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Leaving her entire life as she knows it behind, Violet can't breathe.
She can't breathe as she refuses to look in the rearview mirror: as she drives over the state line: as she leaves the ocean behind and everything in front of her is a wide, open road that can take her anywhere.
Her breathing eases up, just a little bit, as the hours pass by. It helps, possibly, that she's left her phone behind in her apartment. All she has are the absolute essentials. It's everything she needs, everything she can fit in her car as she runs, as she puts more distance between herself and Halden.
Clothes. Her favorite books. Her ID. She’ll venture back for the rest, at some point. Once she's settled down a little bit. Once her heart has stopped racing.
One item she brought even though she didn't need to. But it weighed too heavy on her heart not to. Especially knowing where she's going.
She only stops twice. The first time is for a restroom break and to fill up on drinks and something to eat. It's difficult not to look over her shoulder even though she knows that logically she's good. He's not here. He can't possibly know where she is. Hopefully, he doesn't even know she's gone yet.
She's planned this for too long, knows she's left no bread crumbs to follow.
She's safe.
But knowing it and feeling it are two very different things that aren't even close to being on the same page right now. It's not even in the same damn book. One is high fantasy and the other is a memoir that's still being written.
The second time she stops it's to catch her breath. She’s only one town over from her last stop and she finds she's not quite ready yet. So she stops and walks through a department store, taking her time. She buys a new phone for herself and then finds a used bookstore, picking up the first copy of Peter Pan she can find. It's old and worn and it's missing a page or two, but it makes her feel less anxious and slightly less alone.
She also feels a little more ready for her next step, but even as she drives into the town she last saw in her rearview mirror fifteen years ago, she struggles for breath. She can't remember the last time she breathed properly. It's been over a year, at this point.
She stopped breathing properly even before the first time he hit her.
The engine light on her dashboard lights up as she nears the hotel she's booked with but she makes it to the parking lot without her car giving up indefinitely. The engine light is a problem for later. For now, she checks in and closes the door to her temporary home behind her, double and triple checking that it's properly locked.
Then she has a panic attack that leaves her clutching for air and her mind a scrambled mess as she comes out of it. She falls into a fitful sleep, her clothes still on, and wakes up wide awake in the middle of the night. Unable to fall back asleep, Violet showers and then pulls on an old and worn t-shirt, not allowing herself to think about where she got it.
Violet sits down in the middle of the bed, pulling out the box with her new phone and takes a couple of deep breaths, preparing herself as best as she can.
Plugging it in, she starts the phone and then spends the new couple of moments setting it up. She creates a few contacts - numbers and emails she's spent the last couple of weeks making sure she knows by heart, and then somehow manages to sleep for a few more hours.
For the next three days, Violet doesn't leave the hotel. She stays in her room for everything except eating. Sometimes she orders room service, sometimes takeout, sometimes she manages to pull herself together enough to eat in the hotel restaurant. She spends her days slowly piecing herself together, reminding herself who she is underneath everything that's happened in the last year, underneath the year of physical and mental abuse.
For what she knows she's going to do, she needs to be as much of herself as she can or else this thing will be found out. This deep, dark secret of hers. And she doesn't want anyone to find out. She just wants to put it behind her, to move on, to forget all about it.
She knows she won't just forget about it.
On the fourth day, she books an appointment with a therapist who seems like a good fit and then she drives her car to a mechanic that promises to look at it within the next couple of days. Instead of taking a cab back to the hotel, she finds herself walking with no end goal in sight.
Violet walks for hours and hours, ignoring the growing pain in her complaining knee and the fatigue that's creeping up on her. She walks past her old high school, watching students and teachers mill around and between the buildings.
Leaving the high school behind her, she takes a breath and pulls out her phone, thumbing the contact she's been thinking about for a few days now. But she decides it's time and quickly types out a message, hoping he hasn't changed his number since they last talked - years ago at this point.
It's a gamble, reaching out to Ridoc after all these years. They used to be close friends but he slowly retreated into himself after his injury in college and eventually she stopped trying. For a few years, there were texts for birthdays and Christmas, but even that has been silent lately.
Then, as she was scouring the internet for jobs she found herself on the school's website, seeing his name under the staff section.
She knows he's here but she hasn't found it in herself to be able to think about the ones she left behind - the ones that got away, the ones that stayed. She hasn't been able to look up if they're still here.
Violet walks past her old house - the house she spent a year and a half in as a teenager. This house always felt more like home than any other place she's ever been. But she knows that has nothing to do with the house itself, or the people that lived underneath its roof. It has everything to do with the people she spent her days with, and the very specific person she spent too few nights with in secret, their bodies curled up together in sleep, his steady heartbeat making everything feel achievable.
Violet wipes away a tear or two that she has no good explanation for and continues to walk. Without knowing how, her feet taking her where they please, she finds herself on a very familiar street. She forces herself to a stop before she can reach the house that possibly felt more like home than the one she actually lived in.
She can see the house from where she's standing, leaning against the trunk of a tree across the street. It's a few houses away but she can still see that this house isn't just a house, it's a home. Whoever lives here has taken good care of it, the lawn freshly mowed and the front porch welcoming. She wonders if it's still Fen, but shakes that thought away because it's been fifteen years, and this house is far too large for just one man.
If it's not Fen, she hopes the house has been passed on to a family that truly lives in it, a family that creates memories inside its walls. There are already so many good ones to choose from.
A pickup is parked on the driveway, outside of the garage, so she knows that someone is home. For a second, Violet gets the absolutely ridiculous idea to walk over and knock, to ask if maybe she can take a look around this house that holds so many of her favorite memories. She even takes the first step but stops herself as an SUV drives up and slows down, parking behind the pickup.
Violet’s breath catches in her chest as a man with a large build steps out of the driver’s side. He's older now, and despite being so far away, she recognizes him immediately. There's no mistaking him - those wide shoulders and that height. Garrick Tavis walks around the car, and even though he isn't looking at her, Violet immediately takes a step back, hiding herself behind the trunk of the tree next to her.
There's a vibration in her back pocket but she can't feel it, her focus locked on Garrick, her breath uncontrolled and her heart beating too quickly behind her ribcage, drumming away so hard it almost hurts.
Garrick is here, at this house, grabbing something from the back of his car and-
Oh gods.
There is a small child in his arms, no more than three or four but Violet can't trust that because of the distance. She has blonde hair and pigtails, running toward the house as soon as Garrick puts her down.
“Q," Violet hears him call out, the child giggling as she rushes toward the porch. "You know uncle Xay-”
Violet isn't sure if she can hear the rest because she's drowning, scattering away as quickly as she can, unable to be here a second longer. She's drowning in how effortlessly Garrick’s voice is taking her back fifteen years, she's drowning in memories of this house, in memories of Garrick and Imogen and Bodhi and- and him.
A flood of memories rushes over her and she can taste and smell and hear her life fifteen years ago. The smell of mint and leather, the taste of sunshine and laughter, the feel of comfort and trust and being utterly at ease for the first time in her life. Or as at ease as she possibly could have been. Suddenly she's fourteen and sits at a table at lunch for the first time, strangers around her. Strangers that would quickly become family. She's fifteen and the soft sound of his laughter fills her ears, his patient tone calming her down as he took her outside of town and taught her how to drive. She’s fifteen and more in love than she's ever been in her life. She's a few short months shy of sixteen and her heart is broken as she says goodbye to him, leaving this house and her life behind.
He must still live here. In the house that holds so much of them.
And oh gods, she would have walked right up to the damn door and knocked if it wasn't for Garrick showing up.
Without knowing how, Violet finds herself back in her hotel room, allowing herself a long shower before she orders food and finally looks at her phone. She has a couple of notifications from the same person, and despite the fear deep in her stomach, Violet finds herself smiling.
It's a small, terrified smile, but it's there all the same.
And it feels good to smile.
Violet bites her lip and chews it for a moment, typing out and deleting a response half a dozen times before she finally settles on something.
Saturday gives her a few more days of pulling herself together, of piecing together the most broken parts of her, hiding all the cracks behind a facade. And lying about the move being on Saturday gives her an excuse to either leave early or pull out if she doesn't feel ready. But her job starts on Monday, and practicing to be in a social situation again is needed.
Violet takes a breath, deciding that she can and will do this. She needs to challenge herself and she needs friends here if she's going to re-start her life.
The next couple of days, she looks for apartments and makes a visit to the library where she's going to work soon, meeting her new boss face to face for the first time and getting a look around. She meets some of the staff that she’ll manage and then goes back to her hotel to crash, mentally exhausted.
On Saturday, she takes a taxi to the address that Ridoc sent her and stands outside the door for a couple of minutes, just breathing and collecting herself. Making sure she'll appear as a proper human being instead of a shell of one.
The house is gorgeous, a one-story one with large windows and a medium sized front lawn that snakes around the corners into what she guesses is the backyard. If she wasn't so damn nervous and anxious about appearing at her best self - at meeting Ridoc again after all these years - she would have noticed the two cars out front. Or at least recognized them. As it is, the only warning bells sounding in her head are because of what she's going to do.
So with a final deep breath, she takes a last step to reach the door, ringing the door bell.
It takes almost a full minute, stretching into eternity, before the door opens and Ridoc is standing before her, taking up the empty space between the door frame.
He looks almost exactly the same as the last time she saw him, so many years ago. Too many years ago. His hair is a little shorter, but still just as floppy as it always was. His eyes are warm and brown, with crinkles at the corners when he grins at her, big and welcoming and maybe hiding a hint of nervousness.
He looks healthy, and so much happier than the last time she saw him. Violet still hasn't completely wrapped her head around the fact that Ridoc is married. That he's somehow settled down enough for that. In college, she wasn't entirely sure he had it in him.
“Gods, woman, you're still fucking gorgeous," he beams and thankfully he doesn't reach in for a hug, because she's not sure she can take that right now, but instead he vibrates on the balls of his feet - just as he had all those years ago in college. She's relieved - not sure when she’ll be ready for any kind of physical contact again, if she's being honest with herself. "It's unfair.”
"Hi, Ridoc,” she smiles, and it's an honest smile. She's really, truly happy to see him. They've been texting back and forth for a few days, a text here and there, but this is different.
"The guys are going to lose their minds when they see you,” he continues, taking a step back to allow her to walk into the house. He winks and she surprises herself by laughing.
He rambles as they move into the house, asking about the move but not letting her answer, instead talking about how he moved into this house almost a year ago, and that he can't wait to catch up properly once they're all introduced. Ridoc never rambles, not like this, but she lets him, preparing herself for what's to come. Still, she could have been told what would happen and she could have spent years preparing, and she still wouldn't have been completely ready for what she finds as they step into the living room.
Violet blinks, her reality slowing down as her brain stumbles to take in the faces of her past. She's not sure how long she stands there, staring and forcing herself to try to catch up, but then Ridoc speaks and it breaks some of the spell.
“You all look like you've seen a ghost.”
Not just one. Three of them. She hasn't allowed herself to look at the third one yet however, because after looking at the first two, she knows who she's going to find. And she's not quite ready for that yet. Not to see him and definitely not what it means.
That she won't be able to hide anymore.
Suddenly she's in two strong, massive arms, her body spinning to the tune of a warm, bellowing laugh that hits her right in the guts. She's tense for a ton of reasons, partly because the last time she was touched it was by hands that hurt her, partly because of how she left all those years ago.
But Garrick seems happy, his voice and embrace nothing but warm. And she relaxes a bit, even though she's still too stunned to hug him back.
Seeing him from afar a few days ago didn't prepare her for walking into a house where he is, where they all are. Gods, how are they here, in Ridoc's house? How does Ridoc know these people from her past?
Her mind is slowly catching up when Garrick puts her down and then there's Bodhi. Bodhi, always so gentle and safe and easy to love. Looking at him hurts, because he still looks so much like his cousin. Maybe even more so now than before. “Gods, it's good to see you, Vi," he murmurs softly as he wraps her up in a hug of his own. He holds on for a heartbeat longer than Garrick did, his arms releasing her and his face kind and careful as he looks at her, as he takes her in.
Back on her feet, she's drawn like a magnet to the third man in the room. He's moved closer, from the couch to a point not far away from her at all. His onyx eyes on her are all-consuming, and she can't look away.
Xaden looks exactly the same as he did fifteen years ago, despite his features being riddled with differences. He's older, like they all are. Taller and wider and more muscled, like both Garrick and Bodhi are as well. He still has that perfectly tousled, windswept black hair that she's twisted her fingers through on countless occasions. He still dresses mostly the same - a pair of black jeans and black t-shirt, sleeves hugging his muscular biceps.
His face may be older, traces of his life cutting into his features, but underneath the surprise and the hardness, there’s the sleeping young man she left behind all those years ago.
He breathes out her name and something inside her shakes loose at the sound of his voice, at how familiar it still is. But she can see the changes in him, the scars of time. He looks more exhausted than she feels, dark circles under his eyes and a tired tilt to his beautiful mouth.
The angles of his face are still sharp, only slightly softer by his beard. It's not unkept, but it needs a trim, and part of her hates it for keeping part of his handsome face from her to see. He's still so damn handsome. So handsome it hurts. She notices the scar in his brow, but doesn't have time to wonder because her mind is stuck on the beard and what it must mean.
He's not a firefighter. Not active, at least. It was all he wanted to be, and her heart tugs at that realization.
“Uhm,” Ridoc says then, breaking some of the spell and she looks at him just in time to see him rub the back of his neck as he takes them in. “Not that this doesn’t all seem so delightfully dramatic - and we all know how much I love drama - but can someone explain what's going on?”
Violet looks back at Xaden, unsure how to explain this, how to explain who Garrick and Bodhi and Xaden are - were - to her. As her mind works to find an answer, her eyes snag on Xaden’s bare forearm, on the black ink that takes up most of his skin.
She remembers a conversation from a lifetime ago and she desperately wants a closer look, but she's too far away and she can't see enough.
“You know her?”
The question comes from the woman in the room. The woman Violet hadn't even noticed until now. She forces herself to look away from Xaden, to look at the woman, and she's absolutely stunning, from the way she dresses to her sleek, dark hair and red lips.
For half a second Violet panics, remembering Ridoc’s texts when he told her about the group. Her eyes travel back to Xaden immediately, only slightly relaxing when she can't see a ring on his finger. Garrick has one. Bodhi has one. The woman doesn't.
He’s not married but still, she's here with Xaden, obviously, and something sinks inside Violet at that. She shouldn't feel that sinking feeling. It's been fifteen years, she wants him to have moved on and to be happy.
Not with someone the group doesn't like, a part of her brain tells her but she shakes that away quickly. Because it's really none of her business and Ridoc has always been dramatic.
And there's also the selfish, fifteen-year old inside her wanting him forever, all by herself.
“We went to school together,” Bodhi explains, when no one else says anything. “For about a year and a half, a lifetime ago.”
“Small fucking world,” Ridoc comments with an easy grin and a wink. He turns to Violet, again. “Babes, you didn't tell me that you used to live here. Or that you know my husband. You’ve been holding out on me.”
Violet can feel her eyes widening, somehow having forgotten that someone in this room, in this house, is Ridoc's husband. B, she realizes, is Bodhi, when she catches their shoulders brushing. “I… I didn't know,” she says, sounding too surprised and a little too insecure. “I mean, I-”
There's about a billion ways she could finish that sentence: she didn't know. Know that B is Bodhi, know that Bodhi isn't straight, know that Ridoc and Bodhi somehow met and got married.
But she never gets the chance to finish her sentence.
Another familiar voice cuts through, this one angry and sharp and something dark twists inside Violet’s heart. “What the fuck is she doing here?” Imogen’s voice comes from behind, and Violet knew it was too good to be true that both Garrick and Bodhi welcomed her with open arms.
For now at least.
That won’t last.
Garrick steps up to Imogen, sliding a hand onto the small of her back, obviously trying to calm her down from her anger, all directed at Violet. He’s saying something to Imogen, but Violet can’t hear it, can’t take in anything.
She’s drowning on dry land, fighting for her fucking life to keep her cracks hidden, to keep the mask on, to hide all the broken pieces of herself. She wants to run. She wants to leave the house, leave them, and go back to her hotel to hide away from the world.
Run, every instinct inside her screams, urging her to move but she digs her feet into the ground and stays. Because they don’t know the broken part of her, the part that’s been running for too long. The girl they knew would never have run from anything. And she needs to be that girl right now, because they absolutely cannot know.
Xaden cannot know.
So she stays and continues to fight her instincts as they sit down for dinner, trying not to tense over the fact that Garrick and Bodhi are on either side of her. It’s Garrick and Bodhi, she reminds herself, they would never hurt you.
She knows them.
She knew them.
Bodhi asks questions and she forces herself to relax by focusing on facts, on things she knows to be true. She refuses to look at Xaden, at anyone really, but her eyes travel across the people around the table on their own volition.
Garrick has his arm slung over the back of Imogen’s chair, and Violet sees the gleam of his wedding band as he reaches for his beer. She spots the two rings on Imogen’s fingers, the necklace with the letter Q around her neck, and Violet wants to cry.
She wants to cry because Garrick and Imogen somehow found their way to each other. At some point, they finally realized their feelings. At some point, they got married. They have a daughter, Violet’s mind flashing to the other day, to the sight of Garrick with the small child, her blonde pigtails.
She remembers a time when she and Imogen were close enough that Imogen confided in her about her diagnosis, right before Violet left, and she takes a sip of wine to get the bad taste of what their relationship now looks like out of her mouth.
“So you know each other pretty well?” Xaden asks then, pulling her back to reality, and her mind scrambles to remember what they were talking about. She pushes away the miniscule hint of jealousy she imagines she can detect in Xaden’s voice, because that’s just ridiculous.
She listens to Ridoc’s answer and feels a pang of missing him - of missing Sawyer and Rhiannon, too - but she doesn’t have time to remind herself that she’s here, and so is Ridoc, because he puts the attention back on her by asking about the book she’s always looking for. By asking if she’s found it.
She hates the eyes on her. Hates that it feels like she has a large sign stamped on her forehead, revealing her secret. She hates the bruises underneath her clothes, too stubborn to want to fade at a normal rate.
“It's not a big deal, it’s…” Violet murmurs, trailing off as her fingers softly play with the ends of her braid. She’s nervous, and she despises that. That she can’t be the girl she used to be, no matter how much she’s trying right now. She’s failing this test. “It's just a book. And no, I didn't and I haven't.”
“If you're gonna run a library, you should be able to find it?” Ridoc questions, and Violet shakes her head, feeling her cheeks warm for no reason whatsoever.
“It's not the kind of book that can be found in a library.”
“What book is it?” Bodhi wonders and Violet isn’t entirely sure how to answer that.
“It’s just a limited run edition of…” she starts but trails off, unable to say the words Peter Pan. It shouldn’t be so difficult. It was her favorite book back then, and it still is, and they knew her well enough to know that.
But she keeps thinking about the copy she left with Xaden, about what they did that night before she left, about the words she wrote in the margin of the book. Knowing now that somehow, deep inside her, it’s still true to some capacity. She’s not in love with him anymore, hasn’t been for a long time, but part of her will always, always love him.
“Like I said, it's nothing,” Violet continues as her blush deepens slightly, not for a reason she can actually pinpoint. Warm, large hands on her skin, soft lips trailing kisses down her body, onyx eyes focused on her. She mentally shakes the images away and claws for any way to change the subject, to get the attention away from her. “I'm bound to find it somewhere. But enough about me. Tell me about you, what have I missed?”
She listens intently at Ridoc and Garrick, forcing herself to keep her attention on them, but over and over again she catches herself looking at Xaden. At his dark, furrowed brows and his tousled hair and his arms, his thumb scratching at the label of the beer bottle in his hand. Whenever their eyes lock, both of them look away as fast as they can.
She wonders about his scar and steals glances at his tattoo, catching some of the symbols that are part of the intricate design. There’s a fireman’s axe, and a helmet, and the sinking feeling inside her deepens as she becomes more certain that she’s right. Something happened to him, something that has him out of active duty. Maybe out of the fire department altogether.
It makes her sad and she tries to focus on Garrick instead, proudly talking about Imogen and their daughter, and as Violet listens, she wonders about his scar as well. They must have been through so much in the fifteen years since she left like a coward in the night, and she hates that part of that has marked them permanently.
She’s grateful when Bodhi tells her of his job because for a second it makes everything so easy. Easy to slip back into who she used to be in this group, easy to tease and joke and feel like even a small fraction of herself. But her words are true. It is a waste, Bodhi being tucked away as an accountant. It makes sense, in a way. He was always rational and logical and so open, so him working with numbers isn’t a surprise. Just like it isn’t a surprise that Garrick is a cop, or Imogen a therapist with a narrow speciality.
So she raises a brow, looking him up and down, taking stock of how much he’s grown. Taller and wider and bigger. Still the smallest of the three, but so much larger than he was last time she saw him.
“What?” Bodhi asks with amusement.
“Nothing, just… Gods, what a waste, is all.”
“A waste of what?” he asks, his brows furrowed this time. In response, she looks him up and down again, motioning at his muscled body with her fork.
“That.”
And it feels like she won something when Garrick laughs loudly, Bodhi shaking his head in amusement and Ridoc asking if she’s flirting with his husband. It feels like before, and she refuses to look at Imogen, at Xaden, at the unfamiliar woman at the table, because it will break the spell.
For a short moment, she allows herself to forget about everything else, going back and forth with Garrick, Bodhi and Ridoc, remembering their days in high school and in college. She tenses when Ridoc mentions she’s single, hating she told him that - too much information, her mind screams now.
It scares her, how quickly she went from feeling almost comfortable to scared again, and she forces herself to feel comfortable again, watching how loudly Ridoc and Bodhi clearly love each other through silent looks and gentle touches, feeling like her heart might burst from it all.
She considered these people family once, for different reasons. But family, all the same. And now Bodhi and Ridoc have found each other, clearly happy and in love. Garrick and Imogen have a quiet ease between them that just makes sense.
She’s barely heard Xaden say a word tonight, and she doesn’t blame him. She prefers it, because if he talks, she’ll need to look at him and if she looks at him, he will see something, like he always could see right through her. The woman next to him hasn’t spoken either, and she hasn’t really been introduced, but her hand is on Xaden’s thigh and from the look on her face, she doesn’t look happy that Violet is here.
He must have mentioned her at some point. Their past relationship. How much they loved each other. They might have been teenagers, but they truly did love each other back then.
If Violet was in her shoes, she wouldn’t have been happy either.
“What kind of college degree did you need for that?” the woman asks when Violet comments that she is a librarian, in answer to Garrick’s tease about how she dresses. It’s an innocent enough question, but in the corner of her eye, Violet can see Xaden tense.
For some reason, he didn’t like that question. Or, he didn’t like it being asked by the gorgeous woman next to him.
It’s jarring that Violet can still read him well enough to be so sure of that.
Before Violet answer, Imogen opens her mouth for the first time since they sat down at the table, and for the first time tonight the venom in her voice isn’t directed at Violet.
“Violet is the smartest person you'll ever meet. She's also absolutely fucking gorgeous and competent, and it doesn't matter what kind of fucking degree she got - if she set her mind on something, there's no question of her getting it. She'll run laps around the likes of you, Catriona.”
Something that feels like hope stirs in her at that, at the words Imogen speaks, but then it’s crushed as soon as it bloomed.
“And then she'll turn around and stab you in the back.”
Her green eyes are hard and furious and Violet can’t fight the urge to run this time. She needs a moment alone to crush this heavy feeling inside her chest, threatening to choke her, to tear her to pieces and break the fractions she’s spent days slowly putting together. So she clears her throat to try to push away the tears. But it’s not working, and she can feel them burning behind her eyes. So she forces a smile and stands, quickly leaving the dining room and the people seated around it with a lame excuse.
She’s searching for a bathroom but finds herself in the kitchen, and she decides to take a deep breath so that she can collect herself enough to search for that bathroom so she can lock a door between her and the rest of the house.
Violet turns around to the sound of footsteps, possibly expecting Ridoc and not at all sure how to explain this to him. But instead there’s Xaden, his big frame taking up so much space and his eyes locked on her. Still, she tries to hide her tears and he looks away from her when she wipes underneath her eyes with the back of her hand.
For a moment in silence, they stand there, on opposite sides of the room, the air between them slightly tense and awkward. They've barely said a word to each other for the last hour, not to mention the fifteen years of silence between them, and how everything ended. How she left.
Her mind is swirling with things to say, her veins thrumming with overwhelming emotions and thoughts. She wants to apologize, wants to step into his embrace, wants to continue to pretend like everything is normal but nothing can ever be normal between them again.
There's too much history between them for that.
Xaden pushes his hands into his pockets and continues to be silent for a moment, until he finally breathes out a greeting.
“Hi, Vi.” His voice is soft and quiet and hits her right in her chest, a small smile curving her mouth against her better judgement.
“Hi, Xaden,” she responds and when he takes a step closer, she meets him halfway, his arms coming around her waist in an embrace. Her instinct to run before was strong, but her instinct to snake her arms around his neck is stronger.
Despite the changes in him, he feels exactly the same. His body is hard and big, he smells like leather and mint, and he still fits close to her. She feels and hears him breathe her in, his face pressed into the crook of her neck, his nose buried in her braid.
The smell of mint is overwhelming and when he wraps his arms closer around her ribs, he straightens up and suddenly she's fifteen again, her body locked in his embrace and her feet dangling above the floor.
Some part of her lets go, everything relaxing - her body and mind - and she feels utterly and absolutely safe for the first time since she can't even remember. She hasn't felt safe since the first time Halden hit her, but deep down she knows it's more than that. She's only felt this type of safety once before, in her entire life, and it was when she and Xaden were together.
It terrifies her that she's back to that feeling. That one touch from him takes her back to a safe space. That he is apparently her safe space. Still, all these years later.
That now, in his warm embrace, she can take her first full breath in over a year.
With Xaden, she can breathe.
She chokes back a quiet sob and hopes with everything in her that he doesn't notice.
He hugs her for longer than he should, the embrace far more intimate than it should be. It's far more intimate than she's been in a long time, and she lets herself savor it for now, knowing it can't last.
They both hold on, grasping for different things, and she can't stop herself when her fingers twist in his thick, black hair, still soft as silk.
When they eventually let go, he gently puts her down on her feet and takes half a step back, staying in her close personal space. She looks at him, unable to help herself, and he raises a brow in question at whatever he sees on her face.
Hoping it's not the truth, she folds her arms to unconsciously try to protect herself and her secrets.
“Nothing," she tells him, hoping he can't hear the lie. “How are you taller?"
It's not at all what she was thinking about, but it's a good way to move away from the truth. The truth that she can't stop looking at the gold in his onyx eyes, desperately trying to find the spark in them. The gold used to sparkle so easily, before laughter overtook him or when he got an idea into his head that he wouldn't let go of. His eyes would spark with curiosity and mischief and laughter. They would spark with frustration and stubbornness and authority.
Now they're just… dull.
She hates that more than anything else. Hates whatever took that spark away from him.
“I'm not,” he replies and for half a second, it's there. But it's gone so quickly she knows it was wishful thinking.
“You absolutely are,” she argues and he fights a small smile. “I used to reach up to your shoulders, now I'm barely at your collarbones. It's not just you though. It's all three of you. You're all taller and bigger and all grown up.”
She falls silent then, and he waits for her to continue. “You look…”
“Taller?” he asks when she trails off, and she rolls her eyes, unable to help herself. And she spots it again, that flash of sparkle. It's faded and almost impossible to see, but this time she's almost sure it wasn't her imagination.
“Good. You look good, Xaden. Even with the beard.”
“Even with the beard,” he replies, and the gold in his onyx eyes shines a little brighter. “Just what every man wants to hear.”
“I always liked your jaw, so sue me.”
He ignores that, looking at her properly for the first time tonight and her fear is back, creeping into her veins.
“You look…” he trails off, and he stays quiet for a moment. “You look good too, Vi.”
Another heartbeat of silence.
“How are you? Really?”
She can't push down the fear this time. She can't stop her body from tensing up and she knows that he spots it. Wanting to hide more than anything, but unable to, she picks at the fraying edges of her sweater, making sure they're covering her skin. Making sure there's nothing to see. Making sure her appearance is perfect because her mind is in a million, shattered pieces, her heart beating like a war drum.
She lies through her teeth and hopes he can't hear it, hoping there's enough years between them that her words are plausible. She lies and she looks for a way out, telling him she's tired and she should go.
When he tells her she should stay, that they all want her to stay, she knows he's the one lying. Imogen clearly doesn't want her here. She's not even entirely sure Xaden wants her here, despite the hug he just gave her and the way his eyes are roaming over her. Despite the fact that he asked her to stay.
She wants more than anything to go back in time, to change how she left, how things ended, but she can't do that. There's no time machine to go back and fix things. So she searches his face instead, looking for his forgiveness - for her own - but she can't find it underneath the layers of exhaustion she can see written across his features.
It all hurts too much so she leaves, only barely saying goodbye to the others, somehow holding herself together until she's back in her hotel room.
There's a big part of her that's happy she's not around them any more, because she's not sure she'll be able to hide from them. She knows she definitely won't be able to hide from Xaden. But another part of her wishes he would have followed her, demanded to know what she's hiding.
Maybe the biggest part of her wishes that she was still in that warm embrace, feeling so safe and secure, in a way only Xaden has made her feel before.
Unable to sleep, her mind and body complete chaos, she finds her laptop in the bottom of her bag and plugs it in, connecting to the hotel wifi. And before she knows what she's doing, she brings out a search engine and types out his name.
Xaden Riorson.
She adds the town and the first result she gets is the fire department, clicking herself into its website. His picture is there, surrounded by so many other faces. She notes with something akin to pride that he's at the same firehouse his father was at.
Xaden's the only one not smiling in his picture, and for some reason that tugs at the corner of her mouth and she bites into her lip not to smile.
His name is there, underneath his picture. So is his rank. Lieutenant. There's another title there, as well. Fire and Rescue Instructor.
Without deciding to, she finds herself on the Academy’s website, finding his name yet again on the page dedicated to the staff. It's a different picture this time, clearly taken on a call when he was younger. The picture stirs pride and something else inside her, knowing he got what he wanted but also knowing his path changed somehow, for some reason.
She closes her laptop before she can go down a spiral that feels suspiciously like stalking her ex-boyfriend. Nothing good can come out of it. It's been a long time and they've both moved on.
And, adding to that, she knows the only way to keep her secret is to avoid him going forward. Because the alternative is him eventually figuring it out, and somehow, that scares her more than anything.
So she’ll find a way to move on.
Again.