by Lisa Cardiff
“Cecilia wasn’t Jim’s wife when I was with her. She was always my girlfriend, not Jim’s, and even when I left for college, we stayed together, but then I came home one Christmas break and my parents told me that Cecilia and Jim had married.” He looked away, looking weary. “I get why she did it, but it hurt.”
“What?” He never heard any of that information before, but it made sense.
Brad took a deep breath, apparently fortifying himself. “I understand why your mom picked Jim over me and why she tricked him into believing you were his.”
Alec locked eyes with Brad, cocking one eyebrow, refusing to ask the obvious question hanging between them.
“I was in college, but I was a total fuck up then. I drank. I cheated on Cecilia. I smoked pot all day long. I barely passed my classes and I didn’t give a shit about anyone except me and my band.”
“You played in a band?” Alec asked, feeling a mixture of emotions rushing through him at the discovery that Brad played in a band once, too.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything further about his band. “I thought I loved Cecilia, but I didn’t…not really, anyway. We’d been together since the ninth grade. I took her for granted and assumed she’d be waiting when I was ready to clean up my act. Unfortunately, it took her marrying Jim for that to happen. Jim was my polar opposite. He stayed close to home for college. He was responsible and got good grades and he’d been in love with Cecilia for a long as I could remember. For her, marrying him was a no-brainer.”
“So why did you interfere?” Alec spoke in a low tone, feigning indifference.
“I didn’t realize you were mine until Cecilia drunkenly confessed it to me at my wedding. Two weeks later, I forced her to get a paternity test and I confronted her about custody the day after I received the results—the day Jim…died.” His voice dropped on the last word and sadness flashed across his face.
Alec’s stomach rolled at the reference to that day. In his mind, he still couldn’t process that he didn’t cause Jim’s death. It didn’t matter what the Foundation’s counselors said to him as a kid and it didn’t matter what the five hundred dollar an hour therapists told him in LA. Jim would still be alive and Taylor would still have her dad if it weren’t for him and his big mouth. “You should’ve left us alone.”
“Maybe, but from the minute I found out you were mine for sure, I wanted you to be a part of my life. I couldn’t stand the idea of Jim raising my son.” His eyes met Alec’s and Alec studied his face, the same nose, the same chin and so many little things that resembled his except the eyes. Those were identical to his mom’s.
Alec looked toward the entrance of the restaurant. “That’s total bullshit. If you cared, you would have fought for me after Jim died.”
“I thought I’d already caused enough harm, so I didn’t fight…I gave up too easily.”
“You know, I don’t think I’m hungry after all. I think I’ll take my breakfast to go.” Alec pulled out his wallet and slapped a fifty on the table. “This should cover it.”
“Wait,” Brad said, grabbing his wrist. “Your brothers want to meet you. They love music just like you, and I think it’d be good for all of you to get to know each other.”
“Wait. Let me think about this. You want to apologize to me for being too big of a coward to be a father to me, but now you want me to be a part of your sons’ lives. The same sons who probably had regular meals on their table, who didn’t have a mother who told them she should have aborted him, who didn’t have a mother who dragged drunken assholes back to the house to physically abuse him and his sister.” He took a deep breath, trying to calm the fire rushing through his veins.
“I didn’t know any of that. When I gave Cecilia her check every month, she told me you were both fine.”
Alec stood up. At least he knew how his mom managed to keep the house and maintain her addiction despite her joblessness. “You gave her money?”
“Of course I did.” Brad sighed. “If I had any idea she wasn’t the mother she pretended to be, I would have fought for you and your sister with everything I had.”
“Maybe you didn’t want to know. I’m sure it made your life and your marriage a lot less complicated without Taylor and me in it. I was an inconvenient fact that you wanted to sweep under the rug with a couple dollars every month.”
Just then the waitress placed their food on the table. “Can I get that to go?” Alec asked, his eyes never leaving Brad’s.
“Sure thing.” She picked up his plate and left.
Brad grabbed an envelope from inside his briefcase. “This is from Jayden, one of your brothers.”
Alec looked at the crisp white envelope with his name on it. For a second, he wanted to throw it back in Brad’s face, but he didn’t have the energy. “What does it say?”
Brad shrugged. “He didn’t tell me.”
“Thanks.” He slipped it into his back pocket.
“You ready?” Violet said in her soft, almost angelic voice as she laced her fingers between his. The tension that had been building over the last forty minutes melted away and he felt a million times better, but Violet always made him feel that way. Within a matter of weeks, she had wormed her way into his heart so deep, he didn’t think he’d ever get her out and maybe that wasn’t so bad. He could get used to having her there.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
“Alec, I’m proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished, even more so now that I know what you faced,” Brad said.
Alec nodded, pulling Violet by her hand away from the table.
“I’m really sorry about not being there for you and your sister when you needed me, but if you need me in the future, I’ll be there for you this time. I have no right to request this of you, but I’d love a second chance, and your brothers would love to have you in their life.” Alec started shaking his head, ready to deny Brad, but then Violet squeezed his hand and he smiled down at her.
“Well, at least think about it. I’ll understand if you can’t.” The hope shining from Brad’s face reminded Alec of the hope he felt looking at Violet at that instant.
“Okay,” Alec said. “But I can’t promise anything.” His throat felt constricted and dry.
When he made it to the parking lot, Violet circled her arms around his waist. “Are you okay?”
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against his body and he brushed his lips against the top of her head, inhaling her clean, fresh scent. “Now I am. I don’t know why I decided to meet him. I feel even more conflicted than before. I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure I want him in my life, but he said I have brothers—I think I want to meet them. What he did or didn’t do shouldn’t impact whether I talk to my brothers.”
She nodded as she ran her hands up and down his back. “You don’t have to decide today.”
“I know, but I’m so tired of being angry at him, at my mom, and at life.” He’d closed the door on Brad the day his wife slammed the door in his face. He didn’t think he was ready to open that door anytime soon. Maybe never, but he didn’t want to be angry anymore.
“Then let it go. You don’t have to see any of them if you don’t want to, but you don’t need the anger eating at you. Just accept what happened and make the best of what you have.”
He tangled his fingers through Violet’s light blonde hair, letting it float through his fingertips. “Thanks for being here for me today, Violet.”
“I couldn’t be anywhere else,” she replied simply.
“Where are we going?” he asked as he climbed into the passenger seat of her car.
“Back to my house.”
“What about the Foundation?”
“I was already taking a couple weeks off to visit my parents. I moved it up a couple days and you already resigned, so we’re free to do whatever we want for the rest of the week.”
“How’d you swing that?”
“I convinced some of the ex-employees to come back.”
“And th
ey agreed?”
She laughed as she pulled away from the curb. “After I showed them the Foundation’s updated financial statement.”
“Money makes the world go around.”
“I guess so.”
“And you don’t mind being away for a couple weeks?”
“I haven’t had a vacation in a year. I think I’m entitled to a few weeks of freedom.” She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel. “What time are you leaving on Friday?”
“As early as I can get out the door. I need to be in LA before the end of the day on Saturday, preferably while it’s still light out.”
“How long is the drive?”
“Around seventeen hours, so I’ll drive twelve hours on Friday and I’ll have a relatively short day on Saturday.”
She nodded, not taking her eyes off the road.
He didn’t like the way Violet avoided his eyes. He wanted them to enjoy their last few days together, and if he were honest with himself, he didn’t want to walk out of her life forever on Friday.
“Do you think you’ll go to UCLA to visit the campus before you apply to law school?”
“Probably.”
“You could stay with me when you’re there.”
She didn’t answer immediately. “Are you serious?”
He squeezed her thigh briefly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because this was supposed to be a finite relationship. Remember? Two weeks. No strings. No promises.” She stopped in the driveway of her home.
“Is that supposed to be the polite way of telling me you’re not interested in anything after Friday?”
She shifted in her seat. “Tell me this. Two weeks ago, you said you couldn’t do a relationship, and now, if I’m reading you correctly, you’re telling me you can. Why?”
He grabbed her shoulders, letting his thumbs trace the sides of her neck. “My whole life I’ve felt alone. My mom spit venom at me every chance she could. I felt like my careless words stole my sister’s father. Did I tell you I’ve never told Taylor that Brad is my dad or that her dad ran out that day because I couldn’t shut my mouth?”
With her eyes wide, she shook her head.
“Well, she doesn’t know any of it because I’ve always been afraid she’d hate me too if she knew the truth. So I’ve spent the last sixteen years of my life isolating myself and never fully revealing myself to my friends or my sister and I’ve been so damn lonely. Nobody knows me, or at least not the real me with all my faults and the ugly parts of my childhood, not even my sister, who I love more than anyone in the world. Until you. You know me, or at least I want you to, and I hope I’m not wrong, but I think you accept me, all of me, not just the good parts.”
Leaning across the middle console, he brushed his lips on hers once, twice, and then held them there, frozen, not moving, just allowing the connection between them to simmer and build. Then he pulled back just a few inches. “That’s why I don’t want this to end on Friday. I don’t want to walk away from this, from you. I want to see where this goes. Are you open to that?”
Her hand came up over her mouth and for a moment he feared she’d reject him. He was in uncharted waters. He’d never wanted a woman for more than a night and certainly nothing beyond a superficial joining of two people. The minute he met Violet, he knew she was different, special even, and now, he knew he’d do anything to keep her in his life for as long as she’d have him.
“I want that more than anything,” she whispered. Climbing into his lap, her lips collided with his as she molded her body against him.
He pulled back. There was so much he wanted—no needed—to tell her. “Before you decide, there’s something you need to know about me. It could change your mind about me…about us. I’m not—”
She pressed a finger to his lips, cutting him off. “Alec. No more confessions for today. You’ve had an intense day and whatever you want to say right now won’t change the way I feel about you or who you are. I know you, Alec. I don’t know every detail or dirty little fact, or even every beautiful thing about you, but I do know you, and that’s all that matters.”
Maybe it made him a jackass, but he wanted to take the out she gave him, at least for today. Being with her made him feel alive, and in that fragment of time, he didn’t want to risk losing her yet. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, like Violet suggested, because everything between them came down to one thing. He felt the words shape on his tongue and held back for a moment, weighing them, but in the end, he wanted her to know how he felt about her, only her. “I love you.”
Her mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ and anxiety and uncertainty filled him, but he wanted her to hear what he had to say, and if she didn’t feel the same way, that was fine. He’d spend every day trying to change her mind. “I know neither of us went into this relationship wanting more than a few weeks, but somewhere along the way, I realized I wanted more, and that more was you. I love you. You’re it for me.”
She touched his face, her fingertips barely grazing his skin. “I love you, too.”
“You do?” He smiled, opening the car door and carrying her toward her house, one arm around her shoulder and the other beneath her knees.
“Faults and all. What are we going to do now?”
He set her down and she opened her door.
“To start, I’m going to kiss you here.” His lips whispered across hers. “And then here.” His lips skimmed the length of her neck. “And I’m going to touch you here.” His hands slipped under the bottom of her shirt and he felt a shiver race through her body. Damn, he loved this girl.
Chapter Twenty-One
She gasped as Alec draped her on top of her bed.
“Are you sure you don’t need to check in on the Foundation?” he asked, kneeling on the bed next to her, his fingers trailing softly up and down her legs.
“They won’t miss me, and Eve worked with me for a year before she quit. She knows what to do.” She twisted her hands into his t-shirt, trying to pull him closer.
“You’re wrong. I think the kids will miss you.”
“Well, they’ll have to fend for themselves for a few days because I want to spend time with you.”
“Think of Dean. I’m sure seeing you every afternoon is the best part of his day.”
“Hm,” she murmured, bracing herself on her elbows. “Are you really jealous of a seventeen-year-old?”
“Not even close.” He chuckled. “Well, maybe a little. I was seventeen once and I know what kind of thoughts are running through his mind.”
“So are you saying you don’t have those types of thoughts anymore?”
“Only with you, Little Violet.” His fingertips caressed the side of her face.
She couldn’t help it. Her whole body melted in response to the intensity burning from his eyes. His mercurial, deep blue eyes changed from intense to sinful in seconds. There were a million things they needed to discuss in order for this to work between them, but she didn’t want to spend the rest of the day dwelling on the unforeseen obstacles to having a committed, long distance relationship with him. She wanted today to be about the two of them and that moment in time where the look on his face made her believe they had a chance to make this work.
“I like that thought.” Leaning forward, she nibbled on his lip ring before sucking it into her mouth.
He groaned, shoving his hands into her hair, lightly tugging at the roots. The look on his face made her desperate for him. “You want me to share some of my thoughts?” he said, abducting both her mouth and her common sense with one of his mind-wilting kisses that were a little dark, always wild, and utterly consuming. She couldn’t get enough. Would she always feel this way? If the way she felt since she first saw him was any indication, she probably would. With every little piece of him he revealed, she only wanted him more.
“No,” she answered when he released her lips and her mind circled back to his question. “But maybe you could show me. That might be better. I’ve always been a hands on, get my
hands dirty kind of girl.”
“I like the sound of that,” he said right before his mouth slammed against hers one more time, taking everything she had to give and more.
Devouring her like she was his last meal, he shifted from her lips to her jaw and then down her neck, pausing to score her skin with his teeth and then soothing the pulsing heat with his cool, minty breath.
Then, without warning or a single word, he ripped her shirt over her head and his mouth was back on her within seconds. Kissing, nibbling, licking, while his hands traced every inch of her skin before pushing her bra down and flicking his tongue over each sensitive and highly inflamed nipple.
She felt his erection against the inside of her thigh, hard, thick and teasing her with every subtle movement or twitch and she wanted him inside of her again.
“Alec,” she half-moaned, half-whispered, arching her hips and spreading her legs, desperately trying to focus all of his attention on her throbbing center.
One of his hands slid under her hips, angling her up as he pulled her skirt and panties down her legs. She sighed in relief as his lips trailed down her body, moving closer and closer, but not close enough. Every swirl of his tongue tortured her until her body physically ached with the need to be touched, and when he paused, looking up at her as his tongue stroked the little stretch of skin where her thigh met her pelvis, she realized he knew exactly what he was doing.
“Where you do want me, baby?” His eyes hinted at desire, but his dilated pupils didn’t hide the mischievous glint lurking beneath the surface.
“Inside me,” she breathed, barely recognizing the sex vixen voice that came out of her mouth.
“What part of me do you want inside of you?”
“Anything…I’m not picky.”
“How about my finger?” he said as his finger glided back and forth, never penetrating, just slipping along the surface with enough pressure to drive her crazy, both good and bad. He planted kisses along her neck as he continued his maddening game and her nerve endings felt as though they might spontaneously combust at any moment.