Tate is back in the light again, and it's too bright.
He watches her every second. Every muscle twitch in her face could mean the end. With every cross look she gives him, his heart seizes up with fear that she will wish him away.
During his weekly sessions with her father, he can hardly sit still. He's wondering what she's doing. What she's thinking. If she's coming to her senses, changing her mind. He's seeing the smile on her face as she handed a shirtless Travis a glass of water.
Every time they make love he marks her in a different place. He mars her pale skin with a red, bruised hickey, sometimes on her neck, visible, so she blushes and wears a turtleneck to dinner. Sometimes on the fragile skin on the underside of her wrist, just over the scars across the vein. Sometimes her inner thigh, just in case.
He knows it is chauvanistic and immature and barbarian, but he cannot help himself. He wants to tattoo his name on her lower back, leave signs all over her, signs that she is his, because deep down he isn't quite sure. Not because she doesn't love him. Because he doesn't understand how she can belong to him, how it is possible.
He doesn't fancy her a wild, unbroken horse like in the Harlequin romance books he'd pilfered from his mother's underwear drawer as a child, but it isn't far from that. Everything about her confuses and fascinates him, down to the smallest detail.
The way she smokes half a cigarette at a time every ten minutes, so that she's always got something in her mouth. When she's out of cigarettes she has a penchant for putting her hair in her mouth - not chewing but sucking a bit or sometimes just dragging strands of it across her lips over and over again until Tate can't take anymore and he kisses her and then can't stop kissing her until her bottom lip is swollen like it's been injected with collagen.
The way she gets pissed off and raises her eyebrows at him, juts her chin out defiantly, half-smiles at him without showing her small, white teeth.
How shy she can be sometimes, how innocent she looks when she's got his cock in her hands, her mouth, looking up at him as if always asking, "Am I doing this right?" and he grits his teeth so that he doesn't tell her that nothing has ever felt more right because he knows she'd blush, be embarrassed, get mad and start gathering her clothes.
Some nights, she can't be close enough to him, throws one leg over his hip and wraps her arms around his chest, buries her head in his shoulder, and it's uncomfortable and hot and he's sweating but he wouldn't move even if the ceiling was falling in because he could feel her heart beating against him, feel the shift of her bare skin on his, hear her soft breath tickling his ear. Other nights she curls into a fetal position, her back to him, and the curve of her spine makes it near impossible to put his arms around her, to fit his body to hers, but all night, even in his sleep, he tries. He wakes up and he's chased her to the very edge of the bed and her arms are wrapped around her stomach and he's touching her but barely. She feels like a mannequin, too hard, too many angles, and Tate wakes up afraid.
She is so beautiful and so much stronger than him and he knows he doesn't deserve her but he can't bring himself to care. When she gives him her big, open smile, he feels such gratitude he wants to drop to his knees and worship her. When she spreads her knees, throws her hair back, invites him inside of her, he is so glad that he's dead, because nothing in life can ever top this.
He's always afraid because everything falls apart, because he had existed without her before but he knows he cannot do it again.. He is always afraid because he doesn't know how to keep her, how to be enough for her, and he knows every moment that he smothers her and stalks her and doesn't let her out of his sight he's making it worse.
Some days it's worse than others and he asks her questions he doesn't want to know the answers to, questions that he knows she feels obligated to answer honestly, because they've pledged never to keep secrets again.
He sits on her bed, his skin buzzing like electricity was running through his veins, his eyes burning. He is rocking a bit back and forth, unable to sit still.
Violet is exasperated, lounging on a bean bag chair in the corner, trying to read but Tate knows out of the corner of her eye she is watching him, waiting.
"Do you think Travis is better looking than me?" His voice comes out whiny and petulant, and he wants to crawl in a hole and hide from the embarrassingly pathetic things that kept coming out of his mouth.
Violet rolls her eyes, doesn't look at him. "No, Tate."
"But you do think he's good looking?"
She flops her head back on the beanbag chair, throws her book down in disgust. "Yes, Tate," she says, almost mockingly, and anger flares in Tate although he knows he isn't being fair.
"Is he better in bed than me?"
"God, Tate. Why do you do this to me? Every time I see him, we go through this."
"Then stop seeing him." He's being childish, now, and he knows it. It doesn't change anything.
"Stop it, Tate. I don't ask you to stop seeing Hayden."
Tate can't respond because she's right and he's an idiot but he can't drop it. "You didn't answer me."
Violet sat up in the chair, resting her hands on his knees, looking at him, her eyebrows raised in irritation. "Are we really going to do this?"
Tate can't respond, because the answer is yes and he knows it will make her mad and part of him is afraid she'll tell him to go away and an even bigger part of him is afraid she'll just storm out of the room and go to Travis.
She sighs, closes her eyes, because she knows they have to do this. She opens her mouth once, hesitates, opens it again. "He's different."
"Different how?" He's asked this a hundred times, maybe a thousand. She never answers, and he leans forward slightly on the bed, wanting to know, not wanting to know.
"He's...experienced," she says.
Her words harpoon him, stick in with big hooks and keep him there, struggling, having to know more and hating it. "What does that mean?"
Violet lets out another harsh breath and stands up, pacing around the room. "Why do you want to know all these things, Tate? Why does it matter?"
"I don't know," he says, and his voice is small. He's sorry but he doesn't say it, can't say it while he's struggling for air, trying not to cry out, wriggling on the hook.
"I'm always honest with you, Tate, but I feel like this is destructive," Violet says, looking at him, something pleading in her eyes.
He doesn't speak again, can't speak. He's waiting, waiting.
She's grinding her teeth, her jaw jutting out, because she's angry now, he's made her angry, and although it always frightens him, he knows it means she'll tell him and he has to know. He has to know and he hates it.
"He knows right where to touch me," she says, haltingly, not meeting his eyes.
Suddenly, like always, like every time, Tate doesn't want to know anymore. The buzzing on his skin is digging deep into the muscle tissue, vibrating his bones. Jealousy and rage and pain roil in his sick stomach and he swallows hard and the way she's speaking about it in the present tense makes him want to scream. "I changed my mind," he says, thickly. "I don't want to know."
Violet's sigh of relief is audible. She keeps no secrets from him, and he knows she doesn't want to tell him. He knows she doesn't want to hurt him, doesn't want him to feel this way, doesn't want him to be afraid.
It doesn't mean anything. He will always be afraid because he can never let her finish. He can never let her say it. He'll always imagine the worst because he can't let her speak the truth. It's a goddamn catch-22, and he knows it.
It lingers between them for only a moment before Violet comes to him, climbs up on the bed and into his lap, just as she had the day they'd reconciled. She wraps her arms around him tight, buries her hot, red face into his shoulder.
"I love you, Tate," she whispers, and it's a repeat, his favorite rerun.
He returns her embrace, and she's all curves and soft skin, all human, all Violet, not a mannequin for him to pose and admire, and like always, she's almost too much for him to bear.
His eyes are wet and stinging, and he doesn't know if it's because of what she said and didn't say or because her light is burning his eyes.