Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)(42)

Violet: Yes. But now it’s back.

MY HEART STOPS in my chest. Yeah. The buzzing went away for me, too, when I held her on the porch. Me: I’ll be there soon.

She doesn’t respond and I don’t need her to. Violet told me all I need to know.

It’s three in the morning. I stayed at the bar to help Brandy and Mom clean up the water. Pigpen and Dust lent a hand. Now we’re back and the party’s over. Music quit playing over the loudspeakers. Only smoke and charred remains are left of the bonfires.

People still mill about. Some will head home later. Some will stay the night. I’m supposed to be staying in one of the nicer rooms on the second floor of the clubhouse, but I’m not feeling like following orders.

I trudge up the stairs and only lift my head long enough to acknowledge the new set of prospects guarding the cabin. Part of me understands what Eli’s doing—protecting Violet until he knows she’s safe—but I also understand Violet. She and I are beyond feeling safe.

The dark living room is only maneuverable thanks to memory and the light shining from the kitchen. Cyrus is in there, standing against the frame of the back door, searching the night and nursing a cup of coffee. No doubt he hears my combat boots thudding across the wooden floor, but he doesn’t look up. He knows it’s me and he knows who I’m here to see.

To the right is a room and the door is cracked open. Violet’s mother is wrapped in blankets on the queen bed. Stone’s arm is hanging off the twin. Across from that room is a closed door and I knock as I turn the knob.

Light’s off, but Violet’s face is illuminated by the flashing of color from the TV. She’s under a pile of blankets, her head is propped up by her hand and a part of me warms at how her expression softens as I walk in.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” It’s a groggy voice, a sensual one. I recall her talking to me late at night on the phone using that same beautiful tone.

Since I’ve been home, I doze, sleep while part of my mind stays awake, but I slept deep with her in the hospital. Slept. I’m betting Violet’s the solution to many of my problems. Feels like I’m the solution to some of her problems, as well.

I enter, close the door behind me and sit at the foot of the bed. She watches me. I watch her. Urge is to climb up that bed and pull her tight, but I don’t know if I have that right. In theory, Violet and I are still broken up, yet it feels like the rules have changed.

Violet throws the covers back, revealing pj’s that consist of a T-shirt and cotton pants. She tilts her head to the empty spot beside her. “I want the buzzing to stop.”

I immediately undo my boot laces as she doesn’t have to ask me twice. “I’ll set my alarm and be gone before your mom wakes.”

“I don’t care what she or anyone else thinks.”

She never has. One of the things I love about her.

Violet’s watching one of those twenty-four-hour news channels where eight million things are being scrolled at the bottom. Half of the screen shows an anchor. The other half aerial shots of what looks like a school.

I take off my boots, slip off my jacket and place it on the post at the end of the bed. Violet leans forward and I climb up and lie beside her, pulling the blankets up to cover us. Violet scoots into me, and when I hook an arm around her waist, her back becomes flush with my chest.

Her sweet scent envelops me and I breathe in deeply, wishing every moment could be like this. Mirroring her, I prop up my head using my hand and watch the TV. “What’s going on?”

“Another school shooting.”

Damn. “How bad?”

“It happened. That’s bad enough, isn’t it?”

True. “I’m sorry about Eli.”

“I’m sorry for the people who died. Sorry for their families. Sorry for the ones who survived. They said that the school should open again late next week. Everyone can head back to school and be normal. Just like that. Normal by next week.”

Just like we’ll need to start living life again.

We’re silent. Listening to eyewitnesses, watching the same footage being played over and over again. It’s one of those things that once you see it you wish you never saw, one of those things that can never be undone in your mind, yet looking away never feels like an option.

“Did you hear that when Eli called the police an Amber Alert was created for us?” Violet says. “Everyone in the county knows we were kidnapped. Everyone at school will know, too.”

Great. Coach ought to love this. He was already giving me shit for my loyalties being torn between the team and the Terror. This won’t help.

“How do you think they handle it?” Violet keeps her eyes glued on the screen. “The people who’ve been through shootings before. Do you think they go back to school and everything’s normal because that’s how other people think it should be, or do you think they just show up and fake it, hoping one day the faking becomes real?”

“I don’t know.” I don’t know how to go thirty seconds without replaying Violet in point-blank range of a man itching to pull the trigger. Don’t know how to make my heart not pump like I ran a marathon. Don’t know how to quit the twenty-four-hour adrenaline rush.

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” she says. “I want to fake normal until normal becomes real again.”