Page 96 of Where the Wind Whispers

Softly, she said his name.

He didn’t hear her.

She could hear him, though, even over the exhaust fan and the rushing torrent of water, behind the glass, making his noise muffled … he was shouting behind his hands. Pure rage spilling from his heart and out his mouth, disappearing into his own hands and washing down the drain.

How many times had he found himself doing this very thing over the last little while? Did he expel all of his emotions like this—hidden and behind closed doors—because he didn’t want her to see or know?

Violet didn’t know because she couldn’t get him to talk lately.

Not real conversation beyond their child or her day.

If they did talk beyond those topics, it ended badly.

She knew he was stressed out and that he was barely keeping control of the situation, but she didn’t quite realize how much until now.

And it killed her inside.

It killed her to know her father was succeeding, and she didn’t know how or why. Alberto’s only promise to Violet was to hurt her, and while it might have seemed like he was hurting everyone else around her, her father knew her better than most—except for her husband.

By hurting those around her, she was left watching and unable to do anything.

She couldn’t protect, and she knew it.

Not her husband, his family, or their child.

Alberto was upending her life one little move at a time, and Violet could do nothing but stand on the sidelines, broken-hearted and useless.

She knew it was only a matter of time before Alberto went straight for her throat—or rather, her heart and soul. He’d promised to take one or the other, hell, maybe even both.

For now, though, he was just playing with her by showing her just how easy it would be to ruin her life.

She hated him for it.

It was as if her heart suddenly dropped from her chest and shattered into a thousand little shards all over the tiled floor.

Violet was still moving forward, closer to Kaz. Her fingers worked at the one button at the collar of her dress before she was pulling it over her head and letting it drop to the floor. Left in only her bra and panties, she reached for the handle on the sliding glass door, ready to open it up and be with Kaz.

There had never been another place where she wanted to be more than with him.

Always.

It was the entire reason why they were in this very situation now.

Kaz still hadn’t seen or heard her, and the second Violet opened the shower door, she slipped into the hot water, hissing but managing to ignore the blaze that bloomed over her skin from the level of heat. Her arms circled her husband’s middle tightly, and unsurprisingly, Kaz didn’t even tense at her touch or arrival.

It was as though he knew she was coming in whether he fucking liked it or not.

Still, he kept shouting, letting all his hate and anger and stress go.

Violet kept holding him, even when he turned around, and she was hugging his back. Even when his fists struck out one after the other, snapping hard into the tiled wall with sickening cracks, and then again, until his knuckles split and bled.

Red rivulets trailed down his fingers and wrists, dripping to the shower floor and then they too washed down the drain.

“I just need to think,” he mumbled, his head resting against the tile. “I need to breathe.”

“It’s all right, Kaz.”

He shook his head, frustration thickening his tone. “It isn’t. I don’t fucking know what I’m doing anymore, Violet. I’m fucking up. All the time.”