Chapter 11
Brody
Heath and I hover near the Christmas tree, waiting for Violet. Her gift is here, wrapped in the festive-looking paper that adorned Heath’s fancy-ass instant coffee he always has to buy when we travel.
But Violet isn’t coming down.
Heath and I look at each other.
I start toward her room. “Maybe she’s sleeping in.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“If you say I’m obtuse again”—I hold up my fist—“I will be forced to punch you in the nose. Let’s see if she’s awake.”
He smirks but follows me upstairs to her room.
I knock on the door. “Violet? Are you up?”
“Oh.” Her voice is quiet, and she sounds genuinely surprised. “Um. Yeah.”
“Can we come in?”
“Sure.”
I open the door to find Violet sitting on the edge of her bed, fully dressed. “What’s going on?” I ask gently. “We’ve been waiting to wish you Merry Christmas, and there’s a little gift for you under the tree.”
“She’s leaving.” Heath glowers at the end of her bed, where all of her bags are packed.
I take a step backward. No. She can’t leave. Not early, not like this. “Violet, stay. Please.”
Violet shakes her head. “I should go. I should never have come here. It was stupid of me, and I’m only going to get my heart broken—”
“No one is going to break your heart.” I shove away my panic and turmoil, and sit down next to her. “I don’t know what your dad said to freak you out, but Heath and I—we—”
“We love you.” Heath’s voice carries finality.
I look up at him in surprise. He’s never uttered those words to anyone so soon. It took him almost a year before he said them to Juliette, and I got the impression that he wouldn’t have said them at all if I hadn’t started.
Violet’s also staring at Heath. “You can’t mean that.”
“I do.” He clears his throat. “I know it’s early, but I feel love when I’m with you, Violet. Come downstairs and open your gift, please. If you still want to leave after that…”
He trails off. We’ll have to let her go. It’ll feel like my heart is shredding, but we’ll have to do it.
She stands and we go downstairs together. I might have thought a single gift under the tree looked lonely, but this morning, it feels important, not lonely. This gift says everything our words can’t.
“I didn’t get you anything—” Violet begins.
“That doesn’t matter to us.” Heath sits on the floor in front of the tree, patting the spot next to him. While Violet gets comfortable, I go to the kitchen and bring three mugs of hot cocoa.
Violet sits cross-legged, and I sit on her other side. We each take a sip of cocoa. I feel like we’re starting a new tradition, something we can hopefully do every year.
Next year, hot cocoa under the Christmas tree…and an engagement ring. I’m that serious about her.
I reach under the tree and take out the tiny gift.
“How did you get anything so fast?” She weighs the small package in her hands.
Heath touches her knee. “Open it, angel.”
She unfolds the red and green paper coffee label to reveal a flash drive. Her brows scrunch together as she frowns. “Don’t tell me you recorded everything we did yesterday—”
“No. Never.” I clear my throat and grab my laptop from where I stashed it behind the tree. “Well, not without your permission. Making a home movie with you might be fun sometime.”
Violet plugs the drive into my laptop. A folder pops up.
“Go ahead,” I say.
She opens the folder and sees the video file inside labeled Angel. She shoots me an uncertain look.
“I promise we didn’t film sex with you.” I give her an encouraging smile. “See for yourself.”
She double-clicks the file and it begins to play.
A soft Bastian Crown love song is the soundtrack to a montage of photos that Heath and I took of Violet yesterday—photos where she is fully clothed.
We’ve captured as many emotions and expressions as we could find.
There’s even one where she’s seething after Heath played a “draw four” card right when she was about to win Uno yesterday.
But mostly we have images of her looking thoughtful, happy, excited, uncertain, annoyed, victorious—like when she won Uno. Content. Sleepy.
She’s quiet as she watches the video, taking tentative sips of her cocoa. When it ends, she says, “I didn’t see you take most of these. A couple of times I noticed, but I thought you guys were just messing with your cameras…why did you do this?”
“Because we were looking at you all day.” Heath takes her hand. “We couldn’t look away from you, angel. Every emotion that passed over your face, every expression—we were watching them, cataloging them. Each and every one is precious to us.”
“My dad said—” She shakes her head.
I was worried about Mason killing us, but if he ruined our chances with Violet, he might have to worry about me killing him.
“What did he say?” Heath’s tone is measured, careful. Good thing, because I want to growl and shout.
“He said you’re never serious about anyone.
He said he doesn’t want my heart broken.
” She takes in a big breath. “And Callum didn’t break my heart.
He embarrassed me, sure. He made me doubt my desires.
But my heart wasn’t broken. I think at the end of this week in the cabin with you two, when we go our separate ways? My heart will break then.”
I take her other hand. “Violet. Angel. We don’t want to go our separate ways. We don’t want to leave you—we want to stay together.”
“You—you do? But what about never being serious…?”
“We’ve been serious in the past.” Heath meets my gaze as he speaks.
I don’t want to dredge this up, but Violet probably needs to hear it.
Heath continues, “Our long-term girlfriend left us, this time of year. It was three years ago.”
“We didn’t get serious about anyone since,” I add. “Honestly, we couldn’t trust anyone like we had trusted her. We couldn’t bring ourselves to care enough, either—or maybe we just didn’t meet the right woman.”
“Until you.” Heath kisses her cheek. “If you’ll have us, we’d like to see where this relationship takes us.”
“I—yes.” Violet smiles, her gorgeous lips stretching across her face, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’ll have you.”
I can’t resist—I take her mouth in a soft kiss. She tastes like hot cocoa and sweet marshmallows. She’s going to be our girl, our angel, and we can try out every kinky little thing she wants to try.
When I pull back, Heath turns her to face him. He kisses her just as softly as I did.
“I wish I’d gotten you something,” Violet says on a sigh.
“There’s an entire store’s worth of kink upstairs in your bags.” I point in the direction of her room. “I wouldn’t complain if we get to open up some of those toys.”
She grins. “It’s a plan. Race ya!”
Heath and I give her a head start, but I grab her before she reaches the stairs. I whirl her around in my arms, then back her against the railing for a kiss.
“Mmm,” I kiss her jaw, then back up to her lips. “You taste like chocolate.”
The front door bangs open.
Mason stands, framed by the doorway, a furious expression on his face. “What the fuck is going on here?”