I steady my jaw, turning to her.
“Marilyn, you don’t get it. We’re closing in on D-day…”
“Dick day?” she interrupts.
“No. Destruction Day,” I emphasize. “The day of reckoning, departing, decision… Chris Jackson’s day in court is coming, and I might have to walk into a courtroom with a thousand cameras to play witness to a case I’m not supposed to be a part of. A case that could define King & Sparrow’s entire future. A case I can’t touch with a ten-foot pole.”
Marilyn smirks by the slightest fraction, her navy eyes glistening. “Who said you can’t touch the Chris Jackson case?”
“Sanity.” I take a swig from my drink, staring at Marilyn. “Touching this case is career-suicide. And I’m not going to let Brett’s father drag down dad’s company—and stocks—with it.”
Marilyn smirks. “Didn’t know you cared so much…”
I snort. “I don’t.”
“Then why have you been so intent on doing what’s best for King & Sparrow while dad’s away?” She presses forward. “Why are you so focused on doing the right thing if all you’re going to do is pack up and head back to Hollywood anyway?”
Her voice quivers on an empty note. My sister turns from me, hiding the flush on her face. The actual fucking flush that I haven’t remembered seeing since I was ten. Her blue eyes grow teary.
I’d taken Tank when I wasn’t supposed to. Showed up at the hospital every day since. But the look on Marilyn’s disappointed face tells me that it’s not enough. That it was never enough. And that I should have known it.
Somehow, living my life, I’d broken the unspoken promise I’d made to my sister.
The promise I’d made to save the day.
Because that’s what older brothers did, right? They saved the day.
God knows I need to make up for all the days I didn’t, days I hadn’t been there when she was hurting. I’d run to Hollywood because doing so served me, and me alone. In so many ways, I was every bit of the bastard Brett accused me of being. Only looking out for myself. Leaving behind the people who meant most to me. Like him. Like Marilyn. My family.
My Violet.
It was strange, how often I was coming to think of the little lawyer as mine.
I trail a hand across my sister’s shoulders finally answering her unvoiced question.
“Mare… I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. For once, I want you to lean on me. Count on me to do the right thing. God,” I scoff, “it’s probably the first time I want to.” I squeeze her small neck. “Take advantage.”
I can already see the thoughts forming inside my TV star sister’s head, her fingers threading through themselves as they clasp each other tightly. Her dark, sky-colored eyes go bright. She tilts her head.
“So are you staying in New York for good…?”
“No! I mean, yes. I mean…” I throw my hands up, nearly laughing.
God, Mare was good at shredding my anxiety. I start again, feeling ten times lighter.
“This is about overcoming my fears, my past. And since I’m back at King & Sparrow, walking into the one place that gave me the worst memories and shaping it into some of my best, then I’m turning things around. That’s all I’m saying.” I stand, placing my hands the edge of my hips. “I’m conquering the fucking beast.”
Marilyn crosses her legs, pointing a finger at me.
“And by fucking beast, I’m sure you mean Violet Keats.”
The sound of her name puts a strange fever under my skin.
I throw Marilyn a bone. “One can only hope.”
Marilyn smiles, cocking a cynical eyebrow, and I know now that the Violet talk is on pause. At least, for today.
I nod, feeling satisfied with my misdirection skills. But after saying our goodbyes, as I start to walk out, I feel a flutter in my gut—an uneasiness that hints of events to come and a myriad of words left unsaid.
Chapter Fourteen
VIOLET
Day twelve passes slowly…but without a hitch.
Outside my office window, the sun sets in a rainbow of butter-gold and red on a New York City skyline—a skyline that, years later, I don’t even recognize anymore.
Maybe it’s because the Towers are missing.
Or maybe my twenty-eight year old eyes just don’t see it the same way.
Water-paint like skies clash against a concrete slab outside of my office window, and the vision of Manhattan on the other side of the glass is like a dream, its dwindling lights and falling snow reminding me of why I fell in love with this city in the first place.
I loved the Brooklyn brownstone that’d been a family vacation home for years, but I’d always been drawn to the dregs of the other borough. The one thriving with people, businesses, brick and concrete as far as the eye could see.
Living in New York was expensive. Emotionally and physically. Anyone could tell you that. But I’d taken to the metropolis like a moth to a flame. Somehow, here, in a sea of ambition and taxi cabs, I fit, as if sliding into a new pair of name-brand pumps.
Speaking of which… I hadn’t waited more than a minute after the last worker left to take mine off tonight.
In my office, my legs crossed and bare soles up, I tap the heels of my tired feet against the wooden desk to the sound of the classic nineties band, The Cranberries. The music matches my mood as my mind races through the details of the day, the tune to Dreams putting a pep in the beat that I drum on the front of my teeth with my pen-cap.
Every night, it’s the same thing.
Me. My music. The solitude.
With the exception of a few janitors and jilted workers, the office was always dead around this hour, quiet as a grave. And yet despite all my best efforts to give into the silence, the sound of Heath’s husky voice stays with me—my only company in the cold, abandoned office the falling snow on the holiday-decorated city just outside my window another reminder that I have no holiday to go home to.
No family. No husband. No screaming kids welcoming me in.
Unlike everyone else.
The city was full of people rushing, always in a hurry. They rushed to work to start the day. They rushed home to end it. They rushed here, there, to and fro and to whatever small pieces of life they had waiting in the wings, finding some sense of sanctuary in whatever dog, girlfriend or loved one was waiting for them at home.
I needed no church, no synagogue, no needle, and no safe haven.
Work was my religion—the love I’d dedicated myself to.
The office is where I get my best ideas, where inspiration finds me most. The concept of getting lost takes on new meaning within these walls, and I literally sit in what has become my second home…and dream.
I dream up a world—a life—that gets new breath every day.
My job is the only baby I have time for these days. It’s the only part of my life—period—that takes my time. I’ve barely gotten a chance to visit my parents in Chicago, my friends have almost stopped trying to get me to socialize, and sex…
Sex?
I’d somehow forgotten the meaning of it after eleven long months. Hell, make that twelve.
I’d had to take the concept of self-satisfaction seriously these days, and sometimes on nights like this, when the city felt loneliness, I’d remove the small battery-operated boyfriend—otherwise known as the Rabbit—from my briefcase (as pathetic as I was becoming), my fingers drifting between my legs, rubbing to the thought of some nameless face.