Chapter 5 Colt
Colt
Vi was pregnant.
My Violet.
She was standing there, right in front of me, all big, beautiful belly.
Every emotion simmering under the surface of my skin since I saw her get out of her car slammed into me like a freight train.
Because how many years had we spent waiting for that?
How many positive tests ended in tears? As far as I knew, Violet had never even made it out of the first trimester before.
I never got to feel our babies kick. I never pushed my head against her belly to see if I could hear the heartbeat.
It was the coward's way out, but I bolted as fast as I could. I set her luggage inside, said goodbye faster than I’d ever said anything else in my life, and fucking ran to my truck. And not a second too soon. Because seeing her like that, it rattled me right down to my goddamn core.
How many nights had I fallen asleep to the thought of her carrying my baby? Even after our damn divorce, it was my favorite brand of torture. Imagining what life would have been like if I was able to give her the one thing she wanted more than life itself.
For a second, just as I rounded her car and saw her—really saw her for the first time in seven God-forsaken years—I thought that baby was mine. My brain flashed through every emotion in the span of a single second, and my heart nearly burst through my chest.
But the reality of everything hit me so fucking hard.
I wasn’t the man who put that baby in her belly.
I wasn’t about to be a dad.
I wasn’t anything to either of them.
The first tear fell, and fuck…I managed to swipe it away as I cleared my throat.
If there was ever a time I needed to get a grip, it was right goddamn now.
She wasn’t carrying my baby. It was some other man’s.
Some fucking joke of a man, if he was sending her off to a cabin thousands of miles away from him as pregnant as she was.
What was she thinking, traveling so far along into her pregnancy?
I couldn’t be sure—because I didn’t stay long enough to ask—but she looked far enough along that it was alarming to think about her making the trip down to Texas from New York City.
Yeah, I knew that’s where she lived now.
Her dad had told me she moved there a few months after I last saw her.
Chasing her dreams of publishing her manuscript while living a life completely different from Small Town, Texas.
And she had. She’d chased her dreams so far and so well, that she was coming home pregnant with another man’s baby.
I didn’t even fucking know her due date.
I didn’t stop to ask. Just hugged her like she was telling me it was my baby, and then ran to my truck when I remembered there was no way in hell it could be.
Because the last time we’d been together—one night before the divorce was final, when emotions were so goddamn high I thought my heart might crumble in my chest—fuck.
No baby waited for that long. After a lifetime of thinking it would be me, I was forced to stare down the cold, sobering truth.
I wasn’t ever going to be the father of Violet’s children.
Dammit, these tears needed to fucking stop.
My hands twisted against the steering wheel, trying to fight off the tightness in my chest. Pull over.
The rate at which I was blinking away tears was fucking pathetic, but the last thing I’d do was put someone else on the road in danger because I couldn’t get a fucking grip.
I drove back onto the ranch as the ache in my chest spread through my body, my shoulder, my arm…fuck, what the hell was happening? Hayes was a firefighter. I needed to get to him. I was about to fucking die.
Trying my best to breathe against the pressure sitting on my chest, I threw the gearshift into park and scrubbed my hands over my face.
Get a grip, Colt! My fingers sat against the spot over my heart that was tattooed with a violet.
I’d gotten it done the day of our divorce.
For her. Because I knew, even as I set her free, even as I signed away my right to be her protector, her provider, that Violet Ford would never be replaced.
With my body in absolute agony, I dragged myself down from the cab of my truck and forced myself towards my brother’s front door.
“Hey, Colt. Decided to skip the nap?” Hayes called out from over my shoulder.
The world tilted as my body turned around.
Nothing I tried helped to get the words out of my mouth.
I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t admit how hung up on her I still was.
As soon as I turned, I saw Beau walking alongside him.
“What the fuck is wrong?” Beau asked, his eyes scanning over my face. “You look like you’ve seen a fucking ghost.”
They kept coming closer, but no matter how hard I tried to speak, the mounting pressure on my chest stopped me. My hand found its way above my heart and I grasped at my shirt.
Hayes got the message.
“Are you having a fucking heart attack right now?”
I almost wanted to laugh at how pissed he sounded.
“Sit down.” Both Hayes and Beau hooked their arms through mine and walked me to the porch. I was unceremoniously shoved to the steps by Beau, who mumbled something about getting some aspirin while Hayes got down on his haunches and looked me dead in the eyes.
“Tell me what’s happening,” he demanded.
“You’d think I was your kid brother with that tone…” I finally got out.
“You look ready to fall over, and you want me to apologize for the tone in which I’m speaking to you? Fuck all the way off. I’ll leave you here for Beau to deal with. That dipshit will kill you, for sure.”
I wished I was in the head space to laugh, because Hayes was right. Beau would try to help, and I’d be gone before I knew what happened.
“My chest. It’s tight. And it’s aching in my shoulder and my arm.”
“Fuck.” Hayes looked up over my shoulder and whispered something about Beau before looking back at me. “Alright. Looks like I’m playing wee-woo driver today. You know I’ve always wanted to turn the lights and sirens on in your truck.”
“Ain’t fucking happening,” I groaned as I flexed my left hand. The pain was getting better, but the pressure was still there.
“You want to tell me what the hell you were doing when this came on?”
“No.” I snapped. The damn ache behind my ribs was suddenly nothing compared to the burning behind my eyes.
The last time Hayes or Beau had seen me cry, we were sure our brother Lachlan was going to die after a horrible accident in his mechanic’s garage left him with a crushed leg.
He lived—thank God—but all of us had broken down in the hospital as we waited to hear his fate.
A large hand clamped down on my shoulder. “Is this a heart thing? Or is something else going on?”
I looked into my younger brother’s eyes. “Vi’s back,” I whispered.
His eyes went wide as his head slowly nodded with understanding. “Fuck. You just saw her?”
“She’s at her parents’ place. That’s not…” My fucking voice caught in my chest again. “That’s not all.”
“She brought someone with her?” Hayes asked.
It wasn’t a secret I never wanted to let Violet go.
That I wanted to fight for our marriage.
That I wanted to fight for the twelve-year-old version of me who promised to always be there for her.
But I walked away, knowing it was what she needed more than anything at that time.
She needed space to heal, and I was the idiot who thought she would come back to me.
“No. She was by herself.” I sucked in a harsh breath and spoke the words that were causing all the pain out loud. “She’s pregnant.”
“She’s what?!”
“She’s pregnant. Very pregnant. And it’s not—” My vision went blurry, and then before I could blink back the first tear, Hayes’ arms were wrapped around me.
“I found the—what the hell happened?” Beau’s voice demanded from behind us.
“Not a heart attack. A broken heart. Violet’s back—and she’s pregnant.”
I didn’t have to see my brother to know that his face would be emotionless as he listened to the news. Beau never forgave Vi for leaving, even though it wasn’t his place to hold a grudge.
“Fuck. Well, I finally found your fucking aspirin. Here.” I heard the bottle rattle behind me before Beau’s hand was waving wildly in front of my face. “Better to be safe than sorry.”
“Get him out a dose, dipshit. Does it look like he can fucking manage it on his own right now?”
“Right. Christ. This is so fucking weird. Violet’s back, after all this time.” Beau’s laugh held no emotion. “And pregnant. Why the fuck is she back? To rub it in your face?”
“She wouldn’t do that. She was shocked to see me. And she was…”
“What?” Hayes asked.
“She looked sad.”
“You said she’s here alone?” Beau handed me a glass of water, and I drank it down after chucking the aspirin to the back of my throat, nodding.
“Where the fuck is the guy who knocked her up?”
That was the million dollar question.
I growled at the thought. The vibration ricocheted through my body, and I winced from the pain that lingered in my bones.