“It will be fine.”
He flips a receipt over, scans the back. “You’ve been making good money. Bank it. Give it six months, and you can afford something better.”
I pull a throw pillow against my stomach. “Six months is a long time to be in your guest room.”
“It’s a long time to rush into a lease you can’t cover if Leo gets sick again.”
He’s right. He’s always right about numbers. It’s his job.
“You don’t owe me anything, Duke.”
His pen stops. His hand goes flat on the legal pad, and his thumb presses hard enough into the paper that I can see the indent from across the room.
“I know what I owe.”
I set my phone down. The apartment listings vanish into the dark screen.
“Who’s Leo’s father, Violet?”
The question lands like a slap. He asked me this at the diner, and I dodged it. He hasn’t brought it up since.
“It doesn’t matter.” I keep my voice even. “It didn’t work out.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s what I’m telling you.”
He’s quiet for a long time.
“I had a cut made for you.” His pen rolls between his fingers, back and forth. “Before you left. Property of Duke. I had it stitched and ready. I was going to ask you to be my Old Lady.”
The room tilts.
He sets the pen down and traces the edge of the legal pad. “And then you were gone.”
I can’t breathe. My fingernails are digging into the throw pillow, and my lungs have stopped working, and he is telling me that the man I left because I didn’t think he’d ever commit was days away from committing.
I left anyway. I left with his baby inside me.
“Duke.” It comes out broken.
He stands. Pushes the chair back. Gathers the receipts into a pile.
“I never stopped loving you, Violet.”
He walks past me toward the hallway. I open my mouth, and nothing comes out.
His boots are already on the hardwood, and his bedroom door closes, and I am alone in his living room with a throw pillow crushed against my stomach and a truth I didn’t know I was missing and a lie I don’t know how to survive.
I press my back against the couch and close my eyes.
He was going to ask me. He was going to claim me. And I ran.
CHAPTER 5
DUKE
Violet forgot the eggs.
