The baby’s soft breathing calmed the restlessness that had been plaguing me for months. Her face scrunched slightly, then settled. Quiet and trusting. She was warm, smelled of baby powder, and… well, that baby scent. Gosh, she was small. Protective instincts flared within me.
I lifted my eyes and found Violet’s gaze on our baby too.
“You should have told me,” I said, keeping my voice low so as not to wake Aria. “I should have been there when she was born.”
“You’ll be there for everything else,” she said, her voice laced with bitterness. “Because she’s all yours. I didn’t plan for expired condoms and a baby. I don’t have… room in my life for it.”
A hollow, ringing silence filled my head, like a bomb had detonated too close, and I was only just feeling the aftermath.
“You can’t be serious.” I tightened my grip on the baby. She shouldn’t be hearing that kind of stuff from her mother. Granted, the baby couldn’t understand any of this.
Violet stood up and I mirrored the movement, still holding the baby close to my chest.
“I am,” Violet said, turning on her heel.
“You don’t get to just show up here and drop something like this on me,” I hissed, refusing to raise my voice.
She shrugged. “You have a son. Experience in this… shit. I don’t. My life has no room for a child. Yours does. You must have a nanny and… people to take care of children.”
“Yes, I have a nanny. I trust her implicitly, but a child needs a mother. You don’t know what you’re doing by disregarding her like this.”
Her shoulders stiffened. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“Do you?” My voice sharpened. “Because this… this is a life, Violet. A life we created. Aria needs both of us.”
“No,” she said, then cleared her throat. Again and again. Almost as if she were suffocating. I stared at her, trying to gauge what the hell was going on. “I brought her to you because I can’t have her in my life. I don’t need that… headache right now.” Her voice cracked a bit, but then her expression hardened into a mask. “Everything you need to know about her is in the diaper bag.”
The wind must have picked up, whipping against the windows. It felt like a storm mirroring the one in my chest.
“It doesn’t matter what you need,” I gritted, “or what I need. The baby… She’s what’s important right now and you?—”
The baby stirred again, a soft sound of protest breaking through, almost as if she could feel the tension.
I swallowed hard, eyes fixed on her tiny features before I turned a glare on Violet.
“This baby matters. Not what you and I want,” I said, barely above a whisper.
Violet inched back, and I took one forward. She took a step back, and another, and deep down, I knew she had already abandoned us.
“Violet, don’t you fucking leave our daughter,” I hissed. “We’ll do this together. You can keep up your studies and?—”
“I can’t stand the thought of anything that reminds me of you, Lykos,” she spat, her lip curling as if the very air around me tasted foul. “Not a trace. Not a memory. I want everything about you gone from my life so it’s like you and Aria never existed.”
I stood frozen and hurt, holding my newborn daughter and staring into the empty space where Violet stood long after she was gone.
“Dad?” Dimitros’s voice shattered through the memory. No—therealization. “Do you know what all that means?”
“No, son,” I lied, turning on my heel. “Have a good night. I-I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I left his room and rushed down the stairs. I wasn’t ready to seek out Violet. I needed to think this through. I needed to come to terms with what it all meant.
I had seen grief before. Lived with it. Breathed it in until it became part of me. But what lived insideher… She sealed it tight, letting it fester under years of discipline and denial.
And tonight, I’d seen it crack open at my table.
Guilt swelled inside my chest, threatening to explode.
