Quiet on my feet, careful not to draw attention to myself, I make my way back to the room. If his mom heard a creak in the floorboards, would she go searching to see what it was?
Doubtful.
Colson’s door clicks closed when I make it back to the room, but when I turn around, he’s on his feet at the tail end of tossing the thin sheet back on his mattress. He was looking for me, wondering where the hell I went.
“Violet.” He says it nervously, but there’s an edge to his voice that I don’t miss. If roles were reversed, I’d be the same. Bent out of shape over my guest traipsing through a house she probably shouldn’t be.
“Where did you go?”
“I, uh, thought I heard something.”
“You heard something?”
“Yeah, but,” I wave it off, not wanting him to go out there. He won’t like what he finds when he does, and I don’t want him feeling worse about me seeing it. “It was nothing.”
His gaze shifts to the door behind me. He knows more about this home than I do. I can tell from his posture that when noises come and go, they don’t mean nothing.
He makes a move to walk around me. I step in his way.
“Violet,” he warns.
“It was nothing.”
He tries to sidestep me again, but I match his strides. We’re dancing to the rhythm of a whole lot of disappointment, and I’m not ready to see that look on his face. “Colson.”
He huffs, places his hands on my hips, and lifts me—literally hoists me up—to place me behind him. It happens so fast that I don’t have time to reach out and grab him before the door swings open.
God.
No.
Please.
You don’t want to go out there.
His feet carry him away from me as each second ticks by. I have no choice but to follow. As sickened as I am over what I saw, I’m not about to let him face it alone. What kind of friend would I be if I did?
I watch from the doorway first, but his figure disappears quickly. Following the wall like I did last time, my breath hitches when I find him standing at the end of the living room in a daze.
See, I want to scream.
Brittle and taut, he orders, “Go back to my room.”
He blocks my view of his mom, so it’s hard to see what he’s taking in, but I have an inkling it’s not good. I saw the deal go down, hating the way she clung to that baggie like it was her lifeline.
I don’t hear the same raspy voice I did a bit ago. “Is she okay?”
He turns his head. All I see is that stubbly cheek of his and the slope of his nose. “She’s fine. Go back, Violet.”
I step around the corner of the wall. He turns, blocking my view completely. My words are soft like a whispering wind being carried away by the breeze when I tell him the truth. “When I thought I heard something, I came out to check. There was a guy here with her. I think…”
His brows push down, and my God, that look on his face. It claws at the edges of my heart, reminding me just how serious of a situation this is.
“She gave him money, and he gave her a baggie of something. I don’t know what.”
His nostrils flare, his teeth drawing a white line across his bottom lip.
“Was that all you saw?” he questions.
