Page 120 of A Violet Obsession

The back door wrenches open, and Callum is inside and in my face before it bangs shut, the whole van rocking under him.

“Are you seriously using her as bait?”

“Lily’s fine. It’s just a conversation.”

“She’s not you, Sera,” Callum snarls, staring fixedly out the window at the house Lily entered. The muscle in his jaw flexes, and he reaches for the door. “I’m going in there.”

I catch his arm. “No. You’re not.“

“Just because you don’t care enough about her—” he growls.

My temper, already barely holding on, snaps. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about how I feel about her.”

I take a deep breath, trying to calm down, because I understand where he’s coming from. “I know Lily will tell you all she’s been through when she’s ready, but you’ll just have to trust me when I say she needs to confront them. There is nothing in the world I care about more than her, and if I genuinely thought she was in trouble…” I gesture out the windshield. “I can clear that distance in fifteen seconds, hit the door and be inside in five more.” I meet his hard stare with one of my own. “It’s all I thought about when I couldn’t sleep last night. Listen to her.” I hit the button on the laptop, broadcasting the comms feed through an external speaker. “She’s got this.”

Callum glowers at me, but after a few moments his shoulders relax a little. “I liked you better when you were a grumpy asshole who didn’t talk.”

“Hey, chuckleheads, I think we’ve got a problem,” Sera says as Trevor suddenly raises his voice. “Looks like the husband didn’t know.”

Rhodes comes over the com. “Two men approaching the house. Got out of that silver sedan parked in the street. Sera can you get the license plate from your angle?”

Fuck.

Sera uses the camera hidden in the grill of our van to zoom in on the license plate and starts typing into her computer.

“Could be cops. I think I caught a badge on one of their belts, and both are carrying.”

“I’m going to move closer,” I say, grabbing a clipboard and pulling on my city worker vest and lanyard.

“I’m coming with you.” Callum grunts.

We’re crossing the street when the front door opens, and the two men go inside.

43

LILY

Trevor must have been watching for me from the window, because the door opens before I can knock.

My stomach is twisted so tight, I feel ill. I can’t tell if it’s my nerves or rage winning. Then I’m looking into his familiar face, and pain grabs at my chest.

I’ve known him since I was seventeen and he was the new counselor—the one who saw a kid in a bad situation and did something about it. He helped me apply for dozens of scholarships to get me out. He stayed in touch after the shooting when no one else did. Dinners at their house. A cake when I passed my GED. The job with his wife, the one she had to fake an entire resume to give me.

Why go to all that trouble, for all those years, if he didn’t care?

Trevor pulls me into a hug. “We’ve been so worried. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I let him hold me for exactly one second, then step back out of it. “Or I will be.”

I follow him into the kitchen, and there she is.

Dawn is in her apron, a dish towel over one shoulder, looking at me the way she’s looked at me a hundred times.

And for one disgusting second, I doubt everything.

For one second, the whole thing dissolves, and she’s just Dawn—Dawn who bandaged my hand and told me to mind my language and sent me home with Tupperware. The woman who helped me put my life back together.

Then I remember she’s the best liar I’ve ever met.