But I guessed things did change.
We ducked into the secluded nook, and I held out Violet’s chair. She slipped into it, and I moved to sit on the opposite side. The girl passed us our menus.
“I…um…so…have a good dinner.” She ducked out without saying anything else.
Violet suppressed a giggle.
“Don’t even,” I mumbled, pretending to turn my attention to the menu.
Her giggle got louder. “Told you.”
“What did you tell me?”
A blush was lighting her face. But it wasn’t shyness eliciting that alluring color. It was pride. “Superstar,” she mouthed.
“Not even,” I said again.
She laughed, and she kept her voice subdued considering the entire restaurant was held in a low drone of voices and clanking dishes. “Did you see that girl back there? She tripped all over herself with the mention of your name.”
I waved it off. “She did not.”
“Yes, she did. I bet you could go up to her right now, ask her to go home with you, and she would.”
Somehow, she was all playful grins when she said it.
But I wasn’t laughing. “Wouldn’t happen.”
“Bet you a hundred bucks.” Violet’s grin was even wider.
Faster than she could process it, I had tossed my menu onto the table and had shifted so I was right in her face, leaning off to the side and over the small circular table.
I was assaulted anew.
Violets and dreams and life.
Wanted to glut myself on it.
“It wouldn’t happen.” The words were hard.
Emphasized.
Confusion filled those violet eyes, that perplexed gaze searching my face.
My teeth ground with the ferocity of the confession. “It wouldn’t happen because I would never ask her to go home with me. Not her or anyone else.”
That confusion grew in strength, girl’s mind racing toward disbelief.
The energy shifted.
A fierce severity that blustered from my flesh.
The determination.
Her entire being rattled. “Don’t you dare start tellin’ me lies, Richard. I’ve come to terms.”
It was such a lie, I could taste her defense on my tongue.
I squeezed her wrist, my nose at her cheek, brushing across the silky flesh before I was moving for her ear. “You. Are. My. Wife.”
It was hard.
Vicious.
Possession bounded through my blood.
“And that fuckin’ means something to me.”
Shock froze her, like she didn’t dare breathe. Didn’t dare move.
I couldn’t bear to ask if the same had applied to her.
I couldn’t blame her if it hadn’t even if the thought made me want to go on a crime spree.
It’d been six fucking years, and believe me, that truly could drive a man to insanity.
“Six fuckin’ years.” The declaration came on a roll of pain.
Physical.
Mental.
Tension ricocheted.
Dancing through the flames that leapt and lapped in the secluded space.
I edged back enough to meet those eyes.
To stare into eternity.
Didn’t matter if I had her or not.
She was the forever that had been written on my heart.
Twenty-One
Violet
Sage eyes stared me down with the sort of severity that could blast through a concrete wall that was ten-feet thick. Sear through every resistance. Blow through every reserve until there wasn’t a single thing left but vulnerabilities.
Oh God, did it ever put my rationale at a stark, glaring disadvantage.
My daddy was right.
I was not just fine.
Every fractured piece that I was trying to hold together was quaking and quiverin’, my shredded insides I’d sewn up in flimsy threads threatening to bust apart.
He hovered an inch from my face, our noses close to brushing, that dark aura shifting into something far more dangerous. The carved, sharp angles of his gorgeous, chiseled face were tense with the truth there was no denying.
That energy spiked.
Like tiny daggers impaled in my spirit.
I couldn’t allow myself to get lost in those eyes and those hands and that body. To get lost in those words that wanted to soothe away some of the hurt.
To heal a small portion of the hole that gaped from within, knowing that maybe there was a chance that this man had been as lonely as I had been.
I cleared my throat and sat back in my chair, breaking the connection that strained and swelled, doing its best to cast its hypnotizing spell.
One that could so easily leave me swept away.
Adrift.
Forever lost in his eclipse.
“Violet.” It was a soft breath. Frustration and helplessness.
“I don’t know what to say to that, Richard.”
The waiter appeared at our table, bursting the bubble.
Richard sat back with a sigh of disappointment.
“Welcome to Delonge’s. Can I bring you something to drink to get you started with tonight?”
Richard looked at me, watching me like every word I said was precious in his sight.
I cleared the agony from my throat.
This was not easy.
Not easy at all.
Sitting in his space was making it monumentally more difficult to keep my wits about me.
To remember.
“I’ll have a glass of moscato,” I managed.
“Sir?” the man asked, swiveling his attention to Richard.
“I’ll have whatever local beer you have on tap. You pick.” Richard said it like he couldn’t be bothered.
“Perfect. I’ll be right back with the specials.”
He left, allowing the tension to come sweeping back in.
Shifting, I forced a smile, swearing to myself I could get through this.
I just needed to deflect.
Stay on safer topics and not the ones that would crush me.
“Tell me about the band. About Rhys and Emily. What it’s been like the last six years. I bet you all got up to some shenanigans.”
A true smile twitched along Richard’s plush lips. He sat farther back in the chair, that lean body built of sinew and strength slung back in the seat, wearing jeans and a button-down, the sleeves rolled up his forearms that my gaze kept drifting to. He had one tattooed arm stretched out to the table so he could fiddle with the corner of the fabric napkin folded by his bread plate.
I couldn’t help but watch the muscles tick and jump. The way his easiness was fueled by an undercurrent of hostility.
“We’ve written some damn
