The water rises higher, and I can’t move my legs. Mom’s hand remains on my chest, and it’s like I canfeelher heartbeat merging with mine, twisting into a double helix of emotion. The kind that encompasses me when I’m with Violet.
Pure love.
“I know she’s the love of your life, but you pushed her away when you needed her most.”
Embarrassment clutches me like I’m a football soaring over a field laden with hybrid greens. “Because I thought she didn’t deserve the weight of what I carried. It doesn’t matter if I want her when the fact is that she deserves someone who can give her more than I can.”
“There is no one better suited for her than you, my love. Look at her.”
I glance behind Mom, settling my gaze on Violet’s wispy brown hair and curious eyes. They lock with mine, and it’s like everything around us fades. The house disappears, the water draining and absorbing back into the dirt below. Mom vanishes, too, though her voice remains.
“Look around you, Colson.”
“The water is gone but so is the house,” I observe out loud.
“No more of the bad,” she confirms. “She settles you, and you do the same for her.”
“How can you know that?” I swallow, trying to push down the lump in my throat. “You’re dead.”
She huffs out a laugh as if that fact holds no merit. “I can feel the way she looks at you.”
“How?”
“Because I’m everywhere and have clarity I never had before.” She breathes out a soft breath, and then Violet is gone, and the house is back, including the water.
It catapults to my neck, little droplets jumping into my mouth. “What the fuck?”
I begin to panic, knowing it won’t be long until the water moves high enough to cover my head. What will I do then?
“You’ll reach for her,” Mom says like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Don’t force yourself into misery because you’re afraid to feel what I couldn’t give you. I kept you from love, but that doesn’t mean you have to hold yourself from it, too. You deserve it, darling. You deserve to be loved and for it to come in a way that calms and lifts you.”
My lower lip trembles, moving in sync with the sloshing water. “Mom, I can’t…you have to get rid of this water.”
“I can’t, Colson. You’re the only one with the power to do that.”
“But how?”
Make it stop.
“I just told you. Now, go,” she encourages with a film over her voice that mutes her words. “You have people waiting for you.”
“I don’t want to leave you yet.”
The water covers my mouth and washes over my eyes, too. Mom turns into this blurry, watery image before me, and before I can figure out how to stay, my vision cuts out.
FIFTY-THREE
VIOLET
“Violet!”
My brain registers someone yelling my name, but because I’m stirred from sleep it takes a second for me to think of a response or understand what the hell is happening. The warmth cocooning my body gets yanked from me as my bedsheets are ripped away. I roll to find Sebastian pacing my bedside, his hair sticking up on the sides like he, too, was just sleeping while simultaneously running his hands over his head repeatedly.
“Sebastian?” I question, still half asleep. The only gleam filling my room is from the hall dome light by the open door where Everleigh stands. I reach for my bedside lamp and click it on. I try to wipe the sleep from my eyes. “What’s going on?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Everleigh tells me. “I heard pounding at the door, and this is what was on the other side when I opened it. He rushed in here without saying a word.”
Heavy breaths work in and out of Sebastian’s chest, and for the first time ever, I think he might be losing it. His casual, charming demeanor shifts and in its place is a man who is trying to gather his thoughts and feelings, but his physical symptoms are overriding all else.
