Page 97 of Pistols & Peonies

“Feel better?” she huffs, a lazy smile curving her mouth.

I smirk back at her, rocking back onto my heels. “Next time you want to run, give me a heads up,” I grumble.

She rolls her eyes, pushing up on an elbow and clambering to her feet. “Fine,” she chirps, brushing dirt from her thighs.

I look up at her, arching a brow.

Her lips split in a wicked grin. “I want to run.”

The air around her shimmers, and in the next blink, she’s in her wolf form again. The second her paws hit the earth, she launches herself with a powerful kick of her hind legs, taking off into the trees.

I heave an exasperated sigh, then call my own beast forward, fully prepared to chase her to the ends of the earth if I have to.

Because despite the boundaries we’ve set, despite the lines we’ve drawn and danced around, one thing remains non-negotiable.

Violet is mine.

CHAPTER 31

Violet

Char snaps her fingers an inch from my face, close enough that I catch a whiff of her fresh manicure and the faintly acrid burn of hot sauce clinging to her skin. “Earth to Violet!” she calls, voice pitched higher than usual, eyebrows raised.

I blink slowly, dragging my attention back to her. “What?”

She narrows her eyes, clearly unimpressed. “Are you gonna actually listen to me, or are you just gonna keep staring into space and let your tortilla chip get soggy?”

I glance down, and sure enough, I’ve got a chip balanced on the rim of the little red salsa ramekin, the bottom half soaked through and drooping like a wet leaf.

Char sighs, plucking the chip from my fingers and popping it into her mouth. She crunches down loudly, watching me with that look she gets when she’s debating whether to pop me upside the head or restrain herself in public.

“You’ve been weird all afternoon,” she says, wiping salt from her fingertips. “Spill.”

I should tell her.

If anyone could help me untangle the knot my brain’s turned into, it’s Char. She’s always been good at cutting through my bullshit and forcing things into neat, solvable pieces.

But that’s exactly the problem.

If I dump this on her, she’ll go all in trying to fix it– and there’s nothing she can actually do. This isn’t the kind of mess you solve with a pep talk and a margarita. This is something I have to work through on my own.

And I don’t even know where the hell to start.

So, I stall, picking at a little scab of dried salsa stuck to the wooden tabletop while I try to assemble a sentence that won’t make me sound completely unhinged.

“Sorry,” I mutter. “I’m just tired. Didn’t sleep much last night.”

Char’s mouth flattens into a thin line. “Bullshit. I know you, Vi. When you’re tired, you get mean, not… whatever this is.” She gestures vaguely at me, hand circling like she’s trying to define the problem. “You’re all twitchy and vacant, like one of those stray cats in the alley behind our apartment.”

She’s not wrong.

My head’s been a blender since the minute I got out of bed this morning.

The drive back from the lake with Kane was a nightmare of uncomfortable silence, neither of us speaking unless it was absolutely necessary. The kind of silence that presses in from all sides until you feel like you’re suffocating.

When he dropped me at the apartment and muttered that he’d be back ‘later’, I spent two straight hours lying flat on my back in bed, staring at the ceiling like it might spell out answers if I looked hard enough. Trying to convince myself I’d imagined everything about last night.

That I was just drunk.