Chapter 27
Violet
I flipped the calendar on my wall over to August. I couldn’t believe another month had flown by so quickly. My son would soon be four months old. The following month would mark one year since my life fell apart.
It felt like only moments ago I was happily married to the love of my life, and a lifetime ago all at once.
I missed Ridge, the man I was married to before.
The one who came and played Daddy all day was wonderful, but I missed the man who used to be my husband.
The man who came to my apartment every day was too careful; he walked on eggshells around me like I might break - or he might accidentally be the one to break me again. I hated it.
Two months ago, I finally got to ask my mom why everyone was so angry with her.
She sat me down and told me what she did.
The whole reason Ridge hadn’t contacted me was because my mom told him I didn’t want him to.
Mom explained that she would let him know whenever I changed my mind, but that I didn’t want to hear from him until then.
She made it seem like if he didn’t honor my request things would get ugly, and they’d already been ugly enough for me up to that point.
It was awful. I couldn’t even look at my mother when she was done telling me.
Mom begged me to forgive her. She claimed that she thought it was the right thing to do, but I didn’t see it that way.
So much time had been lost as a result. Time when Ridge and I might have saved our marriage before it was signed away in a divorce.
Time where we might have been in a place for me to share my pregnancy with him and where Fiona wouldn’t have had an opening to step in and manipulate my husband - ex-husband.
It was getting harder and harder to think of him as my ex.
Maybe that was the reason I lost my mind earlier that day and agreed to go on a date with Justin Archer.
I knew him from a party I planned for his mother two years before.
He was my age and had hit on me then, but I had been very adamant with the man that I was a married woman and took my vows seriously.
Not that he had pushed for anything once he realized I was taken.
Still, I didn’t know what came over me or made me agree to the date. I wasn’t even particularly interested in the man. “DD, help me pick something out,” I whisper-yelled across the room so I wouldn’t wake up my son.
“I don’t want to,” my best friend pouted.
“Why the hell not? Didn’t you say it was about time I started living again? You told me I needed to come to terms with what my future might look like. How am I supposed to do that if I haven’t even attempted to move on yet?”
“Yes, but I didn’t mean going out on dates with strange men.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “Then what did you mean? Moving on and figuring my life out kind of entails my love life, too, don’t you think?”
“Are you seriously going to date another man?”
“I’m not dating anyone else, DD.”
“Come on, Vi. You spend every day with your ex-husband.”
“My ex-husband is the key part there. He is here for Liam, not me.”
“Funny, those fresh roses on the kitchen island seem to say otherwise.”
“He was being nice because I’m the mother of his child.”
“Keep telling yourself that, and I’ll keep telling myself that the next guy I date will be the one.” Duri rolled her eyes.
“Well, I guess you never know. I’ll be a lovely matron of honor at your wedding.”
Duri laughed at me. “See, you even still think of yourself as a married woman.”
Heat suffused my cheeks as I realized what I said. “Maid of Honor,” I corrected.
DD shook her head at me and refused to meet my eyes. “I think this is a mistake,” she whispered.
“Well, the only way I’ll know that is if I try.”
“You love Ridge,” she argued.
“I do and I always will, DD. We are divorced, though. Things are not the same. We’re more friends now than anything.”
“How can you say that?”
“He hasn’t even brought up the possibility of us getting back together.”
“Maybe he’s waiting on you to do it, since you’re the one who walked away. Did you ever think about that?”
I groaned in frustration. “Do I need to get my dad to come watch Liam for me?” I asked out of anger.
“Of course not. I told you I would babysit, and I meant it.”
We were just over a month away from what would have been mine and Ridge’s eleventh anniversary together, and our tenth wedding anniversary.
It should have been a huge celebration for us.
Instead, we were coparents to our son and mostly friendly.
It was the reason I said yes to the date with Justin.
I needed to move on, or those memories would always swamp me when I least expected them.
Justin was an absolute gentleman when he picked me up. He held the door for me, walked me to the table with a hand placed firmly at my lower back. He pulled out my chair and waited until I was comfortable before he seated himself. He looked handsome in his tan suit and brown loafers.
“Thank you for tonight,” I murmured.
“I couldn’t believe my luck when I ran into you and you agreed to a date. I wanted this years ago, if you recall.”
“I remember.”
“I’m sorry that my chance means something went wrong with your marriage.” I could tell by the slight smirk on his face that he knew exactly what had gone wrong, or at least the seedy public opinion side of it.
Ridge’s lawyer had released the tapes, so everyone knew what really happened to my husband. Some of them seemed to think that my husband wasn’t really drugged and just played along so he could maintain innocence when his affair was discovered. It made me wonder if Justin was one of those people.
Worse, the whole debacle forced me to question if I could truly trust a man again.
If he smirked like that about what I went through, what did that say about his thought process?
About his intent with me? I wanted to throw in the towel then and there, but figured I was already out, so I might as well see the date through to the end and then politely decline anything further with the man.
Before we could even order our food, the air shifted in the restaurant and a moment later, my very angry ex-husband stormed in and stared me down until he managed to get to the table I shared with another man.
Shit.
"I never stopped being in love with you. You are my world. You and our son. I fucked up when I thought you didn't feel the same. Even then, my only intent was to get drunk and forget all the ugly things I thought might be happening. I allowed my anger and hurt to get the better of me, and that put me in a horrible position that someone else took advantage of. But Violet, if you do this, it makes everything final. We can't come back from what she put us through if we never try. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to give her that win or lose one more thing because of what she did to me.”
My heart felt as though he had just stabbed through it with one of the steak knives laid out on the table.
He was right that Fiona had taken enough from both of us.
I knew enough to understand that my husband made a mistake.
It turned out to be a huge one because he never saw it coming.
He never intended to cheat and didn’t keep it all from me because he had an agenda.
It was all honestly because he didn’t want to have to sift through more temporary employees to find one who would eventually stick.
I understood that.
It was hard to look past that one tiny mistake when a world of hurt piled up around us afterward as a result.
“Ridge,” I whispered his name reverently. My date, Justin, stood up and threw his napkin down on the table which distracted both of us for a moment. Only a teeny tiny minute, though, before my ex-husband quickly seated himself in my date’s chair and grinned over at me.
I rolled my eyes. “That was rude.”
“Going out on a date with another man was rude, Vi.”
“I needed a distraction,” I admitted. As we bantered back and forth, Justin stormed off in a huff.
“From what?” Ridge asked as he ignored the other man’s retreat.
“My life. Our friendship. The fact that our marriage has been over for nearly a year, the up-coming anniversary of how everything fell apart. I needed a chance to do something that didn’t require thinking.”
“Well, that last part was obvious.” Ridge’s eyes tracked over to where my date stomped out of the restaurant and took off. In the car that brought me here. Damn, I’d been abandoned by my date, and he didn’t even wait to see if I was okay with my ex tracking me down. What a dickhead.
“Yeah, well, I guess life has turned me into a shitty judge of character.” I sighed and turned my attention back to Ridge as he spoke.
“You weren’t bad at it when we met.”
“You’re right, I wasn’t,” I agreed. Ridge reached over and grabbed my hand. I stared at the way he engulfed mine as the warmth of his body soaked into my skin. I missed him. I missed his touch. His presence in the way that used to be mine and only mine. I missed my husband.
“We can’t keep tiptoeing around what happened, my sweet flower.”
My heart lurched forward. The damn thing tried to escape my chest, and jump into his, as the old endearment flowed off his tongue like liquid bliss injected straight into my veins.
“I won’t lie and say I don’t want you back. That has always been my goal.”
“Then why haven’t you said that?” I argued.
“I was waiting for you to trust me again.”
That took the wind right out of my sails.
If I was honest, trust wasn’t an issue between us.
I knew that if Ridge said he was going to show up, he would be there barring an emergency.
If I called, he would come. If I needed something, he would provide.
I knew those things in the same way I knew how to breathe.
It was effortless, natural, and unquestioning.