Page 18 of A Photo Finish
Hands on my hips, I groan and tip my head up to the ceiling. “Violet.”
“A crutch. Is that some sort of pun about my mangled leg?” she continues, hobbling away.
“Violet.”
With her back to me, she tries to slide her foot into the flip-flop she got dropped off here in and mumbles something that sounds an awful lot like, “So fucking high and mighty.”
So, I opt for something that might actually get her attention. “Nice sweatpants.”
She spins on me so fast you’d never know how injured she is. “Are you kidding?”
I cut her off. “Violet. I’ll take you to get a coffee. I need to get some groceries anyway.”
Now she just blinks at me, her expression straddling the line of rage and disbelief. When her dainty chin drops in a terse nod, I move near her, grab my keys off the hook and usher her out the front door.
“Do you want your crutches?”
She takes the front stairs awkwardly, with one leg set straight in the cast, and leans against the railing to accommodate the motion.
“No.” She almost growls at me. “You going to lecture me about that too?”
“Nope.” I jog down the stairs and head to my black truck, leaving her behind. “You’re an adult, and you know your body best.”
I swing the passenger-side door open and wait there.
Violet regards me suspiciously as she walks forward, clearly still sore. “What are you doing?” Her tone is accusatory.
“Holding the door open for you.” I honestly almost roll my eyes.So many questions.
She sort of grunts as she approaches the truck, assessing how she’ll tackle getting in, and if she doesn’t ask for help, I’m not going to give it to her. She’s made that much abundantly clear. If I learned anything about Violet from the year we spent corresponding, it’s that she’s stubborn. I gave her almost nothing, and she kept badgering me, coming back for more, until it forced me to relent a little bit. She wasn’t put off by my persona back then.
And don’t I know it. She scrambles into the truck. It’s not graceful, and I end up getting an eyeful of her round ass with “Vancouver” printed across it as she pulls herself up into the cab. My fingers pulse at my side, itching to reach forward and give her a boost. Watching her struggle makes tightness twinge in my chest.
When she’s finally seated, I slam the door and round the truck, getting into the driver’s side, and firing the engine up so that we can get this done and over with. As I peel out of the driveway, I don’t miss the way she reaches up for the oh shit handle, like she doesn’t even trust me to drive her down a gravel road.
It grates on me that she thinks so little of me now. I’m fairly sure that at one point we were on good terms.
When we hit the main road, I chance another look at her, but she’s turned her head away as she looks out the window, gazing at the green fields whipping past as I speed down the road. Her hair has a silvery quality to it, like a cool sunlit stream trailing down her back. Complete with mud from her fall, but I don’t think it would be a wise thing to bring up when we’re already on such tenuous footing.
Plus, I kind of like it. Violet just walked right out the door in hospital sweats, no makeup, and with mud in her hair because she wanted coffee. She didn’t spend hours primping to go out in public, and she still looks beautiful. She’s feminine, graceful, Elven almost.
I remember noting that about her hair when she sent a shot of her head with bird shit on it. “Got a big old dose of good luck today!” she’d said.
The memory makes my cheek twitch. At the time, it had made me laugh, and then it had made my chest ache. I still can’t remember the last time I smiled like that. She had literal shit in her hair, and all she could do was laugh and comment on the good luck it might bring.
That is a glass-half-full kind of attitude I can only aspire to. But I didn’t need to knock her glass over in the process. That was just a dick move. I don’t want to be a dick. I want to bebetter.
“You don’t need to move out.” I break the silence abruptly and stare out the windshield, hard, like there’s something interesting out here in the middle of a field. Spoiler alert: there’s not.
I feel her eyes on me even though I’m doing my damndest not to look her way. Her gaze pierces me like a tattoo gun. A sharp needling sensation, followed by warmth that flows deep.
“You don’t want me there, though.”
I sigh audibly and pulse my fingers around the leather steering wheel. What I don’t want is all the feelings she stirs up in me. I don’t want to have to look at her every day and wish I could touch her or let her touch me, because it’s pure torture wanting something that you won’t let yourself have. “That’s not true.”
Her head tilts as she regards me. “This is a weird situation. It’s awkward. You’re mad. I get it.”
I don’t need to respond to that. We both know she’s right. Weird and awkward doesn’t even begin to cover it. The girl I solicited anonymously on the internet to send me nudes became my pen pal and friend. (I never told her that.) She ghosted me, and now she works for my brother at the family ranch.
