Page 53 of Avenged

“But I did.” I shook my head, but she kept going. “I called and told him I was afraid of getting in the car with Skip. It was so early…I didn’t think he’d still be…and he was mad…he thought I’d been at Malorie’s…” She was saying the words so fast, and they were running together, making it hard to keep up.

“Stop. Breathe,” I told her.

She took a deep breath. I could feel her entire body shaking, whether it was with fear, or anger, or humiliation, I couldn’t tell.

Finally, she breathed out, “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just go.”

She tried to turn back toward the door, but I stopped her.

“Just tell me,” I said, and she rubbed her forehead. She didn’t want to tell me. “Look, if we can talk about sex, orgasms, and body oils, I think you can tell me anything.”

It brought the weak smile I’d hoped for to her face. It was a barely-there smile, but it was still a smile. “I didn’t talk about those things. My doctor did,” she said.

“True, but I think we’re past the point of no return now.”

Her smile wavered, as if the thought of no return was too much. She’d had a very emotional day already, and I was sort of a dick for pushing her, but I felt like if I could just continue to get her to open up, layer by layer, there was a chance for me to bring that funny, comic-loving Jersey out into the open for real, for good.

“How much do you know about the accident?” she asked.

“Just that your dad killed someone and almost killed Vi,” I told her, but I didn’t tell her Vi had told me Jersey blamed herself for it all.

“I spent the night with Skip instead of my friend, Malorie, after prom,” she said, and my heart tugged at the mention of another man—a boy—who she’d spent the night with. “But after we’d…you know… he and his friends got really drunk. At first, I had a few too, but as it got later and they still didn’t stop drinking, I got frustrated. By the time four in the morning came, I was tired and grumpy, and I just wanted to go home. I figured Dad would have stopped drinking long before that. He normally passed out at around eleven. I thought the alcohol would be out of his system. But it wasn’t, and when I called and asked him to come get me at Skip’s, he blew his lid. He was calling me…all sorts of names and said he was on his way. I knew… I knew because of the names he was calling me that he was still drunk. He never did that unless he was really loaded…” Her words faded away.

“Why was Vi in the car?” I asked.

“She was worried about what he’d do…”

“He hit you?” My whole body froze, anger at a man I didn’t know filling me. Anger like I’d felt toward Ava’s asshole father when we’d learned about the emotional abuse he’d doled out on her for years. Anger like I needed to find someone and pound them into the ground.

She looked down, around, and then her eyes came back to mine, and she looked like she was taking the weight of the world back onto her shoulders. “Once in a while. Only after Mom had died. Only when he was really drunk.”

“Did he hit Vi too?” I barely could get the words out over the anger filling my chest and my throat.

She shook her head. “No. I always intervened.”

“You took the hit for her.”

“Yes.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this without losing my control, which was already barely hanging on.

“That night, I knew he was angry and drunk, and I tried to say I’d get another ride, but he hung up on me. I knew he wouldn’t stop until he’d come and got me. I thought I’d be able to talk him into handing me the keys when he got there. I didn’t know Violet was awake. I didn’t know she forced herself into the car. I didn’t know…until the police showed up instead of my dad.”

There was so much guilt and sorrow and anger in her voice, and I realized just how right Violet was. She blamed herself for all of it. For being a normal teenage girl who was sleeping with her boyfriend after prom. For being a normal girl who called her family to come get her. For being the reason he was in the car at all. For being the reason Violet was in the car, too.

“None of it was your fault,” I said, and when she looked away, I tugged her chin back to look me in the eyes. “None of that was your fault.” I wanted to will her into it. I wanted to force her to see the truth.

“You can say that all you want, but you and I both know that isn’t the case. It was my fault.”

“No. How can you blame yourself for this? Your father shouldn’t have gotten in the car. He killed someone. That isn’t on you.”

She shook her head. “Just stop, you can’t take it?”

I kissed her. I forced my lips onto hers because I couldn’t stop her any other way, and I meant to. I needed her to just stop and listen. To really hear what I was saying. But once my lips were on hers, all those thoughts went out of my brain because she tasted just like she smelled, like cinnamon and vanilla. She tasted like Christmas and anticipation and joy.

She stilled in my arms, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, her hands journeyed to my waist and her body crushed itself against mine, a return volley I couldn’t help but respond to. I deepened the kiss until our tongues were tangling together in a dance as old as time itself, but new and fresh because it was with this gorgeous woman who couldn’t see past the shell she’d built around herself. My chest felt like the Grinch’s when his heart grew ten times that day. Mine had done the same. It grew and made room for this tiny woman inside it. All of her, but especially the parts she thought weren’t loveable. Those I wanted most so I could show her just how loveable they were.

We stood there, mouths and bodies joined together as if we’d always done this, until a car door slamming brought her to her senses and she pushed on my chest, aligning herself with my truck instead of me. I didn’t move. I looked down into her face, willing her to open her eyes so I could see what was going on inside of them.

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