Dawson
BAPTIZED
“So, I close my eyes hoping you'll appear,
Cause it feels like grace every time you're near, yeah.”
Performed by Daughtry
Written by Blk / Johnson / Kelly / Daughtry / Mentore
I pulled in the driveway and hit the garage door button. Nothing happened. I hit it again. Still nothing. I got out of the car, and that was when I heard it. Loud bass booming from inside the garage. My body automatically filled with alertness, adrenaline crashing through my veins. I eased to the side door and found it unlocked.
When I entered, what I saw had me pulling out the Glock stuffed at my back in my waistband. I directed it toward the clear plastic hanging down from the ceiling. Beyond it, I could make out vague images of tables and equipment.
A lab.
Fuck.
Mandy and Leena were gone, and the powermonger must have set up a drug lab in their garage. I was going to kill all of them. Violet for dating the asshole. And Mandy and Leena for being so trusting.
The music was almost deafening. Watery Reflection, if I got my bands right. Violet had always had a thing for them.
That was when she danced into view, a fuzzy reflection of the blonde-haired beauty I knew. She was shaking her body, hands in the air, and even though she was all blurred lines, my body reacted to it. Just like it had reacted to her the very first time she’d bounded down the stairs and hit me with her purple eyes and sparkling smile.
I returned my gun to my back and pushed aside one of the flaps. The scents hit me. Orange and cinnamon and something I couldn’t place. Violet was in some sort of lab gear: a coat that ended just below her butt, clear goggles, gloves, some kind of hair net, and paper protectors over her shoes. It was the kind of getup you’d see serial killers wear so they wouldn’t leave behind DNA. Violet had her back to me, and she definitely hadn’t heard me come in. Her butt was waggling wildly as she danced.
My body hardened at the sexy image she made. Excited. Smiling. Bouncing off the balls of her feet. I swallowed hard. She twirled, stopping as her eyes landed on me, and screamed. She dropped the plastic container in her hand, and it hit the ground before rolling under a large metal table almost filling the space.
She placed her palm to her heart with wild eyes before she finally realized who was standing in front of her.
“Get out!” she yelled frantically.
Which wasn’t the response I’d expected. And it was a far cry from the response I truly yearned for.
When I didn’t move, she came at me, pushing me hard on the chest. The surprise caused me to move more than her slight frame did. I went backward through the plastic flaps, and she followed.
“What the hell?” she said over the music, jerking off her goggles, eyes flashing in anger.
I had no idea what I’d done, other than startle her, but she was really pissed. Not just a little. There’d been a time in her life when she’d looked at me with wide, adoring eyes. Eyes begging me to see her in a way that had forced me to run from every room we’d ever shared. Now, there was no lingering trace of that adoration.
I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “What are you doing in here?”
“You can’t come into my lab, bringing all your contaminants with you,” she yelled over the music.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” I shouted back.
Instead of answering me, she disappeared through the flaps, and regret flew over me. She’d been happy when I’d shown up, bubbling with normal Vi enthusiasm, and I’d somehow blown it to smithereens. The music was clicked off, and the silence that followed it was almost louder than the beats themselves had been.
I saw a blurry version of Violet reach under the table to grab whatever had rolled away, and then she was back at the plastic, pushing her way through.
She took off the paper gloves and shoe coverings, shoving them into a garbage can, before washing up at the ancient sink. Her hairnet went into the pocket of the lab coat that she hung on a hook before she opened the garage door and waved me through.
The sunlight hit her white-blonde hair, making it glow. It was wrapped in a braid-like contraption she and Jersey were both known for, surrounding her head like a crown. Shimmers of purple gleamed through the twisted strands, faded but still there. A color I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her without. A color that always highlighted the shade of her eyes. She was the only female I’d ever met with eyes the color of storm clouds hit with a sunset. Lilac. Soft and hazy.
But where her face had once been filled with wide-eyed innocence, there was a maturity to it now.
My little genius was all grown-up.
It should have made me happy. It should have filled me with relief that I no longer had to chastise myself for having dreams about someone so much younger than me. And it did, but it also made me feel like I’d lost something of hers I could never get back.
It was then that the alarm bells rang through my head. I could no longer use her age as an excuse. But my anxiety lessened with the knowledge that there were other excuses…other reasons. The fact that she seemed to have a shithead of a boyfriend being one. Her sister being married to my brother was another. The three phones banging against each other in my pocket and the three lives that went with them was the strongest reason of them all.
I brushed a hand over my face, the wired energy that was keeping me afloat sagging.
I dragged my eyes down her. She was in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt that clung to her frame. But it was the Birkenstocks on her feet that she never would have been caught dead in when we’d first met that had my lips twitching.
“Are you curing cancer in the garage?” I asked.
Something flashed over her face. Not quite regret, but maybe wariness, and it caused my almost smile to slip away as fast as it had come.
“No. I’m not curing cancer,” she said with a defiant lift of her chin.
“What are you doing?”
“Why do you care?” she came back with. This was the Vi I knew. Smart. Sassy. Daring you with just a look.
“I need to know whether I’ll have to send the DEA dogs on a detour or save you from some Russian spy who wants your recipe for free energy.”
“The Saint? Really? You’re tossing The Saint at me?” It was her turn to have lips quirking upward, and I couldn’t help the pleasure I had at seeing the soft smile. So much better than the anger she’d thrown at me in the garage.
The memories hit me like waves on the hull of my boat. Strong and relentless. Violet, in pajama shorts and a tank top that should have been outlawed, sitting cross-legged on the couch with a pillow tucked in her lap, hiding the see-through tank top and the black bra that she had on underneath it, but also pushing up the small swell of her breasts so that they were clearly visible above the pillow’s edge.
She was staring at the screen, completely engrossed in Elizabeth Shue and Val Kilmer’s race from the Russian mafia through the sewers of Moscow. And all I’d been able to do was watch every single expression that crossed her face with my fists balled so hard that the nails had bitten into the skin so I wouldn’t touch her.