Violet Ugly: A Contemporary Romance Novel (The Granite Harbor Series Book 2)

by J. Lynn Bailey

  My phone chimes again.

  “Motherfucker.” Still in my hand, I look down, and it’s a text from Sadie. I roll my eyes.

  Since Merit came back into town last October, I haven’t been able to get her out of my head. For that matter, I also haven’t touched Sadie or any other woman since then.

  I don’t even read the text.

  I use the wall as my guide from my bedroom to the living room. I’m careful not to stray too far from these two locations.

  I don’t know why Eli is making such a big fucking deal about me taking care of myself. I don’t need anyone. I reach my chair and pray real quick because this always hurts so bad, trying to sit in my chair.

  “Goddamn it.” I take five short breaths and try to breathe through the pain eating away at my nerves as I sit. “Oh my God.”

  I’m not sure how I’m going to survive the next month with the television, my chair, and my broken bones. I’d rather stick needles in my eyes. I’m bored out of my mind.

  Maybe, if you’d take some of those painkillers, you might heal faster, dumb shit.

  No, those aren’t going to help. They’ll just make me loopy and tired.

  That might be what you need to get better quicker.

  Carefully, I reach for the remote on the table next to my chair and click the television on.

  And there are so many more hours of daylight left. I’m screwed.

  My phone rings, calling me from an infomercial.

  “Yeah?” I answer.

  Why the hell is Dubbs calling?

  Someone gets hurt, and all of a sudden, everyone wants to talk on the goddamn phone.

  “You feelin’ all right?”

  “Fine.” I reach down and try like hell not to make a sound to grab the pillow sitting on the floor next to the recliner. Fuck, this hurts. My face grows hot and then cold. I hold my breath and pull the pillow up to me. I hold it to my middle, praying the pain goes away.

  “Heard they made moose stew down at some mission in Augusta.” The voice on the other end of the line chuckles, followed by a raspy laugh.

  When wild game is hit and killed, the game wardens can call local charities, so they can harvest the meat.

  “You need help at your place?”

  “No.” I question why he called me. When he calls, it’s usually because he wants something.

  And why does everyone think I need so much goddamn help?

  “All right then.”

  “All right then. Bye, Dubbs.” I hit End.

  I stopped calling him Dad when I turned sixteen, the last time I had to defend myself against his fist. The last time I had to hit a man to protect myself.

  I’d spent years taking it, scared to death, if I said anything, he’d go after Merit and Eli. He’d told me that much. That, if I opened up my trap, he’d kill them. That wasn’t what I told them. Because I knew, if I played it that way, they’d have talked. They’d have told Brand and Rebecca. But, if I played my cards right, said it was me, they’d keep quiet.

  Then, I just got fed up. I’d grown eight painful inches that summer. Eight. It almost hurt as much as cracked ribs and a torn-up shoulder. I’d grown into my body and matched it hour for hour at the school gym in the morning before and after football practice. I towered over the fisherman who had once terrorized my dreams.

  The pillow placed firmly against my middle gives me some relief, and the pain has somewhat subsided, but I dare not move. Now, I’m tired again. Finally. I lean my head back and close my eyes.

  My front door opens, and I jump, sending another shot of pain through my middle.

  Motherfucker, I want to scream, but instead, I just shake through it.

  “Yo, Ryan, where are you?” It’s Eli.

  “Living room,” I say, pushing through the pain, not allowing my tone to be affected.

  Eli comes around the corner.

  “Did you hear Richards got traded?” I try to act casual.

  But behind Eli is my past, my mistakes, staring back at me. The only person I’ve ever loved, looking at me with her big green eyes.

  My heart starts to hammer against my chest as I attempt to figure out why and how she’s here, standing in my living room in Hallowell. I don’t say anything as they fully emerge from behind the wall that separates the entryway from the living room.

  Eli coughs. “Merit came to help you. Knew you wouldn’t take any help from us. But Mer came.”

  Is he looking for an answer? Because, right now, I’m in shock. Shock that she came. After all I’d put her through.

  “Okay. Call me?” Eli says to Merit.

  I can’t look away from her.

  “Yeah,” she whispers.

  Her eyes grow shifty, which means she nervous. I’ve seen that look before. Too many times.

  “Ryan, let her help,” Eli says.

  I don’t answer because I can’t answer. I don’t have a voice. It’s lost somewhere between the seams of my heart that have grown rigid and callous over the years. Years since we last made love. Years since I felt her milky-white skin beneath mine. Measured her breaths and promised that I’d take care of her.

  Eli leaves, but now, there’s nothing but loud silence that sits between us.

  Christ. Speak, Ryan.

  “You can sit.”

  She walks over to the brown leather couch where I’ve taken countless women from behind, and immediately, I get frustrated with myself.

  You should have waited for her, Ryan.

  I’m pissed she’s even anywhere near that fucking couch.

  “Sore?” I hear her angelic voice come from her mouth.

  My head snaps to her. “Fine.” And it comes out fifty ways of fucked up. I’m not mad at her, and now, I’m coming off like a dick.

  “When’s the last time you took your pain medication?” she asks because she knows me so well.

  “Why are you here, Merit?”

  I want her to say, Because I love you. Because I choose you. Because I forgive you.

  “Because you need me.”

  And she’s fucking right. I need her. I needed her when she left at eighteen, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to hold her back. She had her sights set on California. But I don’t want her here out of pity. I want her here because she wants to be here.

  “I don’t need your charity. I’ll be fine.” Maybe it’s the lie I just told or the fact that I’ve just adjusted my body in the recliner a bit, but another shot of pain meets my rib cage.

  “I don’t need your attitude. Besides, I get it. You’re a grown man. You don’t need a woman to take care of you. But, for the record, I’m not here for you; I’m here for my brother and Alex.”

  There’s the Merit I know. I try not to smile, knowing she’s come back. Knowing it took a lot for her to come all the way back from California.

  “You threw the pain medication away, didn’t you?” she asks.

  I try my hardest not to make a face, not to show the remnants of my body fighting back, calling out for mercy.

  “Goddamn it, Ryan. You don’t have to play tough guy all the time. Where’s your trash?”

  When I catch my breath again, I say, “Under the sink. Kitchen.”

  Merit walks into the kitchen and grabs the trash can. “This is exactly why Eli called me, Ryan. You’re so damn stubborn.”

  Is she seriously going through my trash? I cringe in pain, trying not to move too much.

  “I take it, you haven’t taken any of these?” Merit’s standing at my chair.

  I shake my head. She knows. She doesn’t have to ask, but she knows my past, and she knows what I came from. My upbringing.

  This time, I welcome the relief. Maybe part of it is knowing that she’s here, to hold me accountable. Maybe part of it is just knowing, if I take these, someone else knows, so I don’t have to hide.

  “Mer—”

  She says, “Ryan, I just need you to shut up and take the damn pills.”

  I want to say, Thank you, and,
I’m sorry, but I know it will fall on deaf ears until she’s ready to hear it, so instead, I throw the pills to the back of my throat. “Happy now?”

  “This isn’t my problem, Ryan. This is yours. I’m just the warden to enforce it.”

  I turn off the television, wanting to be in a quiet place with Merit. Meet her where she is, in the darkness and with nothing but the sound of my loud heart, waiting for her to hear the beat.

  “Can we talk about that night, Violet?” I whisper.

  “Not if you want me to stay.”

  We sit in silence, and the pain medication slowly starts to make its way through my system. Finally, after a few days, I feel relief from my body and my head.

  Some time passes.

  “How do you feel now?” she asks.

  “Really good,” I say as I look over at Merit.

  Her long blonde hair is pulled back off her slender neck—a place where my lips have been, searched, touched. My mouth around each of her perfect full breasts. Her long, lean hips that rocked against mine in the middle of many nights that summer.

  The Young green eyes are a family trait passed down from Brand. Hers can lure any man off a barstool, and right now, they’re staring back at me. She’s taller than most women but not as tall as me. She’s most comfortable in her home or in the Maine outdoors. Too many people aren’t her thing, and she’s been that way since her mother’s service.

  Her heart is tucked back behind the armor in her chest, and I know a lot of this was caused by her mother’s death. I know it was partly me who caused this, too. I don’t know if that’s all changed in the last seventeen years, but it hasn’t seemed so. Merit is the type of woman who doesn’t ask for approval from anyone. If there’s work to be done, she grabs a shovel. If there’s someone in need, she’s first to volunteer. If there’s justice to be stood for, she’s the willing participant. That hasn’t changed a bit. I think she gets that from both Rebecca and Brand. And she never backs down from a challenge.

  She pulls her eyes from mine and looks out the window at the moon. “Do you need help with getting into bed?”

  Yes. I want you to be in my bed because I need to feel your skin against mine again. Feel all of you. Be inside you.

  But I know I can’t rush this. I know I have to move patiently. Because I can’t live the next seventeen years without Merit. I knew, when we were kids and when she left, that I had to survive without her. So, I did everything in my power to forget her. And, now, she’s back. In my home. Sleeping in my sheets. I’ll just have to convince her that she needs to stay forever. But I’ll bide my time. I’ll take it slow. I just hope she can forgive me.

  “No, I’ll manage.”

  Six

  Merit

  Hallowell, Maine

  Present Day

  It’s the grunting I hear that wakes me. The door to the spare room I’m sleeping in, next to Ryan’s, is open. I quickly sit up. More grunting. My head gains clarity, and I know I’m not at my place in California. I’m not at Pop’s, but I’m at Ryan’s, and Ryan is injured.

  Quickly, I untangle myself from the sheets and walk to his bedroom. I push the door open. He’s sitting on the side of the bed. His back muscles flex and fill his T-shirt. He’s thick and solid in all the places a man can be. A lot has changed about Ryan when it comes to outwardly appearances, but I can’t think about that now.

  “Ryan? Are you all right?” I call from the door.

  He doesn’t speak.

  So, I walk to his bedside. His left arm is still strapped tight to his side.

  I get down on my knees in front of him. His eyes are closed.

  “Ryan, look at me. Are you in pain?”

  He doesn’t nod at first, but he knows I’ll stay in this position and wait for an answer for as long as it takes.

  Slowly, he nods.

  I go to the kitchen and grab two pain pills, a stool softener, and a glass of water.

  Better to get these in his system now, I think to myself.

  When I walk back into his bedroom, he’s standing. I roll my eyes. I don’t tell him he could have waited until I came back to help him for two reasons. One, he’s in pain, and he doesn’t want to hear it, and two, he wouldn’t listen anyway. He’s too damn stubborn.

  I walk to him and stand in front of him as he towers over me. His chest fills the front of his T-shirt as he takes a big breath in.

  “Here. Take these right now.”

  Ryan’s eyes melt into mine. He holds his middle. He reluctantly puts his hand out, and I drop the pills.

  “What’s this one?”

  “Stool softener.” My lip curls in delight. “You’ll thank me later.”

  He throws the pills in his mouth. I hand him the water, and he swallows them down.

  “Where do you want to go? Living room or back to bed?” I cross my arms over my chest, realizing my nipples are hard—and not because of the man standing in front of me, but because I’m cold. “Or shower?”

  “Shower,” he says without hesitation.

  “All right. Well, we’ll need to get your shirt off. What’d the doctor say about the brace?”

  “Don’t get it wet.” His eyes are still on me.

  “Can we take it off?”

  “Yeah. But I think I can take it from here, Mer,” he says.

  “Trust me, if I wanted to help, you’d know.” I try to push off any heat that’s reached my voice, my body.

  Deflect, Mer. Deflect.

  The curiosity of what he looks like under his shirt does affect the part of my brain that influences all other female parts of my body.

  I blow a big breath out. “Yell if you need me.”

  Sitting in the living room, I pick at my nails, really not focused on my cuticles, but what the beads of water look like while sliding down his body. The same body I’ve touched in intimate ways. Though we were much younger, I wonder if his muscles move the same, if his climax creeps the same way, and if he loves me differently.

  “Hey.” I see him in the hallway.

  “Hey. With the cracked ribs, I’m having a hell of a time with pulling off the brace,” he sighs. “Can you help me?”

  I nod and walk to him as if it’s just between friends. As if he’d asked me to mail letters. Buy postage. Make soup. But, really, this is more. More personal than I’ve been with a man in a long time.

  You’re assisting with a brace, Merit, not asking to give him a blowjob.

  Ryan turns his back to me. “See the piece of Velcro? Just pull that back, and I can get the rest.”

  One thing about Ryan is that he always smells good. Even after football practice in high school, yes, he smelled like sweat, but he always seemed to smell fresh, too. Like a bar of soap and expensive cologne.

  With his back to me, I take him in. I wander around in his scent, taking in our memories, both good and bad, pushing back on the want that I’ve spent years fighting. I pull back the Velcro with one quick movement, proving to myself and him that I can push the need for him back further, not allow myself, my heart, to get wrapped up in him again.

  The brace loosens, and he groans, his back still to me.

  “Are you all right?” slips from my lips and out into the space that surrounds us.

  “Fine,” he says through clenched teeth.

  “Is the pain medication kicking in yet?”

  “Gettin’ there.” He turns to me. “I lied.”

  I stand, staring up at him, waiting for his response. One thing Ryan is not is a liar.

  “I need help with my shirt.”

  Oh. Keep your shit together, Merit. You’re here to help, not be his latest fuck. You’ll never be his latest fuck either. Remember that. As bad as it gets, you’ll never give in to his ways. The ones he uses with Sadie or the other women he’s been taking home since you left. He’s a different person now. Hang on to that.

  Ryan keeps his arm in the same position and attempts to slide the brace off. “Ahh,” he calls out, an uncontrollable sound.

>   Carefully, I reach up and help him slide it off his shoulder and his middle, and it drops to the floor.

  “Let’s slide my shirt up and over my right side, pull it over my head, and down my left side.”

  I nod, taking my fingertips and sliding the hem of his shirt up his stomach, not allowing myself to look at his body. He winces again as he slowly pulls his arm out of the armhole and very gently slides his left shoulder and bicep through the armhole of the left side.

  I try not to stare at the broken man in front of me. The one who has owned my heart since we were kids. The one with cigarette burns just below his left pectoral muscle and two more on his chest and several that cover his back. It doesn’t help that Ryan’s body has changed from the gangly teenager into a man whose beautiful body would be better left untouched, untainted by a woman who should know better. By a man who sleeps with women to bury his trauma. Even with his abs that protrude and broad shoulders that make my hips shake, I yearn more for his heart. The one I couldn’t quite capture. I want to reach out and run my hand over the scars, both emotional and physical, but a loud voice inside me screams for me to stop.

  I look up and meet his eyes as a strand of my hair falls to my face, and I hear his breath hitch. He knows what I’m staring at. He knows that I’d have done just about anything to get him to leave Dubbs’s place when he was eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, and sixteen. Those were the years when it was real bad.

  Ryan reaches out and slowly pushes the fallen strand of hair back behind my ear. “The scars are just remnants of my childhood, Mer. They don’t hurt anymore.”

  But, sometimes, we don’t recognize how we’ve been hurt and heal the way we should. Sometimes, we turn to anything to help heal the hurt we can’t see. But I don’t say this out loud for Ryan or for me. I think both of us are just trying to get by in the best way we know how. I also don’t respond with I know because I don’t think that’s the truth; it isn’t a lie Ryan’s telling. I think it’s what he believes.

  “You’d better go shower while the pain medication is still working.”

  He lingers in the space that separates us, looking down at me, searching my eyes, but I turn away and make it easy for him. I walk to the couch, my back to Ryan.