***
Violet told me everything, proving that the Devil’s Touch had actually kept her memories crystal clear. After she tearfully admitted to me what had happened, she went to Dr. Miletus and apologized. I waited outside, because I told Violet that I would not mediate their discussion; it needed to be solely her responsibility to make amends with Dr. Miletus, and she did. Whatever she said must have been very convincing and heartfelt, because when she came back outside, she was beaming brightly.
“Dr. Miletus is taking me back into Medical!”
“What?!” I exclaimed, totally shocked for the first time in a long time. She was bobbing up and down, beaming brightly, so beyond total elation that it was almost cute.
“You better not disappoint her, Violet Mae.”
“What?!” She exclaimed, “I will not disappoint anyone, thank you so much. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go tell Nick.”
Inside, I was thrilled to hear that she was going to see Nick. My acceptance of him had taken me by surprise, but it had happened, and I was glad that they were still together, because I had been unsure if they were during her time with Caspar.
“Violet…” I said before she left, “Caspar is out of your life for good now, isn’t he?”
At first, she said nothing, and that was enough of an answer. She turned to me, brushing a piece of hair away from her face and tucking it behind her ear.
“He’s not all bad, Brynn.” She said as I unlocked our door, “Even you don’t think he’s all bad. I see something weird in your heart when you think about him. Even though he…”
“Violet!” I snapped at her quietly, and I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at her intently. “After he almost raped…”
“He wouldn’t have done it. You said he said that he wasn’t going to do it.”
“And scaring that woman nearly to death, forcing you to hold her to the ash-circle, threatening the lives of her wife, her husband, and her children? That was alright?! He wasn’t going to actually rape her, but it was perfectly alright for him to make her think that he was going to rape her? That woman is consumed by what he did. Her mind is besieged by it every few minutes. Her heart is constantly beating so fast, so frantically. Do you remember how Dr. Miletus was before this occurred?”
“She seems that way to me. She’s a little shaken, Brynn, but she’s not…”
“What, Violet? Is she not demonstrating how traumatic that experience was for her dramatically enough for you?” I hissed at her, so angry that I wanted to storm from the room.
“I’m not saying that I am going to hang out with him, alright? But if you want me to say he’s Satan, and I hate him, and I hope he dies, I’m not going to. I’m sorry, okay? But after everything we talked about, everything he told me, I can’t discredit him completely. I know that somewhere in him is a really good person who hates what he has to do to survive.” She looked away from me for a moment, and then said, “That was actually pretty poetic.”
“No, it wasn’t.” I snapped, “Just leave, please. I do not want to talk to you anymore.”
She stared at me as I lit up a cigarette.
“You think what you do with Adam is any different than what I do with Caspar?” She asked me, her voice trembling slightly. I did not know that I had made her so angry, but it was obvious then in the tone of her voice. When our eyes met, I saw that hers were swirled with flecks of red.
“You think the way you feel about him is any different? You know Adam has done terrible things. You know he is not completely good. He has serious flaws. He is deadly. But you can’t stay away from him.”
“I have stayed away from him for…”
“Clearly you didn’t, or else James would be here, wouldn’t he?”
I slammed my fist onto the table, my heart skipping several beats because the rage had taken hold of it so violently. When I looked up at her, my eyes were completely red.
“James is not here, little girl,” I shouted, “Because James decided to go fuck Adam’s wife!”
“Because he thought you were fucking Adam, little girl!”
“Well, the difference is that I did not fuck anyone, and he did. When I needed him, he let his pettiness and envy drive him to make these ridiculous accusations and then to commit the ultimate betrayal. But I am glad James has convinced you that I am the villain. I am glad that I am the one who drove him away, Violet!”
“You’re the one keeping him away! God, aren’t you over it yet? Can’t he just come home yet? He’s forced to live in Rene’s house, all by himself, when he knows what Rene was. But he has to live there because you won’t let him come home!”
“Does James approve of your little tryst with Caspar? Is that why you are so eager for him to return? Because you think he will be able to convince me that Caspar is someone with whom you should be palling around?”
“No! He hates that I hang out with Caspar, but that’s just because he’s Adam’s son. I know that.”
“Well, pity for me that I actually have a valid reason to hate you hanging out with Caspar.”
“Well, I don’t care about it, okay?! Obviously, I feel terrible about what I did to Dr. Miletus, but I was high, and so was he, and he does what he has to do to survive, and Adam has been awful to him since he found out that Caspar was a Dionysian, and who is Adam to judge anyone, and I don’t know if you remember this, but Caspar saved your life by helping me carry you to infirmary!”
“No, the doctors saved my life, one of whom was Dr. Miletus. Whom Caspar assaulted. Whom you assaulted. Dr. Miletus, should she find out that you are taking this stance with Caspar, will throw you out all over again.”
“Well, like I said, I’m not going to be hanging out with him all the time. Maybe I won’t hang out with him ever again. In fact, I know I won’t, because I am focusing on school above everything else now, because Dr. Miletus gave me this second chance. But I will not demonize him completely, Brynna. Not when this is what he needs to do to survive.”
I looked at her, shocked once again. But this time, my shock was the result of the fact that I was undeniably, pitifully at a loss for words. How could she still sympathize with a man who had violated a woman in the same way that she had been violated? I could have asked her that question, but she had recovered so well, almost effortlessly, after her ordeal with Rene and James’s drunk friends. Say what I would about my sister, but she was resilient; she was always quick to bounce right back after an emotional setback.
“There is nothing I can say, so I will say nothing.” I said as I stubbed out my cigarette. “As you get older, you will realize that while Adam has done some terrible things, to my knowledge, he has never raped or pretended to rape a woman, nor has he committed any violence against anyone on our side since we joined up with him. Adam is a kind man. He is powerful, and he is dangerous—God, he is utterly lethal—but his heart is good. It is dark in places, but there is so much goodness. I do not see that in Caspar.”
“You don’t see it because you don’t want to see it. I have seen it.” She sighed heavily, “James is dark, too. So before you judge my choices, Brynna, you should look at your own.” She started to walk away, but at the front door, she turned around and yelled, “And that was poetic!”
After the door had slammed, I sat back in the chair, thinking seriously about her “poetic” statement. I knew that I was right about Caspar, but there was nothing I could do about her infatuation with him. If I objected, she would only want to be with him more. If there was one person who could talk her out of her decision regarding him, it would be James, but as she had pointed out, I had sent James away and would not accept him back. Violet and I had fought on that subject repeatedly over the previous months, because she wanted him to come home, and I would not let him. Several times, she had brought up my alleged tryst with Adam, because she was young and ignorant and viewed my almost-tryst as being the same crime as James’s affair with Janna.
“He had no reason to do it, though, ot
her than that he was angry with me. He was looking to get back at me.” I told Rachel as we sat on her balcony, smoking. “I almost had sex with Adam because we had gotten so close, so fast. We were fighting for our lives together. We really thought we would die or be captured. We had almost been killed by so many things. James was just angry because he thought I was with Adam behind his back, which I was, but nothing happened.”
“Exactly. Nothing happened. James can’t get pissed off and have sex with someone else every time you talk to Adam. You two work together. You see each other every day. You have a great relationship now, and I am going to be honest, dude, that is good for all of us.”
“I know it is! Adam has acted only in our best interest since he and I came here together. By ‘our best interest,’ I mean us, the former Eartheans. He is far kinder to us than he ever would have been if I had not gotten so close to him.”
“So James needs to stop being a baby and come make amends with you.”
“He has tried to make amends with me. I have spoken to him multiple times over the past few months, but the sight of his face just makes me want to scream.”
“You and every other girl, dearest.”
“Oh, God, you know what I mean.”
She laughed raucously at her own joke, and I joined in her laugh after a moment.
“He’ll be at the wedding tomorrow.” She said after we were quiet for a moment, “Are you going to be alright?”
“I’ll be fine. Tony and I have been prepping. He says that all I have to do is show up, look amazing, and if I don’t want to reconcile with James, to have sex with some other guy right in front of him.”
“Best advice ever.”
“Tony is a genius.”
“That he is. But seriously, did he give you good advice besides that?”
“Yeah. He says that James promised to leave me alone and let me have a good time, because I need one.”
“Yes. You do.” Rachel said, “And Joe and I will be right there with you, and we’re going to take care of you, baby.”
“Aww…” I said, and I turned my head on the side as I looked at her, “I know. God, I bet he is going to look amazing tomorrow, too. They both will. And then all I am going to do is jump immediately to images of the three of us together, and then, I am going to start blushing, and they are going to know that it is a serious sexual fantasy of mine to have sex with both of them at the same time…”
“Brynna!” Rachel exclaimed, and she raised her sunglasses to look at me with wide eyes. Her mouth was open wide, but she was obviously fighting a huge grin, “I have never heard such scandalous talk from you! I love it!”
“I’ll bet you do, you dirty old woman.”
“God, if that ever happens, you need to let me come watch. Or you need to tell me about it in glorious detail.”
“Oh, I would. But alas, I do not think that is going to happen to us. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“I am not disappointed. God, the abs. Abs overload! And biceps! The other day, Adam was shopping with his youngest son, and he was wearing this short-sleeve, tight, black shirt…”
“The tight black shirt!” I said with her, and we both laughed hysterically at the fact that we both knew what it was. We both knew the glory of the black shirt…
“Oh, my God! His biceps, man!” Rachel said excitedly, “And those abs! I adore James. He’s like an older brother to me. A much older brother. He’s one of the hottest guys I have ever seen in my life. Don’t tell Joe I said that.”
“Scout’s honor.”
“But Adam is so hot, too. God, tomorrow is going to be too much for this married gal. I am going to be falling over myself as your hot old men try to win your affections. Let the ‘living vicariously through Brynna’ extravaganza begin. Oh, and let Tony and Tom’s wedding begin, too.”