Chapter 11 A First Second Chance
A FIRST SECOND CHANCE
ROWAN
What’s the sound of your thoughts?
ChaosInPurple: My thoughts sound like thunder from some faraway place. Not the scary kind, I promise.
More like the kind you hear on a summer afternoon when you’re lying on the porch with lemonade and you know a storm might roll in later, but for now it’s just dramatic background music.
My thoughts are never quiet. They rumble and wander.
They build entire conversations that haven’t happened yet. They ask questions no one asked for. They imagine scenarios that probably won’t occur but would make excellent dinner stories if they did.
There’s always something brewing up there.
Sometimes it’s curiosity. Sometimes it’s gossip I swear I’m only analyzing for sociological purposes. Sometimes it’s a love story I’ve written in my head for strangers at the grocery store.
“Do you think we can start talking online again?” she asks softly. “Or does that change now that… we know each other? Or at least you do?”
The question is layered with the fear she seems to be trying very hard to keep from spilling over. Violet, small, pale, swallowed by the white hospital gown and cotton sheets, shifts restlessly, like she’s afraid to stay still.
Without thinking, I place my hand on her arm, grounding her and grounding myself. The second my palm meets hers, she looks up.
Those big brown eyes strip the air from my lungs, cut straight through the armor I’ve spent years perfecting, and for a terrifying second it feels like she sees everything.
My guilt of not walking into that restaurant. My fear of losing her once two days back and then again now. My want of a life we discussed in our chats.
I pull my hand back, slower than I should, and she immediately curls in on herself, shivering beneath the blanket.
God. I hate that I have to do that. I type quickly.
You don’t have to worry about that. We’ll just pick up where we left off two days ago. If that’s okay with you.
I watch her read, my pulse pounding hard. When her lips finally curve upward, just a little, something inside me expands. Winning billion-dollar deals have never felt like this.
“I’d like that very much.”
Pride at making her smile surges through me, and for a moment I forget where we are, the machines, the fear, the fact that two days ago I lost her without ever really having her.
Then she looks away, eyes drifting toward the window, and I see the worry creeping back in, slow and insidious.
“I’m glad they didn’t close the curtains,” she murmurs, nodding toward the hallway bench, the one that’s been my home for the last two days.
I’m so fucking grateful now that I didn’t leave the hospital. She reached for me for comfort without even knowing who I was or why I was there. I want to believe that some part of her already knew I belonged to her.
It makes me want to send FYS the biggest gift basket money can buy, the one Violet always joked about, because isn’t it what true soulmates would do, gravitate toward each other even in the dark?
Her seeking me out, proving again that she’s mine.
Her lip trembles as she bites it, the nervous act making her look heartbreakingly lost. “I really want to move forward. I’m scared that if I keep looking back and my memory never returns, then I won’t just lose my past. I’ll lose my future too.”
I wish I could type faster. The thought of her believing she’s alone in this makes a feral panic claw its way up my spine.
You won’t lose anything, Purple. You have people who love you. People who won’t let you miss a single piece of yourself. Not your past. Not your future.
She studies my face, eyes lifting through her lashes. “Are you one of those people?”
Every instinct in me screams to grab her, to hold her close and swear I’ll be everything she needs. I want to gather her in my arms and drive her to my cabin, place her on the couch. I want to wrap her with the soft lavender fleece blanket Mom got me last Christmas.
I want to keep her safe. I want to protect her from anything bad happening ever again.
One time was fucking enough.
I want to be the person she needs right now. God, I so fucking want it, and I type the truth.
I want to be. If you’ll let me.
She gives me a soft smile after reading my words. I can’t fucking believe that she’s here in front of me, smiling, as if communicating through a phone instead of with spoken words isn’t an obstacle but simply us.
She lowers her gaze to her hand and wiggles her fingers. “Do you know where my ring is?”
I immediately know she’s asking about her grandmother’s ring. The symbol of how serious she was, of how serious we were.
It should be with your stuff. Want me to ask the nurses?
She nods.
I’ll be right back.
Walking out of that room feels like stepping away from oxygen, but I force myself to breathe.
I reach the nurse’s station and exhale with relief at a familiar face. Three days in this place and a few of the nurses already know me and my phone by now. So when I slide my screen toward her with my typed request, asking for Violet’s belongings, there’s no surprise in her expression.
She reaches beneath the counter and hands me a handbag first.
It’s covered in tiny, handmade butterflies, dozens of them dangling softly against one another.
It is so Violet, so Purple, so whimsical and unapologetically her.
Her phone comes next, broken beyond repair. The screen is spiderwebbed, glass splintered and caving inward, the case warped and scarred. The sight is painful. A reminder of how hard her car must have been hit.
Without thinking, I text Archer.
Rowan: Can you get a new phone delivered to the hospital?
Archer: Already on it.
Archer: How is she? Did you talk to her?
My brother left yesterday morning, once it was clear Violet was physically out of danger, even if her mind, her memories, her sense of self, were still scattered.
Rowan: I talked to her today.
Archer: How did it go?
Rowan: Better than I expected.
I can still see the way her eyes lit up when she looked at me. She didn’t recoil or stiffen or search for pity in my silence.
She called me her lighthouse, like I was something solid and safe and not the man who’s one step away from running the moment someone needs more than he can give.
She didn’t flinch at the idea of dating me. If anything, she seemed… pleasantly shocked.
Rowan: She said she wants to focus on the future and not live in constant fear of a past she can’t remember.
Archer: That makes sense. Who the hell knows how terrifying this must be for her right now.
Rowan: I know. But I think when she says “future,” she means me.
I press my fingers to my closed eyes, exhaustion and hope tangling so tightly it hurts.
Archer: Is that not what you expected when you were getting ready for your first date?
Rowan: I didn’t let myself think that far. My imagination stopped at whether Purple would accept me as I am or be repulsed by my mutism. I didn’t dare look beyond that.
The silence on his end doesn’t surprise me.
Archer has always known my insecurities, but this is the first time I’ve handed them to him unfiltered.
Pride doesn’t matter right now. Violet is counting on me, and I refuse to let my fear fail her again, or worse, come in the way of her healing.
Archer: What the fuck, Ro? Why would anyone be repulsed by you? Are you blind? Have you not seen how people, especially women, look at you? You’re handsome, intelligent, and you run one of the most successful media empires in the country. Your silence is just one part of you. It doesn’t define you.
I can practically feel his anger vibrating through the screen.
Rowan: I didn’t mean repulsed, exactly.
I did, though.
Rowan: But not being able to speak isn’t a small thing, Arch.
Archer: But it didn’t bother her. Right?
That’s the part that terrifies me most.
What if she feels close to me since, right now, we’re both broken in different ways?
What if this connection only exists in the space where fear and loss overlap?
But the moment her memories return, the moment she’s no longer vulnerable and searching, she realizes my silence is too much to live with?
Will I survive losing her after finally understanding what my life could have been?
The thought is heavy and aching, and for the first time since meeting her, the future I want feels just as frightening as it does beautiful.
I head back down the hallway toward Violet’s room.
Eavesdropping has never been my thing. I guard my privacy like it’s oxygen, and I’d never intentionally violate someone else’s.
Still, the universe clearly has a twisted sense of timing.
The door to her room is wide open and their voices carry, echoing down the corridor as if they’re looking for me.
“We’d planned to get engaged two days ago.” Violet’s voice is heartbreakingly clear. “If the accident hadn’t happened… he would’ve been my fiancé. I’d carried my grandmother’s ring to the date.”
My body reacts before my brain does, my steps slowing as if my muscles are bracing me from the inside out.
Fiancé.
“Vi, but that was your first date. You hadn’t even met him in person. We literally joked he could be a kidnapper or a murderer, with that dark username.”
Elodie’s words aren’t cruel, just cautious. Still, they dig in deep.
“But we did know each other. We talked for months, didn’t we?” Uncertainty threads through every syllable as Violet’s voice shrinks.
“You were talking,” Willow says carefully. “But talking online and knowing someone in person aren’t the same thing.”
My jaw clenches.
I hate that they’re trying to protect her while unknowingly unraveling her confidence at the same time.
I hate that I’m an invisible variable in a conversation that is deciding my fate.
“Did I ever say I didn’t like him? That I had doubts about him?” Violet presses. “Did I ever say he felt fake or insincere or… just wrong?”