Page 92 of Liars and Liaisons

An accident, they called it. As if every one of us in the James family wasn’t directly responsible. Other than Micah, she didn’t have any family they could contact to refute the claims, so our involvement was ignored.

They’d taken her from me. Led her to the life of debauchery known by New York and LA’s elite. Drugs, sin, the promise of luxury that a simple composition mentorship wouldn’t give her.

But I’d practically tossed her on their doorstep. Taken a bright, idealistic, talented girl and led her to the slaughter myself.

It’s only fitting that her ghost haunts these halls. That’s why I keep the southern wing untouched; I want her to have something to come back to when she isn’t tormenting me.

Now, it’s been tainted by their presence. She might not come back at all.

“I told you the southern wing was off-limits.”

She doesn’t ask how I know she went. She’s smarter than that. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“Your question doesn’t negate the fact that you broke my trust.”

“Youdruggedme the night we met and let me go around thinking I’d betrayed my ex by sleeping with you. Don’t lecture me about trust.”

“And have I not given you every piece of me in the time since?” I seethe, my patience with her, with the world, running very thin. Like a rubber band that’s been stretched far too much and is on the verge of snapping. “Have I not bared my soul to you, time and time again, only for you to crush it continuously? What have you given me? What have you done to earnmytrust?”

Her lashes brush the tops of her cheeks in a slow, disbelieving blink. Emotion pulses clumsily in her irises, but she glances away, and then it’s gone. “You keep her room as a shrine. She must have been very special to you.”

I don’t say anything at all for several moments, focusing on the erratic rhythm of my heart. Whether its chaos is caused by my rage or her, I can’t exactly tell at first.

When the silence becomes unbearable, I bite. Unable to stomach the devastation in her pretty features.

Unable to stomach any discomfort at all where this vixen is concerned.

“What does it matter if she was, hmm? Does that bother you?” I cock my head, watching her face pinken. “Are you jealous, Violet?”

“No.”

Chuckling, I lean my weight into my palms and push myself up. Water runs off my body in delicate streams, soaking the floor as I haul my legs out. I take the sunflower from her, clutching it tight in my palm, and cup her cheek with my other hand.

“How easily you overlook what was my shrine to you,” I say in a quiet voice, my body electrified by her very presence. All the anger within is pacified just by her proximity, and I realize she could do absolutely anything she wanted to me and I wouldn’t be able to hold it against her for very long.

“Sydney was my student,” I tell her, forcing her to meet my gaze. My fingers slide beneath her jaw, tangling in the hair at the back of her neck. “She was someone I saw a lot of myself in—driven, talented, more than a little lost. I took her under my wing with the intent of giving her the guidance I’d never received. She was a flower who bloomed in my program, and I wanted nothing more than to watch her thrive.”

Violet’s breathing becomes uneven when I lean down, brushing my lips over hers.

“Nothing was ever going on between us, nor would it have. My relationship with her was strictly professional, though I cannot say the same for others in my family.”

I tuck the sunflower stem behind her ear, reveling in the juxtaposition of two ostensibly beautiful things.

One forged by the earth, destined to chase the sunlight forever.

The other the sun itself. Warm, bright, and the center of my fucking universe.

“I have a brother in Aplana Island,” she says, her voice almost too soft to hear. “He’s… well, my dad had an affair before I was born, and it resulted in him. My dad rejected him though, and so when he approached me when I was older, I thought I was supposed to do the same. Even though it went against all the kindness and compassion my mom had drilled into me, growing up. I thought I was being a good daughter by staying loyal to them and keeping him out, but lately, I’ve just felt like an asshole.”

Tears spill down her face, and I swipe one away with a thumb.

“And then I found out these rumors about him, and they were so…gruesome. I felt justified in my decision to shut him out. Even though he’d never done anything to me and he was just trying to get to know me. I wasn’t interested.” A pause, and a shaky inhale as she blinks her tears away. “A part of me was scared too. I didn’t want to know how deep our genetics went. If… if the things people say he’s capable of are things that lurk in me too.”

“You’d be surprised what people are capable of doing when left with no other choice.”

“Yeah,” she whispers, and I hate how broken it sounds. “That goes for your brother too.”

I release her and pull away, my hands falling to my sides. The sunflower falls to the floor, forgotten. “What are you talking about?”

---