Chapter 27 Can’t let you go
CAN’T LET YOU GO
ROWAN
What is your heart quietly searching for?
ChaosInPurple: For the moment when someone stops feeling like a stranger and starts feeling like home.
For that day when I have someone to whom I belong, and he belongs to me. Not as a possession, but as a choice we make again and again in all the ordinary moments that no one else ever sees.
For someone who stays, because leaving is hard, and staying is what they want.
I think what my heart has always been looking for is the person it was always meant to find.
The treadmill hums beneath my feet, and its steady rhythm fills the quiet of my home gym. My steps fall heavy against the moving belt, and I can’t decide what exactly I’m doing here.
Am I hiding from Violet or hiding from myself?
Guilt presses against my ribs, and alongside it sits the heavier weight of fear—fear of what almost happened and fear of what might still come.
How the fuck did I let things get this close?
I squeeze my eyes shut. The machine keeps dragging me forward even when every part of me wishes I could stop time instead.
Looking back at the past few days, the closeness between Violet and me feels inevitable.
We have been orbiting each other in ways that were bound to collapse into something more eventually.
Every shared silence, every quiet smile across the solarium, every small moment when her hand brushed mine, it all built toward that one instance on the floor where we almost kissed.
But then she mentioned the engagement, and that single word fucking broke me.
I waited too long to tell her the truth of that night.
I had convinced myself that protecting her meant giving her time. But now the choice I made to protect her has created a wedge between us. And I have no idea how to close this distance.
Her face keeps replaying in my mind. The way her eyes softened when she leaned toward me. The way they filled with confusion when I pushed her away. The way her voice broke when she realized I wasn’t going to kiss her.
A kiss she wanted. A kiss she asked for. From me.
For the first time in my life, there’s a girl who loves me, despite my silence and mutism.
She loves me despite every insecurity I have spent years learning to live with.
I know, with a certainty that scares the hell out of me, that no one else could ever love me the way Violet does.
And if she lets me, I will spend the rest of my life proving to her that I love her the same way.
Violet Harper is my person.
She is everything I never allowed myself to hope for. Everything I could have dreamed about if I had been brave enough to believe I deserved it.
But she doesn’t know the whole truth yet.
And until she does, I cannot take anything from her, not even a kiss she freely offered.
I made a promise to protect her, and I intend to keep that promise. Especially when the person I’m protecting is the woman who feels like my soulmate.
The sharp buzz of my phone cuts through the noise of the treadmill. I slow my pace just enough to grab the phone from the console and open the message.
Violet: Hi. I wanted to tell you that I talked to Elodie.
She’s coming to pick me up. I think it’s better if I stay with her for a few days.
I’m really sorry about last night. I crossed a line and misunderstood your care for something else.
Can you please forget what I said and did?
I’m so embarrassed by the way I came onto you.
Her words sit on the screen like something written in a foreign language.
My balance falters. I lunge forward and yank the emergency stop before the machine can throw me off hard enough to break my skull.
My hands are shaking when I read the message again.
She’s leaving. The thought hits me with brutal force.
My house suddenly feels like it’s made of glass—Violet, Echo, and me, three fragile souls trying to hold one another together while the weight of our pasts and fears presses in from every side.
Every day since Violet arrived, I’ve worried about the moment when one of us might crack under that pressure.
But never in my worst imagination did I think we would break apart due to my actions.
She’s leaving because of me.
I storm out of the gym, but I don’t have to go far to find her. She’s walking out of the solarium, carrying blankets I laid out on the couch for her last night.
When she sees me, she hesitates, but before she can say a single word, I’m standing right in front of her.
I don’t let her speak. She didn’t misunderstand anything.
My hands move before my mind can catch up, framing her face the same way they did last night.
And then I kiss her.
For a heartbeat she freezes in shock, but then her fingers clutch the front of my T-shirt, twisting the fabric. I feel the moment she stiffens, as if her body just remembered how I pushed her away only hours ago.
But I’m not letting her go now. In my effort to protect her from the past truth, I never stopped to consider how deeply I might wound her in the present, one she’s rebuilding so carefully.
My mouth moves against hers with an urgency and a burning need to show her how much I love her.
When her tongue briefly touches my lips, I open my mouth, letting her take whatever she needs in order to believe that I want her, that I need her.
Her tongue tangles with mine, searching, and I angle her closer, delving deeper, until she feels me in every corner of that sweet mouth that has made my heart race from the very beginning.
Violet leans into me, and I catch her easily, one arm circling her waist. I draw her closer until there’s no space left between our bodies.
There’s no hiding my cock, thick and insistent, nudging against her stomach, so I don’t even try. I’m done hiding from her. I’m done pretending she doesn’t unravel me in ways no one ever has.
A soft moan escapes her and my grip tightens without thought. Every sweep of my tongue is met with the gentle, curious glide of hers along my lips.
She’s learning me the same way I’m learning her.
Her hands wander from my chest, slipping beneath the hem of my T-shirt until her palms meet the bare skin of my back.
There’s a pause before her nails tentatively drag over my spine and I shiver.
My lungs struggle to keep pace with the sudden rush of heat flooding my body.
I pull back from her mouth only long enough for my lips to find the delicate column of her throat, pressing slow kisses against the soft, warm skin.
Beneath her wandering fingers, my skin feels electric—lit up, alive, hers.
My mind fractures into two possibilities, whether to take her to the privacy of my bedroom or to drag her deeper into the solarium, where the winter light spills through glass walls and everything about this moment would feel dangerously intimate.
But before either thought can take root, a small whimper breaks through the haze between us.
Violet and I pull apart, both of us breathing hard as we turn toward the sound. Echo stands quietly at the threshold of the solarium.
“Rowan,” Violet whispers.
I press a finger to her mouth, the pad of it resting against still-damp lips. I simply look at her, taking in the flush that warms her cheeks, the heavy, hooded softness of her eyes, the way she’s still leaning toward me as if some invisible thread keeps drawing her closer.
My muscles tremble with the aftershock of it all, and selfishly, desperately, I want to stay suspended in this fragile, impossible moment for just a heartbeat longer.
I know she needs answers. God, I know she deserves them. But reaching for my phone means letting go of her, and right now the thought of releasing her from my arms feels almost unbearable.
So I do something I rarely do.
Holding her gaze, I slowly shape the words with my lips, without giving them a sound. “One second, please.”
Violet’s eyes widen slightly as she reads the silent movement of my mouth and nods.
In that one second, I close my eyes.
I just had my first kiss, with the woman who’s my first, and possibly last, love.
My arms tighten around her committing to memory the quiet way she fits against me.
Finally, I bring Violet to the solarium and place her on the couch beside the dying glow of the fireplace.
Violet watches me the entire time as I add fresh logs to the fire. Soon, the quiet crackle of wood fills the room as the flames slowly come back to life.
I go to the door, lift Echo gently, and bring him over, then place him beside Violet. By the time I settle on the couch, her phone is already in her hand.
Rowan: No one is going anywhere.
“Rowan,” she begins softly.
But I once again place my finger lightly against her lips, shaking my head before she can continue.
Rowan: Please listen to me.
Her fingers tighten slightly around the phone as she reads.
Rowan: You think I don’t love you.
I type the words but hesitate before sending them, my thumb hovering over the screen.
God, how badly I want to say them while looking directly into her eyes. But my quiet has already stolen too many chances from us. So I send the message and lift my gaze immediately.
She reads it, and instead of looking back at me, her eyes slowly close.
“Rowan, I didn’t…” The rest of the sentence breaks when tears spill down her cheeks.
I reach forward and gently tip her chin upward. Cradling her face between my hands, I lean forward and press soft kisses to her closed eyelids, catching the tears there before they can fall.
She slowly opens her eyes, her lashes still wet where my kisses caught her tears.
“I swear,” she whispers softly, “I wasn’t blackmailing you or trying to pull a confession out of you with that text.”
The corner of my mouth lifts. I cannot believe, even after everything we’ve just said and done, she’s worried about whether she somehow forced my feelings out of me.
I reach for my phone.
Rowan: You think I don’t know you, after all this time?
My thumbs move again before my courage can fade.
Rowan: I don’t want you to leave. I have spent my whole life not knowing what I was searching for, and then without warning, I found you and I understood. I can’t let you go, Violet. Not tonight. Not like this.
Rowan: I told you before, I’m not above begging when it comes to you.
The moment I send the message, her hand rises slowly, and this time it’s her palm that comes to rest against my cheek.
“I don’t want to go,” she murmurs, her thumb brushing lightly along my jaw. “I don’t want to leave the place that feels like mine.”
The tight knot of fear eases.
Rowan: Then tell Elodie not to come.
Violet lifts her phone, and panic flashes across her face.
“El texted me fifteen minutes ago. She’s already on her way. She’s not supposed to come inside, Rowan. I know you don’t like people in your space. I was supposed to meet her outside with my things.”
Rowan: It’s not that I don’t like people in my place. I’ve just never had people here who mattered, except my family. But now I do. And everyone who is special to you matters to me. Let her come. The three of us can have breakfast together, and then she can leave. Without you.
“Are you sure,” she whispers, her hand gesturing faintly to the small space between us, “about us?”
Rowan: Baby, I’ve never had any doubts about us.
The words, the nickname, should feel strange. But it all comes easily.
Rowan: I wanted you to have more time to be sure.
She shakes her head vigorously. “I don’t need any time. I’m sure about us.” Her hand drifts down and settles into Echo’s fur as the dog presses closer against her side. “About our little family.”
Damn. My entire life has changed in such a short time, and I can’t wait to experience it all.