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When Violet didn’t answer her father, he pounded harder on the door. “Vi!” he yelled this time. “Open the door.”
“Violet?” Lyric’s deep voice reached me. It was calmer than Uncle Shane’s, coaxing and gentle. “Luca sent me to check on you. Please, babe. Open the door.”
I got unsteadily to my feet, enticed by that voice. Lyric had always been the sweeter Thornton twin. If my heart weren’t stupidly tangled up around Jagger, maybe I would have fallen for him.
Thinking about my brother’s best friend had my head filling with snapshot-like memories. When my hand connected with the doorknob and wrapped around it, pain shot through my knuckles and all the way up my wrist, reminding me I’d punched my douchebag brother in the face earlier. The next image that filled my mind was of Remington Sawyer walking down the stairs at the party as I’d stumbled my way up them.
Violet at his side.
Crying.
Bleeding.
Rage filled my blood as I unlocked and opened the door before I rushed to where Violet was lying on the floor on the other side of her bed. Still crying, and when someone flipped the overhead light, I realized she was still bleeding.
Her mouth was swollen, already bruised all the way around, making her look like she was five and had been playing with purple lipstick. But it was the blood trickling down from both corners of her lips that had me holding back a gasp.
I heard the two men standing over us suck in harsh breaths when they saw her. “What the fuck happened?” Uncle Shane bit out.
Violet only cried harder, and I wrapped my arms tighter around her. “Shh, shh,” I soothed. “It’s okay. He can’t hurt you now. I promise.”
“Who hurt her?” Lyric, crouched down in front of us, heard me, and I lifted my head to meet his dark gaze. When I didn’t immediately tell him, he cupped my jaw and forced me to hold his gaze. “Shaw, tell me who hurt her. Please.”
For half a second, I felt that age-old sisterly loyalty to my brother. Lyric had never liked Cannon. I’d lost count of the times they’d gotten into fights, and every time Lyric had kicked his ass. But then I looked down at Violet’s ravaged mouth, her swollen eyes from all the crying she’d been doing, and what little respect I might have still held for Cannon turned to dust.
“Cannon,” I spat out his name in disgust. “He did this to her.”
“Shane?” Aunt Harper, dressed in pajamas and a robe, appeared in the doorway, sleep still filling her voice as she glanced through slitted eyes at all of us. “What’s going on? Why were you yelling?”
For once, my uncle ignored his beautiful wife, almost as if he didn’t even hear her, and bent to skim his thumb over Vi’s bottom lip. When he wiped away a smear of blood, I watched through a drunken haze as a beast unleashed inside him. “I’ll fucking kill him!” he roared, causing Violet to flinch.
He was at the door in the next blink of my eyes, but Aunt Harper stood in his way. Pushing on his chest to keep him in the bedroom, she demanded to know what was going on. Her pretty purple eyes fell on her daughter, and I watched as she swallowed hard a few times. “I want to know everything. Right now.”
Lyric sighed and, after carefully untangling my arms from around my best friend, lifted her off the floor and placed her on the bed. “Shaw, get me a washcloth,” he commanded.
I hurried into the bathroom to grab the washcloth and dampen it with cool water. Grabbing a hand towel as well, I returned to him just as Aunt Harper was pushing Uncle Shane into the desk chair closest to the window.
Taking the cloth from me, Lyric gently wiped at Violet’s bloody mouth. She whimpered at the first graze of the soft material over her abused flesh, and more tears spilled from her eyes. Her father was shaking across the room, and she visibly tried to control herself, but she was too upset.
Too scared.
Once Lyric had her cleaned up, he folded the stained washcloth and then took her hands into his own. “I need you to tell us what happened, Vi.”
“He didn’t believe me,” she whispered.
“Who?” he murmured softly.
“L-Luca,” she stammered, and I realized she was shivering. “I told him…everything. And he thought… Oh God, Ric, he thought I kissed Cannon on purpose.”
“He’s a dumbass,” he said with a shake of his head. “Don’t worry about my idiot brother right now. I’m more interested in how your poor mouth got so torn up.”
Her fingers tightened around Lyric’s. “Cannon,” she said his name and then stopped, shuddering. “We…Shaw and I, we went to a party tonight. Jagger was there, and he was kissing some girl.”
My stomach twisted at the memory, and I pressed a fist to my chest, willing the pain there to disappear. I’d started drinking to get the image of him with that girl out of my head, but all it had done was make the tidal wave of misery pushing against my insides that much more intense.
“Shaw was upset, and she and Cannon got into an argument…” She glanced at me. I knew she was skipping over the stuff she thought I wouldn’t want them to know, protecting me so I wouldn’t get in trouble, but they needed to hear it all.
“Jagger and I kissed last weekend,” I explained, but no one seemed surprised by my announcement. I guess I hadn’t exactly hidden how I felt about Jagger as well as I thought I had. “But tonight, Jags set it up for me to catch him kissing someone else.”
