“On it. I’ll be back in a minute.” He placed a kiss on my knuckles a second before disappearing.
33
THE VILLAIN
Violet wentthrough two bottles of water before we got out of the bath. She nearly fell asleep five times. On the sixth, I dragged her out and put her to bed for a nap. She got up around five and sat at the kitchen island while she watched me heat up the leftovers from last night’s dinner.
After we ate, we headed for the tree I caught her under this morning with several boxes of decorations. It took us an hour before we headed back inside for hot chocolate. She turned onthe TV to some channel that played cheesy holiday movies 24/7 the entire month of December. She spent the whole time giggling and criticizing every movie.
By the third one she was fast asleep, and I carried her up to bed. The next three days we spent lounging and watching her silly movies. By the time Christmas Eve rolled around, I’d considered locking us in here for the foreseeable future at least a hundred times.
She insisted we had to go. She needed to go back to work and she missed the kids. I tried to convince her to let me snow us in for one more day but she brought up Scarlett and I caved.
“You promised to visit her this week and then you got shot on the 9 o’clock news. She’s probably freaking out. She knows about my trip since I do this every year, but I should have popped by before I left to check on her. You know you’re her hero, right? She’s probably devastated.”
So we packed up. This time, I drove, not that she was a bad driver, she was just…very fast. But she was also a very distracting passenger—I had to pull over twice. She just grinned at me.
“It’s not my fault your self-control is in the negatives,” she’d said.
I used to pride myself on self-control. Considering I literally had voices in my head telling me to kill people 95% of the time. But this woman fucking ruined me. Why would I even want self-control when she was touching and teasing me the whole two and a half hours?
You’re insatiableshe kept saying. Meanwhile, she was leaning over the centre console to tease my dick with that wicked mouth. Not that I was complaining. The fact that my girl was as insatiable as I was boded well for the longevity of our relationship.
Not that I would ever let her go. I didn’t give a shit if she fell out of love with me. I’d chain her to my side until she fell backin love. Fuck that “if you love something let it go” bullshit. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Violet went backto work Christmas day. She came home halfway through her shift and practically collapsed in the doorway. She started feeling sick around lunch so her boss sent her home. There weren’t any villain visits lined up and the other volunteers could take care of her work. At least that’s what I think she said as she passed out in my arms.
I had to violently shake her awake for her evening check in. Whisper insisted on bringing her soup and checking on her. She tried to fight it, but he hung up without taking no for an answer.
Thirty minutes later, she was dragging herself out of bed and stumbling to the door, using the walls for support.
“Baby, go back to bed, I can get it.”
She shook her head.
“You’re supposed to be dead. You can’t open the door.”
“I will come back to life if it means you’ll go back to bed.”
“Don’t be stupid. I’m fine,” she said as she nearly tripped and barely stopped herself from smashing her head off the corner of her dining table.
“Yes, you look it. Silly me.”
She scowled—or tried to. Her energy was too low to muster up more than a squint in her eyes.
“Could you hide in your shadows, please? I need to answer the door or he’ll probably break it down.”
I sighed, doing as she asked. I should have just come back to life then I could say I was looking after her and put an endto these check-in calls. I had to keep telling myself that she wouldn’t be sick forever but staying dead would be better for both of us. I could keep an eye on Eva and I could look into those text messages.
She got a few more the last couple days; they were back toweandusinstead ofIandme. I’d planned to spend the day getting all the equipment I needed to track the phone number but now that V was sick, it could wait.
“Shit, V, you look like death,” Whisper said the second the door swung open.
I was thinking about punching him in the gut but he grunted a second later.
“Way to be an asshole.”
You’re supposed to be dead. You’re supposed to be dead.I just kept repeating my mantra as Violet propped open the door a bit more to reveal the bane of my existence. Fucking Poison Weasel.
