Relief poured through me when my phone vibrated.
TRUCK: He surfaces from the underworld! I was starting to get worried.
I stared at his words for a long time. He meant it as a joke, but little did he know how close his words were to being true.
ME: I’ve only been in Europe for a few months, and you act like I haven’t even been in touch. You heard from me last week. I cannot say the same for you. What the heck has happened while I was gone that you didn’t tell me?
My phone lit up with Truck’s goofy smile. Sometimes it was hard to remember that, for most of my life, I’d called my brother Travis. It wasn’t until he’d gone to Texas A&M’s Maritime Academy and found his friends Eli and Mac that the nickname had taken hold. Mac and Travis were both huge, muscled men, and they’d been deemed “Mac Truck” by the officers. Now, hardly anyone remembered my brother’s real name was Travis.
“Hey,” I said.
“How was Spain?” he asked.
“Decent. I think we’re going to have a shot at the Conquistar de la Atlántica cup. But enough with the chitchat. What the fuck’s going on?”
“So…Jersey and Vi’s dad died,” he said. “We went to New London to take care of the shitbag’s remains.”
Truck had no love for Jersey and Violet’s dad. I didn’t either. He’d killed a woman, cost Vi her spleen, and then proceeded to take it all out on the two of them like it was somehow their fault. He’d been in jail for most of the time I’d known them, but I’d heard he’d been released on parole.
Regret hit me. Violet and Jersey’s dad had died, and I’d missed it. Yet another important event in their lives I hadn’t shown up for. I’d missed a host of birthdays and holidays. I’d missed Vi’s most recent graduation ceremony because of deadlines with the shipbuilder in Italy. Two of my worlds had eclipsed the third…the most important one being shoved to the back.
“How’d they hold up?” I asked.
“Normal Banner women. With the patience of saints,” he said.
“What does that have to do with Violet running the B&B?” I asked.
“Ava was hospitalized because of complications with the baby, so Mandy and Leena went to Texas. Violet is helping them out.”
Shit, I really had missed a lot. My whole world had flipped while I was away. All of it. Mandy and Leena were gone. Violet was here. The solid metal shields between my personas were being battered with more bullets than I’d known to watch out for.
“Are Ava and the baby going to be okay?” I asked. Truck’s two best friends had become, for a short time, a bigger part of his world than I’d been. As a teenager, I’d been jealous. After I’d moved to New London with Truck, I realized how they’d filled the hole in his life that should have been named family.
“It looks like it. Mostly precautionary,” he said, but I could still hear the worry in his voice for both Ava and his friend.
The vision of the black-haired powermonger from the coffee shop returned to me. I wanted to know, but I didn’t. Violet with a boyfriend. It was enough to make me want to toss the limited contents of my stomach.
“Who’s the idiot here with Violet?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.
Truck sighed. “I don’t know, Daws. She’s been with him a while, but they’ve hit some kind of bump in the road. He came running after her to New London to figure it out.”
It was stupid to think Violet hadn’t had any boyfriends since leaving New London for UC Berkeley. But in my head, I’d kept her at age sixteen, safe from guys’ advances because of her underage status. Even after I’d seen the proof of it being otherwise every time we’d been together with Truck and Jersey. She’d grown out of her teenage limbs, still lithe and slender, but with softer, fuller curves.
I swallowed hard.
“He seems like an asswipe,” I said with a growl that Truck couldn’t mistake.
“Honestly, we’ve never cared for him. It’s like he wants her to be his sidekick when we all know that’ll never be Vi.”
She was never meant to blend in. Only stand out. It was why Jersey had created a superhero for her comics modeled after Violet.
“Do I need to do something about it?” I asked, body tightening up because of the multiple implications of that. Interfering in her life. The rebound it could mean on the other worlds I’d kept hidden from Truck.
Truck chuckled. “I’d like to see you try. Violet would cut off your nuts.”
“I know how to bury a body,” I said, teasing but also more serious than he knew.
“Do not, and I repeat, do not get arrested.” His tone was a reflection of mine, taunting but also serious.
“I’d have Dax bail me out, anyway. He has more money and more motivation. He’d never win another race without me.”
“Same old Dawson. No humility at all.”
“Humility doesn’t win you million-dollar purses,” I tossed back before thinking about it. Silence settled over the phone for so long I thought I might have lost him. “Truck?”
“Did you really win that much money?”
I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped at the shock in his voice. It was my fault that my brother didn’t know the full extent of my business with Dax. But there was just so much about the worlds I moved in that I couldn’t talk about that it was easier to say nothing.
“I didn’t pocket that much money. We have a company to run, people and bills to pay, you know? Most of it goes back into the business, but Dax and I do dish out bonuses to us and others on the team when we have a big win,” I said, leaning my head against the back of the seat, wishing I hadn’t brought it up.
It took my brother another long moment before he replied. “That’s it. Next time we go to dinner, you’re paying.”
I laughed again, the grin a much-needed relief.
“Give Nell and Jers hugs for me,” I told him.
“Stay out of jail,” he joked.
We hung up, and I stuffed the phone back in my pocket with the two others. I stared out the windshield at the water that was glistening and glimmering, calling to me much like the water in Tarifa had called to me mere hours before. I didn’t have a boat here to escape in. They were scattered around the globe with the new one on its way to New York on a Mori Enterprises cargo ship.
I started the car and headed up the hill to the B&B.
Memories hit me as I made the all-too-familiar turns. I’d first come to New London overwhelmed with misery. Guilt and anger had been tangled together. It had just started to subside by the time Violet and I had crashed off the cliff. I rubbed the scar that started at the knuckle on my index finger and curled down in between my thumb onto my palm. More regrets. What I’d almost lost.
Violet.
We’d only lived under the same roof for a matter of weeks. So short a period of time in either of our lives that it was a decimal place, and yet the impact had been meteoric. There were still secrets buried in holes in the ground from that time.