“What do you mean? Because what I’d do if she showed up tonight isn’t something I want to talk to my mother about.”
She did roll her eyes—the benefit of being the parent, apparently. “Mind your manners, son.”
“I’ll try.”
“Good. Now, back to the topic of what you’ll do if your Violet comes back. She lives in Chicago, but your life is here. What if she refuses to come back here? Are you willing to move for her? To start all over again somewhere else?” She gave me a saucy sort of pout that looked way too much like an expression Gracie would wear. “Are you prepared to abandon your old mother to a life of loneliness without you walking distance away?”
“Nice guilt trip, lady.”
“Answer the questions.”
I took my time, covering the casserole dish in plastic wrap and putting it away in the refrigerator before even considering giving her an answer. Letting the options percolate in my mind. And though I couldn’t say the words outright because the idea of hurting my mom—the woman who’d stepped up and dealt with all the bullshit after my dad left—just about killed something inside of me, my intentions were clear.
“I would call you every single day to make sure you and Gracie were okay and had what you needed.”
She nodded, smiling but suddenly looking ready to cry as well. I couldn’t stop myself—I grabbed her thin shoulders and pulled her into my chest, hugging her the way she’d hugged me when I was smaller. With her entire body and with the abandon of someone who truly cared for the other person.
I hugged her with all of me, exactly as I sensed she needed to be hugged. “He never deserved you, Mom.”
“You’re such a good man, Easton,” she whispered, patting me on the back. “I hope she does come back to you. You deserve a little happiness in this life.”
She pulled out of my arms, shaking her head and backing away until it was obvious she was headed for the door.
I wasn’t ready to watch her leave, though. “That’s it? You come, you insult me, you eat the food you made for me, you almost make me cry, and then you leave? You could stay for a movie or something.”
“No way. I’ve spent enough time with my progeny today. Besides, I’ve got plans tonight.”
“You don’t date.”
“No, but I play poker. And tonight, I’m feeling real lucky.”
I walked her to the door, standing on the porch and watching as she headed toward home. Needing to talk to her for one more moment before she left. “Hey, Mom.”
She turned right there in the middle of the street, suddenly looking so much older than I knew her to be. Sadness pulling out every wrinkle and sign of age even as she tried to smile through it. “Yeah?”
“If you’re right and you win big, send some of that luck my way.” Luck for me, for Violet, for us coming back together. I’d take anything I could get.
My mom’s smile lifted just enough to make her glow. To bring truth to the expression. “I already have, son. Be patient. And when you no longer have to be patient, be strong. Nothing’s ever easy in life, and sometimes you need to wait for actions instead of words. Remember that.”
I watched her walk all the way home and then headed back inside to find Dolly in my favorite chair.
It had been a night with the women in my life.
Sans one.
And man, I fucking missed her.
“Soon, pretty girl.” I picked up my cat and sat in her spot, rubbing her head as we got comfortable. “Hopefully Violet will be home soon.”
No matter where that home was. Chicago, Downriver, somewhere in between. Wherever we ended up, home would be there because she’d be beside me.
If I was lucky enough to get her back.
VIOLET
Five weeks. I’d left Michigan five weeks ago and hadn’t been back. What had I been thinking? The longer I stayed gone, the more I wanted to be there. To go home. But Easton hadn’t contacted me. Not that I should base my life and decisions on a man, but he was a big reason why I wanted to go back. If he didn’t want me there…
I couldn’t blame him a bit if he didn’t want me there.
The “L” rumbled through the Loop, heading south along the tracks. Work had been hard, and my legs were too tired to walk all the way home. The train was a quick way to shortcut some of the crowds, though it would take me a bit out of my way. Still, it was a nice break in routine, and it gave me time to stare at my phone and think about the man I kept trying not to think about. The one I was too weak to avoid much longer.
I swiped my phone to life and opened my texting app. Maybe if I sent Easton a message. A simple text. Something to initiate contact. But what would I say? Hey, sorry for freaking out and running away from you? Hey, I didn’t mean to humiliate you in front of a crowded restaurant? Hey, I miss you but I’m afraid?
No. Those wouldn’t do. And sending him a message begging him to come to Chicago would be all sorts of wrong. We weren’t even talking, which was entirely my fault. I couldn’t demand he come to me to fix things. If they could even be fixed.
I shook my head and slid my phone back into my pocket. An act that was getting harder and harder to do as the time went on. One of these days, I’d break and call him. I knew it. I just wasn’t quite there yet.
I rushed off the train at my stop and trudged down the stairs to the street level. I had a six-block walk ahead of me, plenty of time to stew and daydream about what I could or would or should do. There was a large crowd on my normal side of the street, so I crossed to avoid them. As I passed a storefront I’d never noticed before, a sign in the window caught my eye. It was so simple, so ordinary, but out of place considering the venue. In between mannequins dressed in wild colors was a black chalkboard with pretty script writing on it.
Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave. –Indira Gandhi
I must have stood and stared at that sign for minutes, dissecting every delicate swirl of handwriting. Memorizing every dotted I and crossed T. The city quieted as I absorbed those words, and the people rushing past disappeared. All I knew, all I could focus on, was that sign and the message it bore.
I desperately wanted to be brave.
I wanted to forgive myself for the mistakes I’d made in my past. Did I deserve a second chance—or third, or fourth—to fix what I’d done so many years before? Did I even have the right to ask Easton to forgive me? Maybe he’d consider it. Maybe he’d accept my apology if I told him I was an idiot who’d acted without thinking and then settled in to wallow in the grief those actions caused instead of pulling myself up and fixing them.
Maybe it was time to be brave and ask for forgiveness before I lost something so very vital to my heart.
Without thought, I plucked my phone from my pocket. My hands shook as I typed a message to the man who’d been my obsession for five long weeks.
I’m sorry I ran. I miss you.
I swallowed hard, my finger hovering over the send button. Was this it? Was this me being brave? Or was this another cop-out? Should I call him? It was a workday and too early for him to have left the shop. I’d probably interrupt him. But a text was easy. A text could be read when convenient.
A text was a lot better than silence.
I hit send, tucked my phone away, and strode the rest of the way to my street. I refused to look at the screen, refused to even think about what I would do if he answered. If he told me to fuck off, like I deserved. If he told me to come home, like I was afraid he’d do. And I was absolutely terrified that he wouldn’t answer at all, having given up at some point in the weeks when I hadn’t been brave at all. I could only hope for more than just silence, even if I didn’t deserve it.
My phone stayed silent through the rest of my walk, through my climb to the third-floor apartment I called home, through a quick session in the kitchen where I warmed up lasagna I’d brought home with me. It stayed silent all the way until I was getting ready for bed.
And then it pinged.
I set down my toothb
rush and padded into my bedroom, wary. Maybe it was Dahlia. Maybe it was one of the few friends I’d made in the city. Maybe it was—
I’d never know if I didn’t look.
So, I looked.
And my heart nearly stopped when I saw Easton’s name on my screen.
Actions speak louder than words, baby. Prove it.
Prove it. Prove how sorry I was. Prove that I missed him.
I didn’t even give myself time to think twice about how to do that. With shaking hands, I switched from the texting app to my contact log, scrolling past screens of numbers until I found the one I was looking for. I pressed call without even bothering to think about the time.
Time to be brave again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
EASTON
Violet never texted me back.
I should have seen that coming, but I’d hoped. I’d really fucking hoped. I’d given her the time she needed, no matter how hard it’d been to resist driving out to Chicago every day of the last five weeks. But last night…last night she’d finally reached out and told me she missed me. That had to mean something, right?
“You going to get to work soon or what?” Gracie leaned out of the office door, giving me her standard smartass glare. “I don’t have all day.”
“Fucking numbers,” I mumbled, earning me a look from Brogan. “I know—it’s a business. Numbers are important. They still suck.”
“I can’t say I disagree with you.” He went back to the oil change he was doing on Gracie’s thirty-year-old Chevelle. Apparently, it was time to get to work and quit worrying about my phone. And Violet. Which really wasn’t possible. All the what-ifs and should-haves refused to let my mind settle. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d lost an opportunity last night. If I’d been smart, I’d have gotten into the truck and driven my ass to Chicago the second she’d texted me. Caught her when she was still reaching for me. No matter how much I knew she was the one who needed to do the trying, the one who needed to remind herself what we were together, it was hard to not give in and run to her. But five weeks was a long time to wait for her to finally crack. Too long.
By the time I headed toward the office, I could hear Gracie speaking to someone. Typical. I walked away from the one thing that could keep Violet off my mind, and my sister was too busy to deal with me.
“Yeah, he’s right here,” Gracie said just as I breached the doorway. Assuming the he was me wasn’t hard to do. I almost stopped and called for Brogan to handle whoever was in there—I wasn’t in any mood to deal with customers—but I figured I’d probably already been seen. Hopefully whatever they wanted could be handled quickly so I could get done with Gracie and go back to work. Stay busy. Stay focused.
Maybe plan my drive west.
But when I finally looked up, all thoughts of drives and focus and work fell away. It wasn’t a customer standing by my desk. Not really. It was Violet. A thinner, exhausted-looking version of my Violet. When did she get so pale?
My mouth moved before my brain could. “Jesus, what the fuck happened to you?”
Violet ducked her head, looking more nervous that I’d ever seen her.
Gracie practically growled, that eyebrow winging hard into her bangs. “Way to be an ass.”
Yeah. I deserved that.
“Sorry, I just meant…you look tired.” Understatement, but that would have to do for the moment.
Violet glanced from Gracie to me, looking skittish and wary. The last things I wanted her to feel around me. Okay, maybe not the last. If she felt nothing, I think my heart would turn to fucking dust. I could work with skittish.
“I had to work overnight to be able to take time off so I could come out here,” she said, her voice a little scratchy. “I haven’t slept in like thirty-six hours.”
Okay, that explained the exhaustion, but not her presence. “What are you doing here?”
Gracie groaned as if I’d just said something epically stupid, grabbed her purse, and headed toward the shop floor. “I think it’s time to leave you two alone. I’ll make Brogan take me to lunch and put up the closed sign so the shop will be empty. You two can…talk.” She paused before disappearing, smiling softly at the woman who’d most recently ripped me to shreds. Traitor. “It was really good to see you, Violet.”
“You too.” Violet glanced at Gracie as she walked out, then went back to staring toward my desk, her eyes avoiding mine. My sister didn’t give me a break, though, mouthing don’t fuck up before closing the door behind her. The brat.
Once we were alone, I had no idea what to say. No clue how to start off a conversation. I was too focused on the fact that Violet was here. Standing in my office and smelling so good, I wanted to grab hold of her and never let go. The moment was practically a dream, a fantasy come to life. If only I could—
“I cheated on Jace.”
That wasn’t at all what I was expecting to hear. “What?”
“At the bowling alley. That’s why I could never really defend myself about the video and why Jace and Lacey are so brutal about the whole thing.” She shrugged, moving to the computer and bumping the mouse to bring it to life. “It wasn’t just me having sex. It was me having sex with someone who wasn’t my boyfriend.”
“Violet, I know—”
“Here, this one. It’s one of the more popular cuts.” She turned the monitor my way, her voice flat. Her eyes locked on the screen where a younger her gyrated on top of…someone. Jesus fuck, my heart crashed, and my stomach knotted. What the hell was she doing? “They zoomed in on the action to get more attention, though I think a few things got lost along the way. He was grabbing my ass—can you tell? Hard to with the angle. Hard to see who it was I was with, too. Isn’t it?”
I licked my lips, unable to speak. Unable to look away from the monitor and yet wanting to throw the thing through the wall. That video was why she’d run, why she’d left town the first time and me the second. That video had destroyed her in so many ways.
Without waiting for me to pull myself together, Violet pressed a few keys on the keyboard to make the image go full screen. “Marcus Knight, quarterback from Grosse Pointe High. We met at an ice-skating rink, of all places, a few weeks before this was shot. He was nice.”
“Violet—”
“Everyone always assumed it was Jace, and he did nothing to stop that idea. Of course, neither did I. I was already being called a whore because of the video, God forbid I make it worse by admitting it wasn’t even my boyfriend I was having sex with in it.” She shook her head, pressing keys on the computer until she tracked down another clip, this one from farther away. Her head was thrown back, Marcus’ hands covering her breasts. Throwing the monitor was seeming like a better idea with each second. “That one’s the one that gets the most shares. You can see my face clearly, can’t you? Trust me, people can. They recognized me from that clip. They still do.”
My mind roared, anger burning me up from the inside. Not at her—no, never at her. Anger at life. At Jace and Lacey. At the judgment this town had thrown at her. At myself for not stepping in earlier. “Turn it off.”
She didn’t, though. Of course not, because Violet was doing what she needed to. She was finally confessing. “Do you know why I cheated on Jace?”
I could hardly shake my head, and I definitely couldn’t speak past the rage building in my throat.
“Neither do I. I should have ended my relationship with him a long time before that night. He was such a…jackass. But he was handsome and popular, and he charmed me right out of my pants. It took me over a year to figure out how he was controlling me. Tiny statements, little decisions that ended up being big ones. He picked where we were going to college, he picked where we went every weekend, he picked when and where we had sex. He picked everything, and I followed him around like a puppy. Until I decided not to be a puppy anymore.”
She ran a finger over the screen, right along the curve of that guy Marcus’ arm. “Marcus was different. He was kind and funny. He ke
pt telling me how much of a jerk Jace was. Kept trying to seduce me. That night? That was right after the spring snowball dance. Jace had dropped me off at home early, even though I’d wanted to stay out. He’d said I should get some sleep, but I knew. I knew he was going to meet up with his friends and probably hang out with some girl. Things were super rocky with us—I assumed he was as unhappy as I was, and I wanted to pay him back for being such a dick to me for so long. So, I called Marcus, and we went to the bowling alley Jace’s dad owned. I knew how to get in, knew the alarm codes. I knew everything except that they’d installed three cameras the week before.”
“Did Jace know about the cameras?”
She shrugged. “I never asked him. From what I understand, Jace’s coworker was the first one to see the video. It was totally an accident. He was trying to figure out the new security system and stumbled on clips of Marcus and me walking in. He called another friend, then another, and finally, they called Jace. Once it got back around to me, Jace was…oddly calm about the whole thing. Lacey, on the other hand, wasn’t. And that’s where the problems started.”
“That night,” I whispered. “When I picked you up in the rain…”
“Jace convinced me to come to the bowling alley. His dad was letting him and Lacey have friends out to bowl after hours. Perks of being the owner’s kids, you know.” She shrugged, her eyes unfocused as she stared at the screen. “Jace came and picked me up. I didn’t want to go—didn’t want to see him—but I had to.” She looked up, and the expression on her face—the pain there—nearly knocked me over. “I was going to tell him. I swear, I was going to break it off for good with him. I was so over everything, and I just wanted to be rid of him. Plus, the guilt from being with Marcus when I was still technically with Jace was too much. I felt like a liar and a fraud, and maybe I was, but Jace and Lacey were worse. They had the video playing on every screen in the bowling alley when Jace walked me inside. The entire football team was there. The cheerleaders. Half the basketball team. All of them sitting around and watching it. Critiquing me.”
Pop The Clutch: A Second Gear Romance Page 24