arm.
“Wait here,” I say, studying her face for signs when I don’t want more non-verbal confirmations. “I’ll get the car.”
She waits quietly, clutching her bag against her hip and holding her elbow with her free hand.
After pulling up next to the entrance, I seat her, secure her seat belt, and drive her home in silence.
She almost looks relieved when I pull through the gates of Gus’s property, as if she expected me to murder her on the side of the road and dump her body in the bushes.
“Thanks,” she says, already reaching for her door before I’ve parked.
The minute I cut the engine, she gets out of the car.
I’m at her side even as she straightens, cutting her off. She stares up at me with her huge, lavender-colored eyes as I corner her by planting one palm on the roof of the car and the other on the open door.
Her throat ripples as she swallows.
Wrapping a hand around her neck, I trace the vein that pulses under her skin with my thumb. Her blood pumps under my fingertips. I drag her closer while threading my free hand in the long strands of hair to cup her head, messing up her hairdo and holding her like a fragile butterfly as I slowly lower my head until our lips are aligned.
Her breath catches on a hitch when I close the last hairbreadth of distance and brush my mouth over hers. I kiss her gently, softly, with all the tenderness I can muster, because if what I suspect is true, it will be the last time I kiss her like this.
CHAPTER 26
Violet
My insides quake as Leon leads me to the front door. It takes everything I have not to puke right there on the porch.
When I fish my key from my bag, he wraps his fingers over mine, takes the key, and unlocks the door. Everything he does is gentle, and it confuses the hell out of me. It scares me even more than what it confuses me, and I’m already terrified. His reaction when he saw Elliot’s presentation tells me Elliot wasn’t discreet in hiding his plagiarism. Leon knows Elliot stole his work.
“Goodnight, Violet,” he says, his tone matching the softness of his actions.
He stares at me with a look that consumes, a look that’s born from fire and bred in hell. The flames seem to destroy him from the inside out. It’s the tormented look of an artist who observes beauty he’ll never be able to replicate. It’s a look of unrequited longing, of having lost something before you’ve owned it. It darkens his eyes to a stunning hue of Guinness and gold, a turbulent maelstrom of dark, foamy waters. Like the first time he walked in on me in the kitchen at the office, I’m mesmerized by those eyes, held captive by his suffering and my guilt. In the golden flecks at the bottom of that whirlpool, retribution glows like a secret source of light. It makes his eyes shine with a sinister promise, a layer of vengeance painted over the pain.