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Focusing on her hands, measuring ingredients, pressing the meat into the pan, and chopping up the vegetables to the background of her music was the alone time Violet had needed to come to terms with the loss of her most recent plan and with the uncomfortable feeling of being trapped in the Bluff. She also wanted to do something nice for Mikel.
He took care of her too often; she’d realized that last night. It felt good to do the same, and her planned evening of dinner and more hot tub time, followed maybe by a walk into the woods under the zenith moon, was coming together nicely. Something thumped again, louder this time. She slid the food into the oven, slammed the door closed, and killed the music on her phone.
Only silence waited, but something prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. Violet set the timer on her phone, then slid it into her back pocket, and padded to the door to the shop to investigate. The concrete floor was cold under her feet when she stepped out. Nothing looked amiss. Mikel’s projects were still in neat rows, in various stages of completion, with everything untouched as far as she could see. She paused, waiting, listening, and trying to quiet the gnawing in her gut that insisted something was wrong.
Hissing, faint and barely there, was coming from further inside the shop. She crept forward, eyes narrowed while she tried to place the sound—a constant backdrop of noise that got louder as she made her way down the aisle and approached Mikel’s gym. When she stepped out from behind the shelves, the water fountain in the corner was open, water pouring down into the basin. A shock raced through her; her skin crawled. She was about to take one wary step forward to turn the faucet off, as she still searched the space, when she smelled it.
Gas.
Violet had time to draw one breath, turn on her heel, and take three long strides toward the exit when she heard it. The explosion was loud. It shook the ground under her feet, and the heat of it roared at her back. Then, it grabbed her, lifted her, and kept her hurtling in the direction she’d been going. When it let her go, she fell, rolled into a shelf that was teetering precariously above her, and rolled away again. Self-preservation saw her struggle and stumble to her feet, but she couldn’t keep the room straight. The floor listed at an odd angle, and her head spun. Violet staggered, fell, and settled for pulling herself along the floor toward the door.
The air was getting thick, and her head was pounding from the impact with the concrete. Her vision was bleeding, running into fuzzy shapes and colors and splotches of black that were getting bigger. Sheer grit kept her going, moving forward until her palm slapped the door to the loading bay, and she could shove it open. The concrete outside the building was cold under her cheek, then finally, she could rest.
It could have been seconds or hours when her eyes opened again. The world still swung and tipped on its axis, but her vision had cleared. Her phone alarm was still playing from her back pocket, and it dawned on her that someone was moving her.
“Come on. Hey. Shit, okay.”
Violet blinked up at him, trying to recall where she’d seen him, through the mental fog.
“Gotta get you away from the building.”
She stumbled, unsure if she was helping or making it worse while he half carried and half dragged her to the front of the house, and they both collapsed onto the lawn.
“Are you okay?” He looked at her with concerned blue eyes.
“Dizzy,” she managed to grit out, pressing the back of her hand to each of her eyes in the hopes of righting them.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” the man said, and looking back at the shop and its plume of dark smoke rising from the far end, Violet knew he was right.
“How do I know you?” It seemed important to her muddled brain that she know.
“Uh, we met in town. I’m Tim, wiper guy.”
Violet nodded, then thought better of it when it made the dizziness worse.
“I called the fire service,” he explained when the wail of sirens in the distance made her jump. “They’ll be here soon. Shit, dude, I’m just glad I was over on Ninth and heard the boom, then there was smoke in the sky and I figured someone should check.”
“Thanks,” Violet croaked at him.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans. “You should probably go to the hospital. I mean, you don’t look bad considering but I bet your head needs to be looked at.”
She made a noncommittal noise at him but then remembered something. “Gotta call my boyfriend.”
Violet tried to lean to retrieve her phone from her back pocket and ended up falling into Tim. Between them, they got the phone out and got her propped back up on her butt.
“Violet.” Tires screamed, and she blinked stupidly between the phone in her hand and Tim. Then, suddenly Tim was shoved back.
“Get the fuck away from her.”
Mikel appeared in front of her, face tight, eyes blazing, and his hands hovering by her shoulders like he wanted to snatch her up and pat her down for injury but was scared to hurt her.
“Are you injured?” he demanded.
“No.” Violet took his hands and held them. “Tim found me, got me over here—”
“Get the hell out of here.” Mikel’s voice rumbled like thunder.
“Hey,” Violet demanded, as she winced at the pain her own raised voice had caused.
