Four days later, Violet stared at the fire with her cheek resting on Zach’s chest as it rose and fell steadily in his sleep.

They hadn’t left the living room much over the last few days, opting to stay close to the warm glow of the fireplace. On Thursday morning John had called on the landline to walk Zach through the process of turning on the generator, so thankfully they had a couple of electrical outlets working in the kitchen, along with the heat and water, but by then they’d already made a camp in the living room and it felt like “their” place.

Once the rain and wind had finally stopped, they walked, hand in hand, to survey the damage in Winter Harbor. It wasn’t bad—a few downed trees, lots of wires and debris. They were told by the local convenience store owner to expect a few more days without power, and neither of them could possibly have cared less.

They finished “My Spot” on Wednesday as the storm raged outside. By Thursday night, “Fall(en) Days” was starting to take shape. Violet had written the words after they’d broken up in college but had edited them for Zach’s music and played with the idea of falling and breaking throughout the song. Zach layered it with a soulful, broken melody and added a catchy chorus that appeared three times and finally ended the song.

Fallen heart, once brave and beating, lost in a loveless maze.

Fallen heart, now quakes with aching, oh, these fallen days.

He was still tweaking some of the music, but Violet had started writing another poem in the quiet of her mind as she slept beside him night after night. “Forged in Fire” promised to be more of an anthem about a phoenix love rising from the ashes of lost chances. She worked on it every night as Zach slept and woke every morning to the sound of his guitar playing softly behind her from his favorite chair. A rhythm established itself as they got used to each other again.

For all that he had finally said “I love you” to her, Zach mostly kept his feelings close to the vest, his brooding eyes thoughtful and cautious by nature. He didn’t expound on his declaration or tell her he loved her every other second, but he’d murmured it three different times as they made love, and every time it had made her climax more intensely and forcefully than she ever had in her life.

She looked at him across the room, assessing the differences between Yale Zach and Rocker Zach. He was edgier now than he’d been in college, both outwardly and inwardly, but in the dark quiet of the night, when she lay nestled snug against his hard, naked body, he told her things softly. As he stroked her hair from her forehead or lightly trailed his fingers over her back, he’d tell her how he hadn’t ever managed to forgive his parents for treating him like a commodity instead of a son. He shared how much Cora’s tough but constant love had kept him from the brink of total and absolute despair after losing Violet and leaving Yale.

He talked about how he’d fallen into the life of a rock songwriter after winning a songwriting competition at Juilliard, how he’d caught the ear of a publishing company and quickly secured a manager. He told her about how much he enjoyed touring the first few years as a guitar for hire, how he’d embraced the “fuck you” attitude so prevalent in the hard rock and heavy metal worlds at first, but how it had gotten stale over the years. He wanted to write something beautiful. And then he’d kiss her and stroke her face with reverence and thank her for helping him to do just that, simply by writing with him again.

He still checked out her tits at every available moment, and she still teased him that she wasn’t hiding anything interesting down there. But now, unlike Yale Zach, he’d call her a liar and grab her with confidence, slipping his hand under her bra to caress the sensitive skin with skill. Her nipples would pucker for him on command, and he’d assure her they were the most interesting thing Maine had to offer. She’d lean into his hand, running hot and wet for him, grappling for his belt and zipper, needing to feel him inside her, filling her, loving her, owning her.

“You’re starting to come back into focus,” he said on Saturday morning, watching her from across the room as she lay on her stomach on the couch, chewing the crap out of her pen top. And she was. She could feel it too.

She started to realize how much of herself she’d lost during her years with Shep, how she’d traded her creativity and hope for something sturdy and safe. She’d changed the way she looked, the way she dressed, the way she spoke, the way she wrote. Her whole worldview had been compromised by her need to fit into Shep’s world. And she had fit in. But she hadn’t been herself.

And now she was with Zach again, and she felt freer and more alive than she’d felt since Yale. She felt herself loosening up day by day, blossoming under Zach’s attention and passion and rawness, basking in their mutual respect as they polished off “My Spot” and “Fall(en) Days.” She felt that fullness in her heart and knew with certainty that Zach was the foremost desire of her heart and the missing half of her soul.

And yet.

The words “I love you” wouldn’t come. They were her last holdout, her last fail-safe, her last measure of control. Saying the words the first time had led to so much life-changing pain, she needed to be sure he belonged to her completely, that he’d never hurt her so deeply again. And she still hadn’t mustered the courage to ask him why he never returned to her. Until she had those answers, she wouldn’t be able to give herself to him fully.

Every time they made love—on the couch; on the floor; against the cold windows, which had been the most erotic sex of her life, the hot and cold sensations making her body writhe, her back shivering as he pushed the scalding heat of his flesh into her body—the words hovered in her head. And her body, pliant and gasping beneath him, must have betrayed her feelings, no matter how terribly she fought to conceal them. She loved Zach as much now, more now, than she ever had.

But knowing it and having the courage to say it were two very different things. And Violet simply didn’t have that sort of courage. Yet.

***

John called on Saturday afternoon while Violet was on the deck writing. Zach picked up the phone, peeking out to make sure Violet was occupied before walking quietly to his room.

“Johnny.”

“Zach. How’s my shack? The generator working for you?”

“Yeah, it’s fine, man. It’s all fine. Thanks for calling me back.”

“Sure. You said it was important.”

“Yeah. You know how Malcolm was riding my ass to write the last four songs for the new album? Well, I’ve got two. I’ll have all four if you give me a few more days.”

“Huh. But I want ballads, Z. And you write angry.”

“I’ve got a new partner, and this new stuff is good shit, Johnny. More mainstream. Grammy-level stuff, I’m telling you.”

“And you want to waste it on Savage Sons?”

“Malc promised ten K a song. Upfront.”

“He did, did he? Out of his own pocket? Because I never approved that. We barely give advances anymore, Zach, and yours is capped at five. You get special treatment because of your track record, but not that special.” John paused. “You get it in writing?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I’ll pay five per song, and they’re mine, and I can give them to whomever I want to. If he wants to pay you more, that’s between you and him. So you didn’t get it in writing?”

Zach sat down on the bed. “Nope.”
“Malcolm’s a slippery little bastard. I like you, Zach, so I’m going to be honest with you. Ace is writing too. Shit’s not bad, I heard them recording something yesterday. Saw them having lunch at the commissary yesterday too. Seemed chummy.”

Zach flinched. “You know my stuff’s way better than whatever shit Ace is writing.”

“Yeah, I’d agree with you there. But you’re not, in fact, here, Zach. You’re in Maine. Writing an . . . opera.”

Zach stiffened, thinking about his promise to Violet. He needed to deliver $20,000 to her by next Saturday. While he had most of the money in savings, it would just about wipe him out. There had to be another way.

“John, what if . . . what if I needed to make money? Fast?”

“Are you serious?”

Zach ground his jaw, hating the eagerness in John’s tone. He knew what was coming and dreaded it.

“The Mechanics need a guitarist,” John said. “European leg of their World Tour. Starts on October 12 in Zagreb, work our way to London, home on December 24.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred a day. No stipend.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

“Hired guitar doesn’t make that much, Zach. You know it. It may not be good, but it’s fast.”

“There’ll be two shows some days! That’s only fifteen K.”

“Well, along with the twenty I’ll give you on the four songs, you’d make up most of what Malc promised, wouldn’t you? And royalties later.”

And more important, he’d have Violet’s money for her.

“Or you can take your chances with Malcolm. But the gig with the Mechanics might be gone if you drag your feet. I’m actively looking for someone.”

“Give me a week.”
“I don’t have a week, Zach. It’s, uh, Saturday? I’ll give you until Tuesday morning. Take the rest of the weekend. And you’ll need to be in New York by Wednesday. They leave on Friday night, and you’re going to need to play with them at least a couple times before you leave.”

Zach took a deep breath, hating John, hating Malcolm, hating the Savage Sons and the Mechanics.

Zach pressed the end button. He raised the phone to throw it across the room, then stayed his hand. He needed to get in touch with Malcolm and see if he’d still buy the songs. If not, Zach was fucked: he’d have to sell their songs and go on tour for three months—leave her for three months. His insides flipped over. He didn’t even know if she loved him and he’d be leaving her. There was no way she’d wait for him; it would be playing into her worst fears about him. But if he didn’t take the gig, he’d be the reason she didn’t have the cash to buy out her contract. She’d be sued for breach, and he’d be helpless to help her.

Touring meant leaving her. Not touring meant fucking up her life and letting her down. Either way, their long-term chances didn’t look good.

“Fffffuck,” he growled, getting up to close the bedroom door. He couldn’t fuck this up. He couldn’t lose her, and he couldn’t let her down.

He had no other choice. He was going to have to call Malcolm and do whatever it took to make that deal happen. He dialed the phone.

“Malc here.”

“Malc, it’s Z!” he added some fake levity to his voice.

“Whaja want, dickhead? More groveling?”

“No, man. I was, uh . . . had some bad weather here, so I couldn’t call you back sooner. But I was wondering if you still wanted those songs, because—”

“Actually, Ace isn’t the wanker I thought he was.”

Malcolm was pouting. Zach counted backward from ten.

“No one knows your voice like I do,” he said.

“Yeah, but you’re too busy for old Malcolm. Writing some bloody rock opera or something.”

“Screw that. I wrote the songs for you. Two of them already done. You can have the rest on Tuesday if we still have a deal.”

“You wrote ’em already?”

“You said ten K a piece, Malc.”

“Huh. I’d have to see if I liked ’em.”

“That wasn’t the deal.” An edge crept into Zach’s voice.

“Deal’s changed.”

Zach tried to control his tone. “Okay, if you want Ace’s shit to fuck up the album, it’s your funeral. No skin off my back.”

He waited a beat. Another. He tapped a syncopated rhythm softly on his thigh as his doubts kicked in.

“You’re such an asshole, Zachariah! Yeah, I want your bloody songs!”

Zach’s shoulders, which had been bunched up around his ears, finally relaxed. “Tuesday good? I’ll send them via e-mail so you can test them out. I’ll be back next weekend so we can record them.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.”

“Don’t let Ace touch that fucking album. He’ll kill it. In a bad way.”

Malcolm laughed. “Fuck you, Z. Yeah, okay.”

Zach’s relief was so great, he could taste it. He wouldn’t have to go on tour, and Violet would still have her money.

“Hey, Z, what made you change your mind?”

Zach rubbed his wrist and the words a girl hovered uncertainly on the tip of his tongue before his songwriting rocker personality asserted itself.

“I don’t want Ace fucking with my work, that’s all. I’ll be in touch.”

“Right,” said Malcolm. “Cheers.”

Zach pressed the end button, lay down on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and feeling his taut muscles relax. It felt like a near miss. If Malcolm had decided to work with Ace instead, he’d have been in a really bad position. He sighed, grateful he’d dodged that bullet. Violet was back in his life, and he intended to keep her there no matter what. It was all coming together.

***

That night, as they lay naked under blankets in front of the fire, Violet leaned on Zach’s chest, letting her hands flatten and splay over his muscled pecs. She looked at him and grinned while he pushed her hair away from her face, smiling at her with those post-sex lazy eyes that made her want him even though he’d already had her twice. She was starting to get used to the way he looked at her, and it didn’t make her gasp anymore to see the love soften his hard eyes. It made her insides warm. It made her feel languorous and sexy. It started to feel like something that belonged to her, that look.

She glanced down at his smooth, contoured chest. “When did you get so big?”

“Every man’s favorite question, Vile.”

She sighed, trying not to grin. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist and repositioning her over his erection. “It’s not?”

“Fine, Zach. You have an enormous . . .” She glanced down, and her cheeks flushed, which made no sense, since they’d spent more time unclothed than clothed over the last few days. “. . . you know.”

“I don’t know. I need to hear the words.”

She picked up on his double meaning and stiffened for a second before relaxing. She wasn’t saying “I love you” until her heart felt safe or until she was ready, and Zach wasn’t going to goad her into it.

He arched up, rotating his hips, rubbing against her. “You’re a writer, be descriptive.”

The way he said descriptive was so low and dirty, her heart kicked into a gallop. One of the best surprises about Zach was how confident and playful he was as a lover, and Violet, who’d only known Shep’s somewhat mechanical lovemaking, was often taken by surprise by his spontaneity and then carried away when his eyes darkened to a blackish-gray that demanded everything she had inside to give him.

Now she grinned at him, licked her lips, and slid down his torso to sheathe his sex between her breasts, bending her head to kiss the tip with a swift peck. When she looked back up, his eyes had ignited.

“Descriptive?” She kept her voice low and sultry, sweeping her tongue around the indent of his navel then blowing gently on the wetness. He groaned softly, his breath hitching just enough to make her grin. She grabbed a condom from the pile on the bedside table, ripping it open with her teeth and rolling it slowly over his rigid, throbbing length. “Enormous. Throbbing. Pulsing. Massive.”

He flipped her onto her back, pressing his weight down on her, and grinding into the soft triangle of hair below her tummy.

“Impatient,” she continued, wrapping her legs around his back as he dropped his head to suck on her neck, licking a path to her ear and taking the lobe between his teeth. “Ahh! Impetuous . . . ahh . . . demanding . . . ah-ah . . .”

“I want you.”

“Then take me,” she sighed, gasping as he penetrated her. He held her eyes captive as he slowly pushed inside, entering her body with an aching deliberateness until the skin of his pelvis pressed up against hers, until he was flush and full—enormous, throbbing, pulsing, massive—inside her. He held himself still, intimately connected with her, his chest heaving, brushing her sensitive breasts with every breath.

His eyes raked across her face, fierce and burning, like it hurt him to look it her, but would hurt more to look away.

“I love you,” he finally rasped, rigid and unmoving inside of her, as if to prove that the feelings were more important than the act, though beads of sweat betrayed his body’s perilous grip on control. She held his gaze. She understood. She wanted him to let go and find his pleasure with her.

Reaching up to hold his face, she drew his lips down to hers and kissed him with all the love, past and present, in her heart, swirling her tongue around his as he started to move within her. And again that feeling of completeness, of truth and rightness, overwhelmed her. In all her life, she’d never felt as naked, as vulnerable with anyone as she did with Zach. It was written in the way her legs clamped around his back, the way they moved in a rhythm mutually decided by their hearts, in the way she rose to meet his every thrust, begging in sighs, in the way she gripped his hips and dug her nails into his skin. Could he read her? Did he know without her saying the words? Could he feel it? Could he see?

That beautiful aching pooled below her belly, and she moaned into his mouth, feeling the cresting, the peaking, and then the falling as she exploded around him in spasms of exquisite pleasure. Her brain flooded with endorphins as her arms tightened around him, jerking and flexing as the swell subsided.

She was vaguely aware of him thrusting into her a final time, kissing her womb as he called out her name with a strangled cry. His fists curled into the sheets by her head, and he finally fell on top of her, spent and fulfilled.

“Oh my God,” he sighed into the hollow of her neck, his body still trembling and shivering with aftershocks. “Violet . . .”

She slid her hands gently up his back, then flipped her hand over to run the backs of her nails down to his perfect ass. He convulsed again, lightly now.

He started to pull out, but her hands raced to his hips, gently held them in place.

“Don’t go,” she whispered.

He slid back into her slick warmth and buried his head in her neck, his lips against her damp skin.

“I love you so much,” he murmured.

She wrapped her arms around him, leaning her cheek against the warm skin of his shoulder. She pressed her lips to the light at the top of the lighthouse, then closed her eyes.

I love you, too.

***

“So,” she said a little later, as he held her, “you never answered my question. You weren’t this big at Yale. I can’t even remember you ever working out.”

He sighed against her neck. “You seem pretty fixated on the changes in my body, Vile.”

“Like you mind, Z.” She laced her hand through the one he held under her breasts, and he kissed the back of her neck.

 “Okay, yeah. I work out. I like the way it feels to be muscular and hard-bodied.”

“And your groupies must love it,” she snarked, instantly regretting her show of jealousy. But she couldn’t help it. He’d been honest with her about sleeping with a lot of women. She’d seen Flick reach out and touch him like she had a right to. Violet knew she had no right to feel upset or jealous about his past, but she did. It felt like no woman, before her or after, should have ever laid her unworthy hands on him. Like they should have seen the little violet on the inside of his wrist and known, Oh, he already belongs to someone. She unlaced her fingers from his, and drew his hand away from her chest so she could see her tattoo. She pressed her lips to it before replacing his hand, and he kissed her neck again.

“Some of them do, I guess. But they won’t anymore. Or they will, but I’ll be off-limits.”

“Why’s that?” she asked, hating herself for offering pathetically easy bait. She wanted to hear him say it—that he belonged to her, that he wouldn’t be with anyone else but her.

“Because I’m taken.”

Because I’m taken. His words made her shudder with pleasure before her heart caught at the idea of him being on tour again. With women throwing themselves at him every night. Deep Haven, as blissful as it was, shut off from the world in their own little cocoon of perfection, couldn’t last forever. Reality was more tricky.

She rolled in his arms to face him, loving the twinge of longing elicited by the tips of her breasts brushing his chest and worrying as her heart swelled with love for him. As though he knew how much she struggled with her feelings, he dipped his head to kiss her lips, then kissed his way down her cheek to her neck, where he rested his lips against her pulse.

She was glad the room was dark except for the glow of the gold and orange and lavender embers in the fireplace, throwing off gentle, constant warmth. Hard questions were easier asked in the dark.

His lips lingered on her throat as she whispered, “Do you really think this can work? How does it look in your head, Zach? I’ll come stay a night in New York, and then you’ll come stay a night in Greenwich? We’ll get together on weekends? What about when you’re on tour?”

He pulled her closer, burying his face in her neck, which muffled his voice a little. “I don’t want us to live apart.”

“You want to move in together?”

He shrugged, then leaned back, kissing her nose. “I want us to get our own place.”

She marveled at his single-mindedness. From the second she’d reentered his life, he’d seemed so sure of them, so certain about their future together. She’d heard of things like this—a couple who’d dated in high school meeting fifty years later when their spouses had died and getting married a week later, high school sweethearts who met at their twentieth reunion as if not a beat had passed since their last kiss—but she never thought something like that would happen to her. She wasn’t against it, per se, but the speed was jarring. It made her feel breathless, like she was free-falling, and while she didn’t hate it, she wasn’t totally on board with it either.

“In Greenwich?” she asked.

“If it’s a deal breaker for you, yes. But I wouldn’t exactly blend in there, Vile.”

“Then Manhattan? But you don’t own a place. You rent.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t buy, we can’t buy.”

“Buy a place?”

“I’ll pick up some gigs if I have to.”

“You make five thousand a song plus royalties! You can’t possibly have money woes.”

“Yeah,” he said softly, looking away from her. “I shouldn’t. But I haven’t had to live a very grown up life. I have a kickass apartment that I barely use and a lot of awesome guitars. I haven’t saved very much. I’ve never had anyone in my life to be responsible for.”

“And now?”

“I’ll grow up.”

“For me,” she murmured.

“I’ll do anything for you.”

She leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers, loving the sweet, quasi old-fashioned meaning behind his words. Despite his tattoos and piercings and tough rocker demeanor, his once-crazy lifestyle and the myriad temptations he met while touring, he wanted to take care of her. The idea was so sexy to her, it made her breath catch, made her face soften with tenderness for him.

“You amaze me,” she whispered, kissing him again.

“No. It’s the other way around,” he whispered back. “You amaze me. Everything that’s good in me is because of you.”

“It was all there the day I found you, Z,” she said, reaching up between them to touch her spot under his eye. “I saw it from the start.”

He shuddered lightly and gathered her into his arms, pressing his lips to her shoulder, returning to their conversation. “So live with me? In New York?”

She sensed his urgency to hammer out a plan and sighed, thinking about the hustle and bustle of New York which she appreciated in small doses, but felt bewildering as a place to live. “I don’t know if I can live in New York.”

 “Then Brooklyn. Or New Haven. There’s still a train that goes from New York to New Haven, right?”

She leaned back, fixing her eyes on his tiny mole so that they wouldn’t fill with tears. She concentrated on it as hard as she could, though it was useless and her eyes filled anyway. “You’d do that for me? Move to Connecticut?”

“Violet, you don’t get it. I keep saying it and you don’t get it. I’d do anything for you but let you go. I love you.”

He searched her eyes after he said this, looking for her to return his feelings, for her to reciprocate his words.

She dropped her eyes, the intense emotions between them and discussion about living together starting to overwhelm her. A low-grade panic spread uncomfortably in her gut. “New Haven’s where our story got messy.”

“It’s also where it started.”

“Really messy, Zach.”

“Okay.” He let go of her, rolling onto his back with exasperation, and part of her felt relieved. “Life’s messy, Vile. Love’s messy. Unless you’re with Shep fucking Smalley. Then it’s parceled into perfect, bite-size pieces of sawdust.”

He was pushing back. He was also right. Goddamn it.

“Don’t talk about him like that.”

“Your sainted ex.”

“He’s dead, Zach. Have some respect.” She tugged the blanket over her, moving onto her side and turning her back to him. Yeah, he was right, but it felt disloyal to let him talk about Shep like that—she didn’t like it.

After several minutes, she felt the back of his fingers run softly down her back. “Vile? I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” she muttered, still facing away.

***

He rolled onto his back again and stared at the ceiling, annoyed. What had just happened? They’d been talking about living together and suddenly she’d shifted the conversation back to what had happened at Yale. She still didn’t trust him enough to say “I love you,” even when it was written all over her face. She could barely talk about a future with him And as much as he hated to admit it, thoughts of her with Shep still invaded his mind at odd moments and made him want to punch something.

“You know what, Violet? Let’s hash it all the fuck out once and for all, because I’m sick of it popping up every time we’re having a good moment. Fuck, yes, we got messy. We were kids trying to figure out enormous fucking feelings. And no, I couldn’t handle it. You were the first girl I ever loved, the first person who ever loved me. Forgive me for not recognizing the feeling or knowing what to do with it when it arrived on my doorstep. And yes, I made the biggest mistake of my life when I got freaked-out and ran away. But, goddamn it, Vile, I can’t change the past. I wish I could. I wish I hadn’t missed out on nine years with you. But we’re here now, aren’t we?” She didn’t answer and something inside him that longed for her beyond words, and definitely beyond good decisions, snapped. “And as long as we’re hashing things out, you jumped in Shep’s bed in what? Three weeks? Four? How long was it until he was comforting you, huh?”

She whipped around to face him with furious eyes and sat up abruptly, grabbing one of the many blankets to hold against her chest in an effort to hide her breasts.

“You’re such an asshole!”

“I’m an asshole?” Zach sat up too, yanking another blanket up to his waist. “You couldn’t wait a few days for me to get my head around—”

“Around what? Whether or not you liked me? We’d spent every waking moment together since the first day of school, then you slept with me and walked out of my life!”

“Because ‘I love you’ felt like too much, Vile. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Too big. Too final. Too scary. Ever felt like that?”

Her eyes were wide and furious, and he could see her face reddening, even in the dim light. She looked like a volcano about to explode. And then she did.

“Why didn’t you ever come back to me? Before I got together with Shep! After! Five years ago! Last summer! Sometime! Anytime! Why? If you loved me so much, why didn’t you ever come back to me?” Her last words came out in a harsh, strangled, ragged sob.

He didn’t flinch but heard his voice waver a little as he answered, “Because you had already moved on.”

“At Yale?”

He nodded. “Was I supposed to assume some sweet words from my lips would have prompted you to walk away from your life with him?”

“Yes,” she breathed, low and intense with fury. “Yes. You could have assumed that. Zach, all you needed to do was tell me, and I would have been yours.”

Now he did flinch, hating her words because she was lying to him. Didn’t she know that he had come to find her the second his feelings had come into focus that fall at Yale? By then she hadn’t wanted him. He looked down at the violet on his wrist, working to keep his voice calm despite the wave of anger he felt.

“That November, when I finally realized what I had lost, I wanted you back, Violet, but you weren’t available. You were always with him. You moved into his room just like you’d moved into mine. I was sure you were sleeping with him, and when I thought about it, I wanted to die.” He tried to keep his voice measured, but it was hard to control the pain that resurfaced as he discussed those dark days. “The days I saw you together? Him touching you? Kissing you? Every time it was like someone reached into my chest and ripped out my beating heart. I never saw you without his arm draped across your shoulder, his tongue fucking your mouth like he was sucking the life out of you. I finally had to transfer to Juilliard because I thought I would go crazy if I had to see it anymore.

“And the one time I actually approached you, you looked like you were going to faint or vomit if I took one step closer. You stood there staring at me, leaning back against your rich, popular, frat-hole boyfriend like you couldn’t bear to look at me, like I was nothing to you. I saw it, Violet. You may not remember it. But I saw it in your eyes. I knew. I knew we were totally and completely over.”