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That’s what Preston had lost, in addition to his money, his position at the bank and all of his friends.
He obviously wasn’t strong enough to face the reality of that. Wasn’t brave enough to try to change into a good person—something I didn’t think was possible.
So he hung himself.
It might’ve been sad.
If he wasn’t such a piece of shit.
It was sad watching my daughter battle with the emotions that came with the news. She tried to be tough, acting like she didn’t care. I could tell that she was trying to protect me from her pain. She was trying to protect herself from it by hating him. I had tried to reach out to her, to give her the space to feel grief and sorrow, but I’d just given birth to a baby boy who demanded a lot of my attention. I was sleep deprived, hormonal and trying to battle with the satisfaction I felt in knowing that Preston was dead.
Not that Swiss didn’t help. Heck, I was lucky to change a diaper. So I did have time, time I utilized trying to help my daughter. But she’d put up a wall. Hiding behind that wall with smiles, with snuggles with her new brother. With cleaning the house, with working at Julian’s, with school and travel.
So I had to trust in her. Had to trust she’d come to me when she needed me. Or Swiss. Or Macy, Freya, Caroline. Any of the people who had adopted her into the family without hesitation. The family that Violet adored and fit into effortlessly. The people who would have her back no matter what.
I opened ‘Violet’s’, my restaurant, when I was three months pregnant, working right up to my due date. It was safe to say that Swiss was a hot fucking mess that entire time. It was also safe to say we had a lot of heated arguments about me working in a restaurant kitchen while pregnant.
I was trying very hard to be sensitive to his past, to his trauma. But I also couldn’t lie in bed with my feet up for months. I couldn’t let someone else cook at my restaurant. Not until I trained them and felt fully confident in their skills.
I guessed I was like Julian that way.
It was a constant source of tension between us, and I didn’t drive myself anywhere after six months. Swiss sat at the bar, nursing the same beer, glowering at everyone each night.
And, if he felt like it was too late, he shut the place down.
He shut my fucking restaurant down.
Even though I’d yelled at him about scaring off patrons, his presence actually had the opposite effect.
Word got out about the ultra-hot biker sitting at the bar, and we did even more business, which in turn had us operating later, which in turn had him shutting the bar down. A vicious cycle I found endlessly amusing.
Swiss did not.
Nor did he find it amusing when I didn’t tell him my water broke until my contractions were seven minutes apart.
Yeah, there had been a lot of yelling on the fast but careful drive to the hospital. Fortunately, I’d benefitted from the experiences of the Old Ladies who came before me and who had forewarned me that men could get hysterical and dramatic over labor.
Declan Carter was born without incident, with ten fingers and ten toes.
His father held him for hours, just staring at him, just holding his tiny hand. During the first week of his life, Declan barely slept or existed anywhere but his father’s arms.
And it filled my heart.
Swiss, as I had imagined, was a wonderful father. He was gentle, patient and adoring. He barely let me lift a finger and took over all of the house and parenting duties.
I’d selfishly feared a change in our relationship with the arrival of a baby. Yes, things changed, but for the better. We worked as a team. We communicated. We injected even more love into our house.
And his sexual appetite for me had not dulled.
Not even a little.
He damn near ripped my clothes to shreds exactly six weeks after I gave birth.
Six weeks. To the hour.
Declan was with Hansen and Macy for the entire day. And that was only because we were both so in love with him we could not be away from him for longer than that. And luckily, he’d sleep-trained like a dream and slept through anything because we didn’t stop after he came home.
For a while, for a long time, I lived with bated breath. Expecting. Waiting. For that other shoe to drop. I braced myself. For impact. For it all to crumble.
