Loving Violet

by Terri Anne Browning

  “Don’t you ever do that to me again,” he groaned, pressing his forehead to mine. “I couldn’t find you or Krush anywhere. I thought…” He swallowed hard and whispered, “I thought you left me.”

  Pulling back, I glanced over at Krush still messing around with the squirrel so I didn’t have to look at Luca. “I just needed some air.”

  “What’s wrong?” He grasped my chin between his thumb and index finger and turned my head so I had to look at him. “Baby, talk to me. Tell me what you need me to do. Last night… I know you need time. I’m not trying to rush you. I just want to be near you.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  His eyes darkened. “With the ‘why’ again, babe?”

  “I need to know,” I whispered. “Do you need to be near me because you promised Remington or because you can’t stand to be away from me?”

  “You already know the answer to that, Violet. You’re just too scared to let yourself believe it.” Standing, he bent and lifted me into his arms. “Have you even slept? Huh? You looked like a ghost sitting there.”

  “Stop yelling at me,” I mumbled. But the lack of sleep and the long walk were already catching up with me. Holding on to his shoulders as he walked back toward his house, I laid my head on his chest and closed my eyes.

  Sometime later, I felt him laying me on the bed, but when he started to straighten, I tightened my arms around his neck. “Don’t go,” I whispered sleepily. “I can’t sleep without you.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” he scolded gently. “I slept like shit without you last night, Vi.” He kicked off his shoes and crawled beneath the covers with me. “All you have to do is tell me what you want, and I’ll make it happen, babe.”

  Now that I felt safe and warm with him wrapped around me, sleep started to consume me once again. “I don’t know what I want anymore,” I whispered. “I’m so confused.”

  “I know, baby. But we have all the time in the world for you to figure it out.” I felt him kiss the back of my head and let my eyes drift closed. “I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”

  Chapter 50

  Luca

  Our argument from the first night and morning after in West Bridge wasn’t brought up again, but Violet did begin to relax a little more. She started to smile more often without the guilt filling her beautiful face. I guess she realized it was okay to smile and laugh without it being disloyal to Remington’s memory.

  We hadn’t talked about how long we would stay in Tennessee, but when one week turned into two, and then two turned into almost a month, I had to bring up the option of staying for a while longer because my spring training camp was coming up sooner rather than later. Not to mention, she needed to figure out if she was going back to Santa Monica for her next appointment or if we should find her a doctor closer to us for the moment.

  “If Krush and I are in your way, I’ll go home,” she said over dinner when I brought it up the first week of April.

  Frustrated, I glared at her. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just trying to figure everything out for our schedules. I have training camp, and you need to continue your prenatal care.” She just sat there staring at me like she didn’t know how to answer, so I went for broke and told her what I would like for us to do. “I don’t want to be away from you for camp. If we stay, I can be here every evening, and I’m sure Annabelle will be able to recommend the best OB-GYN in Nashville to take over your care. Her son-in-law is a cardiologist after all, and Mieke just had another baby, so we could probably get in with her doctor without an issue.”

  “Okay,” she said after a few tense moments of just staring at me. “And I guess I need to sign up for birthing classes.” She bit her lip. “Shaw was supposed to take them with me and Remi. She is Love Bug’s godmother. But she’s so busy right now with work, I don’t want to bother her.”

  “I’ve already been looking into classes. There’s one that starts next week, so if you’re on board with staying for my training camp, I’ll get us into it,” I informed her, and her eyes widened. “What?”

  “Nothing,” she muttered and picked up her fork and knife to cut into her grilled chicken.

  “Well?” When her purple eyes met mine with a question in them, I laughed. “The class, babe. Can I sign us up or not?”

  “If you think you can make the time,” she said with a nod. “I don’t want to spread you too thin.”

  “Shut up, okay?” I nudged her leg with my foot under the table. “Do you want me to call Annabelle, or do you want to talk to her?”

  “I can do it.”

  “All right, then.” I nudged her again, just so I could touch her. “If we’re staying, maybe it would be a good idea to turn the guest room across from the master into a nursery.”

  Since that first night, we’d been sleeping in the same bed. It was sweet torture because all I did was hold her until we fell asleep. My cock was constantly hard, but I wasn’t about to fuck things up by trying anything she wasn’t ready for. So, I just lay beside her with her body wrapped around mine, enjoying being with her, feeling her, smelling her until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. Krush slept at the foot of the bed, and I didn’t even care that I had to share my bed with a dog.

  “I have a nursery set up back at the Santa Monica house,” she said with a shrug.

  “Yeah, but where is Love Bug going to sleep when we’re here?” I rubbed my foot up her leg, torturing myself but loving the feel of her skin touching mine. “Let’s go into Nashville tomorrow and pick out everything. Whatever you want, we’ll get. But if it needs to be put together, we’ll have to get someone to do it for us because I’m not good at assembling shit.”

  An amused snort left her, making me laugh at the cute sound. “Yeah, if we want it put together right, we’ll have to get a crew in here to assemble all the baby stuff.”

  “They can babyproof the entire house while they’re at it.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “I was teasing. Jenner helped me put together a lot of the stuff at home.”

  “I wasn’t. This place needs to be taken care of before she gets here. I don’t want my little princess getting hurt on anything.” Her soft gasp went straight to my cock, so I grabbed her empty plate and my own and carried them into the kitchen.

  We spent two days finding everything for the nursery and then spent another week on finding the right company to come in and babyproof the entire house. Annabelle set up Violet with her daughter’s doctor, who was a friend of Mieke’s husband’s from med school.

  The appointment was the same day as the first day of training camp, but there was no way I was missing it. My coach tried to be a dick about it, but I called the owner and reminded him that Violet was Remington’s wife, and the guy assured me I could leave practices anytime I needed to for anything involving Vi or the baby.

  I didn’t have time to go home to get her for the appointment, so Jenner drove her into Nashville and I met them at the doctor’s office. As soon as I walked into the waiting room, Jenner gave me a chin lift and told me he’d wait at the car. I barely had time to sit down beside Violet before her name was called.

  After her appointment, I could hear her stomach growling. “What would you like for lunch?” I asked as we walked toward the parking lot. Since I’d known she was coming into the city, I’d left the keys to my SUV with Jenner that morning and taken my car. I was taking the rest of the afternoon off, so I was going to take the SUV and have Jenner drive the car home while I took my girl out.

  “Don’t you have to get back?” she asked as we neared the vehicles.

  “Nope. I’m all yours for the rest of the day.” Jenner stepped out of the SUV where he’d been waiting, and I told him what was going to happen. When I didn’t get an argument, Violet frowned at the two of us before heading for the car.

  “Where are you going?” I called after her and opened the passenger door to the SUV.

  “You said we
were staying, and you brought the car,” she reminded me.

  “Yeah, I did. But I’m not driving you and the love bug in anything less protected than a tank.” She glowered at me, but I didn’t even blink at her. “Get your hot ass in the vehicle, Vi.”

  “You know, Remi never let me go anywhere without Jenner,” she snipped as she got in. “Not even when he went with me.”

  I leaned in and fastened the seat belt around her, making sure the bottom strap went across her thighs and not her belly. Before I pulled back, I brushed a kiss over her forehead. “I’m not Remi.”

  “Believe me, I know,” she muttered, giving me a side-eye. “He loved me so much that he worried about me every second of the day.”

  My fingers clenched on the door as I stood there staring down at her. She wanted to argue; I could see it in those pretty eyes of hers. But I didn’t want to ruin even a second of the time we got to spend together, even if what she’d just said cut me to the quick.

  “Are you saying I don’t?” I asked in a quiet voice that hid all the emotions swirling around in my chest. “That just because I want to be alone with you for a meal, I don’t love you enough?”

  “Do you love me?” She lifted her brows in surprise, but I just stood there, staring her down, and that pissed her off even more. “No, I’m curious, Luca. Do you? Or is all of this because you made a promise to Remington?”

  I stepped back, ready to close the door but waiting on her to answer. “Italian or Mexican?”

  “What?”

  “For lunch. Do you want Italian or Mexican?”

  She grabbed my shirt and pulled me into her space. “I want you to answer the damn question.”

  “You already know the answer.” I carefully untangled her clenched fingers from my shirt and kissed the back of her hand. “Now, do you want breadsticks or chips and guacamole while we wait for our food?”

  “Onion rings,” she grumbled. “Because I want a burger.”

  I winked as I stepped back. “Now, was that so hard?”

  “You drive me crazy, you know that?” she snapped once I was behind the wheel. “I can never get an answer to any of my questions.”

  “Seems pointless to give you answers you already know.” I pulled into traffic and turned in the direction of the best burger place in the city.

  “Maybe I need the answer spelled out for me even if I do know,” she countered, still wanting to argue, but glaring out the window instead of at me this time.

  “And maybe you aren’t ready to hear the answer even if your stubborn ass wants to hear it so badly you can’t see straight.” I made a turn and got stuck in traffic. Reaching out, I took her hand and rubbed my thumb over the engagement and wedding rings on her finger. The engagement ring reminded me of the ones I’d looked at a hundred different times when we were younger, before I’d fucked everything up.

  She’d told me over and over again how much she loved Grace Kelly’s ring, and I’d searched online for one similar, but I could never decide which one to get her. None of them had ever called to me as being the one for my Violet. The one Remington had given her was almost a perfect replica of the one she’d always admired, so I knew it had to be close to ten carats.

  But the thing was, it didn’t suit her pretty little hand. It was beautiful, just like her, but it was too flashy. My Vi wasn’t flashy. She was classic, and that was what I’d always envisioned putting on her hand. Something that would be just as bright and dazzling and fit her style perfectly.

  Realizing I was staring at her rings, Violet jerked her hand away. “I’m not taking them off.”

  Taking her hand back, I entwined our fingers and laid them on the leather console between us. “Okay.”

  Traffic started moving again, and I got us to the restaurant before her hanger caused one of us to actually explode.

  As she dipped her third onion ring in some weird sriracha-chocolate sauce and I made do with a salad to start because I was in training and had to eat cleaner than I did in the off-season, she started to cry silently.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she wiped at her eyes with a napkin. “I was a bitch earlier.”

  I took a bite of my kale and berry salad with no dressing and frowned at her. “Were you? I didn’t notice.”

  “Shut up, Luca,” she muttered, fighting a smile even as her eyes continued to leak. “I was horrible to you, and you just took it.”

  “What was there to take?” I asked. “You were hungry and cranky. I’ve known you long enough not to pay attention to anything you might say when you’re hangry.”

  Her eyes instantly dried up, and her smile turned into a glower once more. “So, nothing I said hurt you?”

  “It would take more than that to scratch me up, Vi,” I told her with a half grin, but her eyes were glued to mine, and I knew I couldn’t hide the truth from her with their color change.

  “Maybe I should go back to Santa Monica,” she muttered to herself as she stuffed another onion ring into her mouth.

  Unable to take the thought of her leaving me, I slapped my hand on the tabletop. “You aren’t going anywhere without me,” I growled. Her eyes widened, and I gentled my tone. “We have a childbirth class Friday night.”

  “Luca…”

  “Don’t,” I gritted out. “Do not do this shit to me right now, Violet. I’m already hanging on by a thread, so please. For both our sakes, just don’t.”

  Chapter 51

  Violet

  Between getting the nursery ready, Luca going to practice, and the two of us taking a weekly childbirth class together, we were so busy that time seemed to get away from me. It was like I blinked and suddenly I was thirty-six weeks pregnant, anxiously awaiting the baby’s arrival.

  And I needed to decide on a name for her. Luca and I both called her Love Bug when we talked to her, and sometimes Luca called her his little princess, but we had to give her an actual name and I just couldn’t decide. What if I named her something Remington wouldn’t have liked? What if the name didn’t fit her? What if mean little brats made fun of her name?

  Every time I thought I liked a name, I would second-guess myself, and I couldn’t give my baby a name if I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it belonged to her.

  It drove me so crazy that I started sneaking into the home office every few nights and reading through all of the emails Remington and Luca had sent to each other, hoping to find some clue in them that would lead me in the right direction to help with this whole name debacle. My husband had left instructions on all kinds of shit that blew my mind, but our daughter’s name wasn’t one of them.

  Still, I read through them all. Repeatedly. Until I could recite every one of them by heart in my sleep.

  Reading them only gave me more questions for Luca that he never wanted to answer, and that only upset me more. The guilt I’d been carrying about my feelings for Luca lessened a little more every time I read Remington’s emails. He wanted me to be happy, and he figured the only way I could truly find that happiness was with Luca.

  But I wasn’t so sure he was right.

  With each passing day—and Luca never once telling me how he really felt—I couldn’t help thinking that the only reason Luca wanted me around was because he’d made a promise to a dying man. It made me think of our relationship before he’d cheated, and I started questioning everything until I didn’t know if I was coming or going.

  Had Luca ever really been in love with me? He’d always said I was his soulmate, the other half of himself that he couldn’t live without. But he’d never once tried to touch me back then, just as he never once touched me suggestively now. If he’d wanted me even half as much as I wanted him, there was no way he could have kept his hands to himself.

  Right?

  Maybe he had loved me back then, but it wasn’t the all-consuming love I’d felt. It didn’t rip his soul from his body when he lost me. His heart still beat in his chest, whereas mine had stopped completely u
ntil Remington changed my life.

  Growing up, I’d been Luca’s best friend, second to no one. Just as he’d been mine. Not even Shaw could take his place back then. That friendship had deepened on both our parts, but I didn’t think it became for him what it became for me. I’d only been Luca Thornton’s favorite toy. He’d been possessive and overprotective of me, loving me, but not in love with me. When it came down to it, he was able to tear me apart as if I was nothing to him.

  There was love, and then there was the love I’d had for Luca, and there was no way he’d felt what I was feeling.

  Just as he couldn’t possibly feel it now.

  And that hurt. More than anything, it hurt because I wanted him to love me like that.

  I wanted him to love me like I’d once loved him.

  Like I still loved him.

  At first, when that realization had hit me, I’d felt so guilty because it seemed like I was being disloyal to Remington. But the more I read his emails to Luca, the more I realized it was what he wanted for me. While we were together, I’d loved my husband with everything in me. He knew that. But he also knew that I’d pushed down my love for Luca, burying it so we could be happy without the ghost of what I felt for someone else overshadowing our happiness.

  It had taken a little while, but I’d unburied that love for Luca, and it was consuming me once more.

  I couldn’t tell him that, though. Not when he wouldn’t even tell me he loved me.

  I couldn’t tell him, and I couldn’t keep going on as we were. Sleeping in the same bed with him every night. Having him take care of me only because he’d made Remington a promise—and not because he actually wanted to be with me—was slowly killing me.

  When Luca woke up that morning to go to practice, I was already up. I hadn’t even been to bed. I’d spent the night once again reading through his emails with Remington, and I was too tired to even think about Luca’s reason for agreeing to anything my husband asked of him. I wanted to ask him why again, but knew I wouldn’t get a real answer from him, so I didn’t even try.