Page 39 of Avenged

But the alternative? The thought of her having to carve out some kind of cash to try to stay at a pay-by-the-day hotel on the wrong side of town? No way. Not going to happen. I’d die first. I’d make her hate me first.

I could tell Jersey was still on the fence, angry and unhappy.

“We can always go stay with Jada.”

“For a month?”

Violet shrugged. “She’d let us. Her parents are never home, anyway.”

Jersey was shaking her head.

“Your pride is going to be your downfall,” I told her softly, and she turned on me, her anger flaring to life again.

“You don’t know anything about me, Travis.”

“I know enough to know there’s a difference between independence and stubbornness.”

“Ugh,” she growled out then looked from me to Violet. “Fine. Fine. Fine. We’ll stay.”

Then, she stormed up the stairs, making more noise than I’d ever heard her make. Violet and I gave each other a high five.

“You’re the best brother-in-law ever,” she said.

And hell if that didn’t shoot ice right down my spine.

Jersey

HUMAN

“I can fake a smile,

I can force a laugh,

I can dance and play the part.”

Performed by Christina Perri

Written by Perri / Johnson

My stomach was clenched tight, and the pain shot up both my back and my rib cage. I was lying on Travis’s bed. A bed that, even with the clean sheets, still smelled like him. It wasn’t anywhere near time for my period to start, but the pain was almost as severe as those first few days. Like cramps. Like a migraine that wouldn’t go away. I tried the relaxation methods the school psychologist had taught me years ago. Imagining my happy place. Imagining a boat with Mom and Dad and Violet when she was just a little thing. The water was so bright it shimmered around us like a halo around angels. That moment was the best day of my life. It was before Mom’s cancer was known and before Dad had gone off the rails. It was a picnic in the middle of the ocean. Now, it felt like an Alice in Wonderland type of moment?unreal and real mixed together.

The pain gave way just the tiniest hair so I could fully breathe in and out.

I could hear Violet in the other room. She was playing some video game with Dawson about streetcar racing. Violet didn’t play video games. We’d never had any of the game boxes, and she’d always been more of a book and research kind of girl than a thumb-moving gamer. I was frustrated she had to spend so much time with him, but her assurances she knew there was nothing that could exist between them had eased my worry a little, teeny, tiny bit.

It had been three days since I’d agreed to stay with them. Dawson and Travis had graciously helped us move the items we needed for the month we’d be out of the house. They’d also helped Mandy and Leena unload the refrigerator and cupboards, moving all the non-perishables into the shed out back, and moving the non-canned goods over to their place.

Once we’d unpacked back at Travis’s, I’d feigned tiredness in order to hide my pain and had gone to bed early. And while I didn’t want to worry Violet and show just how much pain I was in, I knew I was really avoiding Travis. I was playing chicken. I’d done a good job of it when he’d lived with us at Leena’s, and I was trying to repeat it here, but so many things had changed in the course of the last few weeks that, even when I wasn’t in the room with him, I could still feel his presence.

I opened my eyes, and they landed on the open closet door which was now stuffed with things belonging to Violet and me. My clothes were lined up next to his as if we really were married. As if we’d said, “I do,” with a kiss to the lips instead of a kiss to the hand. But damn if I couldn’t still feel that simple kiss against my skin.

The thought of Travis kissing me for real…it was too much. I wanted it, and for that reason alone, I couldn’t have it. But it felt like Doctor Chaos or Doctor Fate’s creator and antithesis, Nabu, was playing games with me. If Nabu kept thrusting us together over and over again, there was no doubt that, at some point, I’d crack. That my body would betray me, and the flare of desire he caused by just being in the same room would be evident to him.

This was not going to end well if I resided with him. I carefully thought through the few comic books I still had and knew none of them would be worth enough to cover a month at the Homestead Inn, even if I could stomach having Violet and me there again. I didn’t want Violet with the people who paid by the hour.

I forced myself to roll off the bed and couldn’t help a groan hitting me as soon as my feet hit the ground. My body hunched over onto itself. It felt like minutes had scrolled by before I could stand up again.

I made my way to the single bathroom we were all sharing now. It was barely big enough for one person, let alone four. I wasn’t complaining. I was grateful Travis and Dawson were making room for us in their tiny cottage, but it felt wrong to be there—more wrong than saying I do had felt.

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