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After another breath, I meet her eyes and my tone is detached and indifferent and stone-cold final.
“Here’s how this is going to go. The boys will see you when they want to see you. You’re more than welcome to pick them up this weekend if you want. But they live here with me—that’s how you wanted it. If you’ve got a problem with that now, get yourself a lawyer and take me to court. Otherwise, I’ll tell them to call you before they go to bed tonight.”
And I turn around and walk away.
“You’re an asshole!” she screams after me.
I just raise my hand and wave without glancing back.
* * *
When I walk into the backyard, my jaw is tight and every muscle in my body is coiled with tension. The sun is starting to set and the kids are all gathered around the firepit roasting marshmallows. I feel my family’s questioning stares following me, but I avoid eye contact. I snatch a bottle of beer from the cooler and sit down in a chair at the far end of the patio—twisting the cap off and taking a long drink.
But I still can’t shake the frustration . . . the pointless, fruitless frustration. I just don’t get why she has to be so goddamn miserable all the time. It’s like she gets off on making me as pissed off as she is.
Two gentle hands land on my shoulders, just resting at first. Then kneading and squeezing—working at the knotted, tight muscle.
“Hey.”
I tilt my head up into Violet’s soft, concerned eyes.
“You okay?”
And I just look at her. Take her in. Take the time to absorb the calm sweetness that’s always radiating from her. Letting it fill me and wrap around me like a fleecy blanket.
And I think about how lucky I am to have her in my life. How amazing she is with my kids, with my family—how awesome she is, period. She could have literally anyone . . . but she wants me. With her whole heart. And she shows me all the time, in big ways and small.
The frustration seeps out of me, my chest loosening and warming with her touch and scent and the nearness of her—leaving me soothed and happy again.
Violet makes me happy. When she’s around, it’s impossible to feel any other way.
And I’ve seen too much to ever take that for granted. To waste a moment of it.
I clasp her hand and tug her around to my lap, sitting her down and wrapping my arms around her. Her lips are supple and warm when I kiss her. We don’t make out or anything—it’s a brief, sweet peck—and then I just hold her.
Because that’s enough. It’s everything.
“I am now.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Violet
The temperature at night dips lower than usual for late September, but still warm enough that the heat isn’t turned on yet. Connor likes to sleep with his window open—it’s just one of a hundred wonderful intimate details I’ve learned about him in the last few months. The kind of sweet minutiae that truly makes two people a couple—the small facts that no one else is privy to.
Like how he knows I talk in my sleep. He discovered this a few weeks ago when I was mumbling in the dead of night and he decided to have a conversation with me. I didn’t remember it in the morning, but apparently he asked me how sexy I thought he was . . . and I answered “purple, definitely purple.”
The cat’s already out of the bag about my poetry hobby—so, after that, there’s really nothing I mind sharing with him. Connor Daniels has all of me now.
The crisp night air breezes in, coasting across my bare back. A delicious contrast to the heat of Connor’s chest against mine. He’s propped up against the headboard, and I’m straddling his hips, riding his cock in slow, deliberate strokes.
I love this position—not an inch of space separates us. And he’s so deep inside me—his hardness, thick and unrelenting—making me feel impossibly full, making me come so easily.
My hips speed up, as I climb higher and closer with every hard drag of my pelvis against his. Connor’s groan is hot and heavy in my ear and I know he’s close too. His mouth slides across my chest, leaving a slick trail, before he takes my nipple in his mouth—sucking and flicking with his tongue and sending a spike of electric heat between my legs. I clench around him and moan his name.
And then I’m falling, flying, a swell of pleasure coursing through me so strong my head falls to his shoulder and I go slack against him—too caught up in the sensation to stay upright. His arms tighten around me, holding me, his fingers grasping at my shoulder blades, his hips snapping up roughly as his orgasm overtakes him.
