Page 71 of Kiss & Collide
“I’m not a ‘meet the parents’ kind of girl,” she said quietly. “Parents usually hate me.”
“Mine didn’t.”
She let out a soft huff of laughter, still not turning around to look at him. “Really? My own do.”
Now they were getting to it. He reached out and took her glass from her hand, setting it on the table. Then he took her by the shoulders and turned her around. “Maybe you should tell me about them.”
She scoffed again, keeping her head turned to the side and her eyes on the window, closed off and shut down. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Bullshit. Tell me about the ‘sperm donor.’ That’s what you called him, right? Was he not around?”
Her gaze dropped to her feet. “Oh, he was around. For a while at least. My parents divorced when I was twelve.”
“What happened?”
“If you ask my mother, he cheated. Which is true. But they were miserable long before that. As long as I can remember. If they weren’t outright fighting, they were giving each other the silent treatment or engaging in elaborate passive-aggressive sabotage. It was like growing up in a fucking psychological experiment. Nothing at all like that perfect couple you grew up with.”
“No couple is perfect. But they’re great parents. I’m sorry you didn’t have that.”
“It is what it is,” she said with a nonchalance he could tell was forced. “Not sure it would have mattered if I’d had great parents. I was a hard kid to love.”
He hated hearing her talk about herself that way. “Why do you say that?”
Her eyes flashed to his, a moment of vulnerability, then away again. “I wasn’t exactly your typical little girl.”
“What’s typical? I’m guessing you were less Disney princess, more Wednesday Addams, right?”
She laughed softly, although it didn’t lessen the tension radiating through her body. “A bit. Anyway, when my father finally started fucking his secretary and left Mum, she said it was because our family wasn’t what he wanted. And by ‘family,’ she meant me. That wasn’t exactly news. Kids can sense stuff like that. I mean, I started watching racing with him when I was six to try to make him feel better about having a daughter. But that didn’t work. He barely tolerated me. After he left, Mum said I’d been a miserable disappointment.”
Out of nowhere, fury flared up bright and hot in his chest. “Who the fuck would say that to a little kid?”
“Mum is … well, I suppose to use therapy speak, she’s toxic. Not that he’s absolved, but I don’t exactly blame my father for leaving. I wouldn’t want to be married to her either.”
“What happened after he left?”
“She certainly didn’t decide to become mother of the year, if that’s what you’re wondering. She got even more bitter, and quasi-obsessed with his new life, even though she hated the wanker. Gathering up every morsel she could about him and the new wife became her hobby. I honestly think she sometimes forgot I was still there.”
“And what about your dad?” He very much feared the answer. It sounded like Violet had been set adrift by both of them, and left to parent herself.
“He had a baby with the new wife … a son … and basically forgot all about his old family.” Her voice was small and tight. Something like pain flashed through her expression, and to his shock, her eyes were glassy with tears. Jesus, Violet was about to cry.
He lifted his hands to reach for her. “Violet—”
She seemed to remember herself, shaking her head and drawing herself up before he could touch her. “I fucking hate him, but I can’t say I blame him much on that one, either. If I was a hard little kid to love, I was a rotten teenager. Of course he didn’t like me.”
“I’m sure he liked you. And if he didn’t,he’sthe idiot. Not you. You were just a kid.”
She’d been as vulnerable with him as she was willing to get. He could see it in the sudden set of her jaw, and the flash of temper in her eyes. “Look, I know you’re used to those amazing parents of yours, providing all the love and support you needed to chase your dreams, or whatever, but a lot of people are born to a couple of selfish fuckups, and I’m one of them. My parents don’t like me.Mostpeople don’t like me. I know that. I’m used to it. Fuck, Ilikethat.”
Fuck her parents. What kind of people deliberately make their kid believe she’s unlikable? Violet was one of a kind. If she said it, she meant it. And she was a fighter. When Violet was on your side, you could take on the world.
“Hey.” He took a step closer to her. She shifted uneasily in response, still looking off to the side, down at the ground, anywhere but at him. He reached up and set his hands along the sides of her long, slender neck. “Violet.”
“What?”
He traced the angle of her jaw with his thumbs, urging her face up. Her eyes lifted to his, and he understood in a flash of clarity why she piled on so much steel-plated armor all the time. He could see the truth in her eyes. Because underneath it, she was as vulnerable as an exposed nerve. First her parents had effectively abandoned her, and refused to love her. Then, when she’d thought she’d found belonging with Ian and his band—a new family—she’d lost that, too.
“I like you.”
