The Probability of Violet & Luke (The Coincidence #4)(2)

This time I can’t blame what’s happening to me on destiny. Only my pride, my wounded heart, and the choice I made that led me to countless bad choices, all of which can never be erased.

None of this can.

Chapter 1
Violet

I’m on the brink of losing consciousness, fading in and out as two months of bad decisions weigh me down and push me further into the water. My entire body is drenched, my lungs about to combust, yet I don’t come up for air. I freely accept the lack of life inside me and allow myself to stay there, going further and further, until I feel light and weightless. A second or two longer. That’s all I need. I can do it. Feel the comfort for just one more moment before I have to return to the painful reality of my life and what I am.

Just one more second.

Hold your breath.

Keep it in.

Trap the pain.

Drown it out.

Don’t think.

Breathe.

Don’t live.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I took it one step too far. Stayed under the water one breath too long. Inched a step too close to the edge. Drove just a little too fast down the road. Death. Would it hurt? Or would it be weightless? Liberating? Would it be better than life? Would I finally, at the very end, be able to breathe freely again? The only way I’ll ever know is to go through with it—fall off that edge. Go too fast. Sink to the bottom and never come up for air. I’m so close to finding out, yet I’m not ready to fully seal my fate just yet.

So gripping onto the edge of the bathtub, I drag myself up out of the water, gasping for air, my lungs gratefully aching. I sit up, half in, half out of the water, inhaling, exhaling, blood pumping through my veins and mixing with the adrenaline. My emotions are still numb and I focus on getting that next breath of air. But the longer I breathe, the easier it becomes, and the more my mind starts to awaken again. Feelings and thoughts of my parent’s death arise, stabbing at my heart. Their murders. And the thing that nearly kills me every time I think about it. Every minute. Every second. Every damn day—it consumes me.

Luke Price. The one guy—the only person—I’ve ever let in. The only person I’ve ever felt safe with. And now that’s all gone—he’s gone. Taken away—stolen—by destiny’s sick and warped humor. Letting us meet for the first time, then allowing us to discover that we’ve been connected with each other long before we first met. Revealing that his mother was one of the people responsible for my parent’s murders. That all along, we could have never ended up together. Even though destiny let us think that it was meant to be from the moment I fell out that window and kicked him in the face.

And now I’m left feeling worse than I’ve ever have in my entire life. Before Luke, I didn’t know what it was like to have someone care about me and to understand how it felt to care about someone else and I’m learning really quickly that it’s difficult turning my emotions off when I know how amazing things can feel.

But I keep trying to push through, if for nothing else than to see this through the end. See someone finally pay for my parent’s deaths. But it might be impossible since there’s still another person involved—another person that is still unknown. I hate not knowing yet at the same time I loathe knowing who one of them is, especially since there hasn’t been any justice yet. Hate that it ruined my shot at happiness and I despise myself for thinking about it that way. It feels selfish. My parents are dead and I should only be thinking about justice for them, yet I can’t stop thinking about how Luke made me feel. Content and happy, something I hadn’t had since I was five years old. I want it back, almost as much as I want justice for my parents. And that feels wrong, makes me feel like my parents would hate me if they were still around. And maybe they do. Maybe they’re hating me from the graves I’ve never yet even paid a visit to, simply because I can’t bring myself to go there.

“Violet, what the hell are you doing in there!” Preston, the last foster father I had from the ages of fifteen until I became eighteen and an adult, bangs on the door. He’s eight years older than me, but doesn’t mind the age difference, and uses it to his advantage all the time. He didn’t use to be so interested in me, well not to this extreme. But then his wife left him and now all he seems to see is me. It makes me sick to my stomach, just hearing the sound of his voice because it reminds me of everything that’s happened the last two months I’ve been living here. Rent doesn’t come free and Preston won’t accept money. So I deal to pay rent and then my body pays him for any mistakes I make along the way.

I hate myself, for letting despair kill me enough that I allow stuff to happen.

“I’m taking a bath,” I reply, brushing my hands over my wet hair and letting my head fall back against the rim of the tub as vomit burns at the back of my throat as I remember the night… his callous hands...

“Well, it you don’t get out soon, I’m going to have to pick the lock and come in and make you get out,” he says through the door with amusement in his tone. And desire. Lust. Need. .

I hate him.

I need him.

I wish I was somewhere else.

“I’ll be out in just a few,” I holler back, watching the faucet drip and ripple the water. I put my foot up on the brim of the tub and stare at the yellowish bruises covering my shin and that dot up from my knee to my thigh. But as the images rise of where they came from, I shake my head and put my wall back up. I refuse to think about them. I need to survive no matter what happens, like how I did for most of my life, in and out of foster homes. After all, I’ve had worse.