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“Do you want to fuck me?” She wondered if Violet would lie about this, when those grey eyes were so hot and revealing. She wondered if she would ever forgive Violet if she did. But Violet said, in that voice of smoke: “Yes. I do.”
“Because when you’re in a room I don’t want to look anywhere else.”
“Ah. I should have known—illusions aren’t your thing. You like to touch.” Violet’s mouth curled up at the side. “It’s how you know the world.”
Violet said, “Do you know who keeps telling you that you can trust them, over and over again? People who are going to screw you over.”
“Do you know who I think keeps saying that they’re fine? Over and over?” Maud’s shoulders set. Some instinct in Violet pricked its ears and said: You’ve miscalculated again. Maud said, “People who are desperately scared, and awfully sad, and too small to admit it.” And she turned around and left Violet in the larger room, with the larger bed, and with a feeling like a metal spike between her ribs.
She hadn’t anticipated Maud Blyth. She didn’t know how anyone ever could. Violet turned the maple ring on her thumb, drew her spoon through a streak of custard, and exhaled. “My sister Alice was wild for blackberries,” she said. “She would come home with an apron full of them as soon as the hedges were full.” “You don’t talk about your sisters,” Maud said after a cautious pause.
“Most men stop looking closely when you start being the person they expect you to be.”
“I—yes. Though—I’d still want to spend time with you, even if you never touched me again.”
