“Death,” Arion states dryly as he drops to my other side with very little warning.
He bites down on one of her green apples, gaze steadily on Violet and the daft wanna-be-beau, as he listens to the same puppy-dog flirting bullshit I hear coming out of that wanker’s mouth.
“No, it wasn’t,” Violet is saying around a laugh. “It was Ms. Peppercorn. I don’t remember her real name, but she had all those peppercorn necklaces that made everyone sneeze.”
Cue dual laughter, as Jerome takes her down memory lane from the good ol’ days…
“Who is this wanker?” I ask again. “How long has he known her?”
“Someone tell me his name so I can dispose of the body properly,” Arion says, smiling darkly at us.
Vance exhales like he really doesn’t want to waste time dealing with him.
“Kidding,” Arion finally says a little sourly as he looks back.
We all watch as Jerome subtly reaches for her hand, but she uses it to tuck her hair behind her ear before he can, completely oblivious to his almost-touch, as her eyes scan the small menu on the table.
“Sort of kidding,” Arion amends.
“He’s an architect, apparently from one of the places Violet lived, and he erected her beautiful fucking sanctuary. He’s her hero right now,” Vance goes on, though the words seem to leave a bad taste in his mouth.
“She wants monsters. Not a fucking hero,” I chime in. “That girl is too devious for a hero, because she’ll make you fucking watch her body be tortured just to prove a bloody point.”
“We agreed to not bring that up, or I will end up doing very bad things that will only make the situation worse,” Arion reminds me very tightly.
“We agreed to do that around her, not—”
I shut up, because the wanker says something that finally interests me.
“So your life has gotten even weirder since we split up, and I have to say…I wish I’d been here to see how it all got to this point. You’re more mysterious than ever, Violet Carmine,” the wanker tells her.
We all go silent and still for a brief, palpable second.
“Since they split up?” Arion asks, as a slight chill causes our breaths to fog. “What’s his name?”
“Dead Wanker,” I say absently, just as Vance answers, “Jerome.”
“Jerome?” Arion parrots in a very agitated tone. “Jerome has spent five months tending to her one dream right under our noses? He’s the bloody ex she fucking lived with, you stupid fucks,” he adds like this is all our fault.
“She lived with him?” Vance asks, not sounding one bit happy.
Dead Wanker it is. Yep. I’ll carve it on his fucking gravestone myself.
“It’s not that interesting of a story, really. It just seems like it because you’re starting in the current middle,” she tells him.
“Current middle?” he asks her like he’s confused.
“Is he both deaf and daft?” I ask.
“I don’t know what current middle means either,” Arion says seriously. “Shut up.”
Violet shrugs at him. “Imagine if you felt that life would never end. The most obvious downside is that you’re perpetually trapped in the middle of your story—a story without end.” She spins the salt shaker on the table.
“But we’re just mere mortals,” Jerome says with a grin, as though he has really missed these sorts of chats with a girl who doesn’t belong to him.
“And we live our lives assuming we’re in the middle of our story, never seeing an early end, should it come. The goal is to live until you know your story is truly over…there’s an end in sight. It keeps the heart from turning to dust, because you don’t live too long to stop caring. The fault is that there may not be enough time to finish the story the way you want to.”
Jerome’s smile only grows, and I glare over at Arion.
“I hope you’re not kidding anymore,” I tell him very seriously.
“Vance, how badly will she hate me?” Arion asks like he’s weighing his options.
“She took a beating from Idun over an irrelevant shifter she hardly knew. What do you think?” Vance volleys, squashing the dream like a juicy bug under his shoe.
“You seem…still as crazy as always, but also content. Did you finally find your home, Violet? Or are you still just passing through?”
“It’s just the middle of my story right now. Who knows what tomorrow holds?” she tells him in a non-answering way.
“I hate him. I bloody hate him. He’s using their past as a bonding mechanism right now,” I point out, just in case they haven’t caught on.
They both glare at me, as I run a hand through my hair, finding this more and more disconcerting.
“Imagine what Idun will do to a human. He won’t be sticking around, because Violet would have to lock him in Sanctuary,” Vance says like he’s talking us and himself into that conclusion.
“What if he’s just passing through?” I bite out. “I won’t handle another man touching her. I’ll break his fucking brain if I go messing around in his human head with this much anger. Someone else needs to handle this.”
Arion looks over me like he’s actually soaking in this moment. “I’ve never actually seen you genuinely jealous before now. Idun fucked Dorian and you didn’t go this crazy.”