Chapter 27 Violet
VIOLET
Sunlight streams through the curtained windows, and I wake up slowly. I feel warm and comfortable, taking my time with shaking off the haze of sleep. When I’m coherent enough, I open my eyes and stretch, wincing when a jolt of pain wakes me up all the way.
I feel sore in places I didn’t know I could be sore—worn out, but satisfied.
Memories from last night come back to me as I lie there, and I can’t help but smile.
It was amazing. Filthy, to be sure, but incredible.
Better than any fantasy I’ve ever had before.
Partly because I was never daring enough to imagine all three of the guys sharing me like that.
I wouldn’t have thought it was possible before last night, so it never seemed like something to even think about.
Even though they told the world basically that all three of them were dating me, I never believed they would actually want to share me in real life.
But here we are. Me, sore and happy in the morning with the three of them.
I move around a bit, shifting in place. Since my bed was broken, we all ended up camping out in the living room, making a big pile of blankets and pillows in the middle of the floor.
It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it’s nice. Cozy, in a way. There’s residual heat from the fireplace, and from the three bodies under the blankets with me.
When I turn onto my side, I can see that Rhett is awake too. His eyes are open and he looks like he’s drifting on a sea of his own thoughts. Lennox and Sawyer are still asleep, snoring softly, and I smile at Rhett when he looks at me.
Tentatively, he smiles back. It’s just a little thing, his lips quirking up at the corners, but it makes me feel even warmer.
“I’m surprised you weren’t up with the sun,” I say, teasing a little.
“Is that what you think I do?” he asks, whispering back.
I laugh, shrugging. “I don’t know. That’s what mountain men do on TV. Get up and go forage for breakfast and all that. I am surprised you’re not off chopping wood again, though. That’s what you did last time, and last night was definitely… a lot.”
That’s a way to put it, but it doesn’t seem to encompass everything that happened. I don’t know a word or a phrase for that so ‘a lot’ is going to have to do for now.
“It was,” Rhett agrees. Something thoughtful passes over his face. “But I was comfortable right where I was when I woke up. So I stayed put.”
My heart flutters a little, and my smile only grows. It’s a soft, vulnerable thing to say, especially coming from Rhett. I have no idea what last night’s events mean, for any of us, but the way he’s looking at me warms me from the inside out.
He seems peaceful in a way he hasn’t in a long time, and it feels amazing to know that I have any part to play in that.
“Hold on a second,” I tell him. I move carefully—because I’m still so sore and because I don’t want to wake up the others just yet—slipping out of the covers and padding across the house to my bedroom.
I pull a small bag out of my drawer and then bring it back to the living room, scooting down until I can claim my warm spot in the blankets again.
Rhett watches me curiously, and I smile and hand over the cloth bag. He tips the contents into his hand and ends up holding a leather bracelet. It’s made of a soft, dark brown leather, and there’s a medallion in the center, made of intricately carved wood.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“A bracelet,” I say, grinning when he shoots me a look. I laugh softly and shrug. “I don’t know, I thought it would fit your lumberjack style. It seemed perfect for you when I saw it.”
There’s a soft look on his face, and his fingers caress the leather gently. He traces the carvings in the wood, and I watch him, pleased that he seems to like it.
He clasps it around his wrist—a perfect fit. “See?” I say. “It suits you so well.”
“It does,” he agrees. “Thank you.” Then he reaches out to palm the back of my head, pulling me in so he can kiss me.
Where his kisses last night were heated and rough around the edges, this one is softer and slower. A languid morning kiss that thrills me to my toes.
Something about that makes the other two wake up, and I can hear them talking sleepily as Rhett kisses me. When he finally lets me go, it’s only a matter of seconds before I’m being pulled into Lennox’s arms.
“Good morning,” he murmurs, tucking hair behind my ear before he goes in for a kiss of his own.
Sawyer has his turn next, and I feel like I’m floating on a cloud of warm contentment by the time he lets me go.
And then I shift and end up hissing in pain when another jolt of that soreness makes itself known.
“You okay?” Sawyer asks.
I give him a look. “Oh yeah, just my body being unimpressed with all the exercise last night.”
He snorts. “You seemed pretty impressed last night.”
“Did we hurt you?” Lennox wants to know.
I shake my head. “No, it’s just… it’s been a while since I had sex, period, and last night was…”
“A lot,” Rhett supplies.
“In a good way,” I rush to add. “In a really good way. But now I’m paying for it because I didn’t even know I could be sore like this.”
The guys are sympathetic to my pain, but it’s also very clear they’re feeling some kind of manly pride over it. I poke Lennox in the side about it, giving him a frown.
“Sorry,” he says with a guilty grin. “But there is something nice about knowing that you’re going to be thinking of us with every step today.”
“Mm, yeah,” Sawyer agrees. “I like that a lot. You won’t be able to forget the way we wore you out last night.”
My sore pussy clenches at his words, making me moan in both arousal and slight pain. I shoot him a mock stern look, even though I’m sure my flushed face and grin undercut the seriousness of my expression. “As if you won’t be thinking about it too.”
“Oh, we will,” Rhett puts in with a rough chuckle. “We definitely will.”
Since it’s my day off today, there’s no rush to get up.
The guys seem to be in a similarly unhurried mood, and we take our time getting up and getting started for the day.
Lennox disappears into the shower, and Rhett goes to argue with the coffee maker, even though I’ve told him it’s better to let me do it.
Sawyer rolls to his feet, stretching his arms overhead, and I shamelessly ogle him, taking in his strong lines and delicious muscles. He catches me looking and winks, flexing a little to make me laugh.
There’s the sound of a phone dinging somewhere in the pile of clothes, and he digs out his phone from his pocket. He grins and his eyes flash up to me. “Get dressed and then come with me,” he says.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Ominous,” I tease, but get up and go wait for my turn in the shower. There’s no way I can go out in public smelling like all kinds of sex and carrying on.
Once I’m clean and dressed, I meet Sawyer by his truck, and climb into the passenger seat.
“So you’re really not going to give me a hint about where we’re going?” I ask.
He fiddles with the GPS on his phone, turning the screen so I can’t see it. “Nope. Not a clue. You’re just going to have to let yourself be surprised, Peaches. You trust me, don’t you?”
I nod because of course I do. Even before all of this, I would have said I trusted him, and the last few days have only cemented that.
“Good,” he replies. We drive in silence for several minutes, watching the snow covered trees whip past the window as we leave Sweetwater Lake and get onto the interstate, heading for the city.
There’s some cheesy Christmas mix on the radio, and Sawyer taps his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat as he drives.
Eventually, he breaks the silence, looking over at me. “Thanks, by the way. For last night.”
I flush immediately, plunged into a sense memory of hands and mouths and that delightful mix of pleasure and pain. I shiver, swallowing hard as my body tries to react. “I think I should be thanking you,” I murmur.
He laughs, shaking his head. When I look at him, there’s heat in his eyes that lets me know he’s thinking of everything that happened too. “I don’t mean the sex,” he says. He pauses, then adds, “Well, not just the sex, anyway. Mostly, I mean… thanks for making me and my brothers talk.”
“Oh. You’re welcome. I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten. Or why.”
He nods. “Yeah. Clearly, we needed to have it out, without all the barbs and trying to get under each other’s skin, but we just never did.
It was easier to just hold on to the bad feelings and assume the worst about each other’s intentions.
And the fucked up thing is, I don’t even think we realized we were doing it.
I know I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to just assume that Lennox felt a certain way.
It just… happened.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, the point is, we needed someone to force us to see what was actually going on, and I’m grateful it was you. You’re pretty fucking amazing.”
I can’t help the smile that spreads over my face to hear that. “I’m glad I could help,” I murmur back. “And I’m glad it seems like you’re all getting along better.”
“It’s thanks to you.”
“I’m sure you would have found your way back together eventually.”
“Maybe,” Sawyer allows. “But it would have taken a lot longer. And things probably would have gotten worse before then. So we owe you.”
We end up in the next town over, and Sawyer parks outside a shop that looks shiny and expensive. It’s one of those fancy home goods stores, where everything is made from dark woods and gilded metals and costs more than I make in a month.
“What are we doing here?” I ask him, looking around in awe as we step inside.
“You’re not very good with surprises, are you?” he asks, teasing. “Give it a minute.”
A sales lady comes over, dressed in a crisp blazer and slacks. “Can I help you two?” she asks.
“I have an order to pick up,” Sawyer says. “Last name Sullivan.”
She consults her tablet and then smiles. “Sawyer? I see your order here, give me a second to go grab it.”
“What did you order?” I ask, unable to stop asking questions.
He just smiles and leads me over to one of the displays.
On it is one of those fancy coffee machines that I’ve dreamed about.
It does espresso and steams and froths milk, and can handle pods as well as brew big pots.
It’s a gorgeous, shiny stainless steel thing, and my eyes are as wide as saucers as I look up at Sawyer.
“You didn’t,” I gasp.
“I did,” he says.
“Sawyer! This thing costs a fortune.”
“And it should last you for years. Think of it as an investment. You need coffee to function, and your shitty coffee maker was going to crap out on you before the new year.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. I just feel touched, warm all the way through. Especially knowing that he had to have placed this order days ago, before we all slept together. He just did it because he wanted to do something nice for me, and it’s a very sweet gesture.
“Don’t do that thing where you think you can’t accept it,” he says, giving me a look. “Or I’ll just take it and put it in your house anyway.”
“I wasn’t going to do that thing,” I assure him. “I’m just… it’s so nice of you. Thank you. Really.”
He reaches up and tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering just a little. “You’re welcome. It’s fun to do nice things for sweet people who deserve them. And you deserve all the nice things, Peaches. Trust me.”
There’s warmth in his eyes as he looks at me, and we just smile at each other for a long moment until the sales lady comes back with a large box on a dolly. She helps us get it outside and Sawyer loads it into the cab of his truck.
Once we’re back in the truck ourselves, driving back to Sweetwater Lake to head back to my house, I keep turning my head to look at the box in the back seat. A sort of giddy excitement fills me, and my mind races with ideas for all the drinks I want to try.
“You’re like a kid at Christmas,” Sawyer teases me. “Am I going to get to try some of your creations?”
“Of course. I have to make you drinks as a thank you.” It’s been a long time since I’ve had something like this to be excited over, and it feels good.
Finally, I turn back around and settle into my seat.
His comment about Christmas reminds me that we’re getting close to it.
Close to the holiday and to Isabelle and Andrew’s wedding.
Once we’re past that, Sawyer will be leaving, along with his other two brothers, going back to their lives—away from here.
“Do you know where you’re heading next?” I ask him.
“Once everything’s over here?” Unlike Lennox and Rhett, Sawyer doesn’t have one specific home to go back to.
Thinking about him leaving puts a pit in my stomach.
I’m going to miss him. Even more so now than I did the first time he left Sweetwater Lake for good.
“Not sure yet,” he replies, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
“I don’t usually make a plan for it. I just wait until I get the itch to go somewhere and then I see where I end up.
Sometimes it’s as simple as seeing where flights are the cheapest. Sometimes I’ll see an ad for a place on TV and just decide to go there. The spontaneity is part of the point.”
I nod. “Makes sense.”
Either he hears something in my voice—despite my efforts to sound neutral and unbothered—or it’s just good timing, because he looks over at me while I’m looking wistfully out of the windshield. I glance over at him, and there’s a look I can’t read in his eyes.
“Right now I like where I am quite a bit though. I’m not in a hurry to leave.”
My cheeks flush almost on cue, and I duck my head to hide a smile. “You charmer. I bet you have a swooning fan club from here to the Grand Canyon. You probably say that to all the girls in the towns you stop in.”
He laughs but shakes his head, something serious glinting in his eyes. “Nah. Just you.”
My heart stutters at the way he says it, his tone simple and straightforward, as if it doesn’t take a second of thought. I’m not quite sure what to say in response, so I gaze out the windshield instead, trying to tame the butterflies flapping wildly in my stomach.