Brutal Obsession (36)

Even Willow’s stash of chocolates.

She threw out the salt, too, citing the fact that salt can make your body hold on to water weight. Instead, she filled our fridge with greens, plain chicken, fish. So many salads. Enough that I thought I might turn into a rabbit and take Willow right along with me.

“Good point.” She sighs and crawls out of bed. “Okay, fine. Maybe only tell her after that appointment.”

Unless she ignores my call altogether, which she has been doing since I got back to campus last weekend. Out of sight, out of mind.

Easy come, easy go.

I have the urge to get rid of the globe and delete her number from my phone. But that’s dramatic… and overkill.

Drama is Paris and her weird claim on Greyson. I gesture to Willow’s phone. “Just tell Madison that Paris can have him. I don’t really give a shit what she does.”

Another bald-faced lie, but whatever. It’s not the first one I’ve told, and it won’t be the last. Willow gives me a look that tells me she knows I’m lying, and she’s judging, but she still types it out and hits send.

“How are you going to get to Vermont?”

I grimace.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What’s going on with you and Knox, huh? I thought it was just a little hookup…”

She has the good grace to blush. “I don’t know. At least Greyson didn’t have him waiting for you in the locker room.”

“Ew, no. I would’ve refused on the grounds that you’re my best friend, and we don’t do that to each other.”

She smirks. “Pretty sure Greyson would’ve been more than happy to bury you for that.”

I shrug. “Worth it.”

We go to brunch and talk about normal things. When we return home, the rest of the day is spent on the couch, watching movies and struggling through the homework we’ve been putting off. In my environmental economics class, we have to pick a project and do a presentation on it at the end of the semester. Some of our homework is leading us in baby steps toward it. Pick something that’s impacting the environment—water pollution, for example, or subsidized crops. My mind spins at how little I know about the world and how humans are steadily destroying it.

We make dinner, and I stare at the food. My appetite is nonexistent. It doesn’t help that my focus keeps getting yanked back toward ballet like a yo-yo.

Willow gives me a look. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” I know what she means, though. And yet… I can’t help it. I want to be ready for an audition so fucking bad, I can practically taste my dreams reviving. I have to stop myself from pressing my hand to my stomach.

She shakes her head. “You’re going to do what you want no matter what I say.”

“You said you’d help.”

“Figured you’d go about it in a healthy way, is all,” she mumbles.

I nod once and grab a plate. The television fills the silence, but that’s it. I sense her wanting to say something else, to try and make it better, but there isn’t anything she can do. She’s waiting for me to assure her. So I do.

“I just need to make it,” I tell her in a low voice. “After that, I’ll ease up. Okay?”

She rises abruptly. “I love you, and I want you to chase your dreams. But, Violet? I don’t believe you.”

I spend the rest of the night watching Mia Germain choreography. Old videos of her teaching open classes, of the ballerinas who excelled under her guidance. They went on to dance for famous companies that toured around the world.

My heart aches with desire.

I hadn’t let myself go there, and suddenly it all seems like…

It’s there again. It’s a possibility.

Hope is this dangerous thing. It’s quiet and warm and it stays locked away until we feed it, and then it bursts into flame. It can consume us.

It will very well eat me alive.





16





GREYSON





I have the briefest warning of my father’s arrival. My phone chirps with a social media alert that I set up forever ago, which pings when his location changes. Well, when his secretary checks him into specific cities.

It’s how I used to keep tabs on him without reaching out. When I was alone in a big, empty house with nothing to do, I could check and see where he was. Nebraska, California, Edinburgh, Dubai. The man traveled overseas a lot—especially for someone who is supposed to be a New York senator.

I’d like to think that it’s his fault I turned out the way I did. Because I was rotting of boredom as a teenager, I sought out my own thrills. I found parties, and if there weren’t any? I created them.

He always gave me access to a credit card that he paid monthly without blinking, as long as I didn’t surpass the high limit, and I knew the combination to the safe where he kept an array of valuables: cash and firearm included.

Anyway, it pings that his private jet just landed in Crown Point, and I scramble to make my room presentable. I hide the photo album in with my textbooks, run downstairs, and shove dishes and cups into the dishwasher. I even get through sweeping half of the lower level when my phone goes off again.

This time with a phone call.

“Hello?”