2. Violet
VIOLET
Leo has both hands in a bowl of dry cereal when the knock comes.
Not a polite knock. Not a neighbor knock. Four hits, knuckle-hard.
Camilla looks up from the couch where she’s nursing the baby. Her eyebrows lift. “Expecting anyone?”
I’m not expecting anyone. I’m sitting on my best friend’s living room floor, surrounded by fruit snacks and toys.
And this is my life since it all fell apart last month.
Living paycheck to paycheck doesn’t leave room for any unexpected catastrophes.
A month ago, Leo had a fever that wouldn’t break.
Two nights of him screaming and soaking through his pajamas, and me losing sleep, holding a cold washcloth to my poor toddler’s head.
I missed two shifts. Then three. On the fourth day, Leo was better, but I still couldn’t send him to daycare.
My manager called. They’d filled my position.
They needed someone reliable. Like I chose this.
Like I woke up and decided to let my kid get sick for fun.
With no money coming in, I couldn’t pay rent. And thankfully, Camilla took us in so that I could get back on my feet.
The knock comes again.
I get up, step over Leo’s scattered blocks, and open the door.
Duke.
He fills the doorframe. His body and his presence have always filled every room he walks into, and our time apart hasn’t changed that.
He’s six-foot-one, and his white T-shirt pulls tight across his shoulders under the leather cut.
Hellborn Kings on the back, Treasurer on the front.
Black ink covering both arms from wrist to bicep.
Brown hair is swept off his forehead, and it’s a little longer than he used to wear it.
Beard trimmed close along his perfectly defined jaw.
He looks exactly the same. He looks better. I hate that.
And those eyes.
Clear, pale, knock-the-air-out-of-you blue.
The same blue Leo has.
My son is ten feet behind me, sitting on a blanket, stuffing fruit snacks into his mouth. His father is standing in the doorway. Neither of them has any idea.
Duke meets my eyes. “Violet.”
“How did you know I was here?”
He doesn’t answer that. Of course he doesn’t. This is Ash Valley. This is Hellborn Kings territory. He probably knew where I was before I unpacked the car.
“Have you eaten today?”
The question catches me off guard. “What?”
“Food, Violet. Have you eaten?”
I have eaten, but not much. I had half a granola bar at six a.m. But Duke doesn’t need to know that.
“I’m fine.”
His mouth does a thing. A small, controlled movement. Biting down on every response he wants to give and swallowing them whole. He looks past me into the living room.
Camilla’s house is small. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen that opens to the living room, with no wall between them.
The baby is just weeks old. Bottles are drying on a towel on the counter, a basket of laundry is on the recliner that hasn’t been folded in days, and my suitcase is open against the far wall with Leo’s clothes spilling out of it.
“Hey, Duke.” Camilla shifts the baby to her other arm. “You want to come in?”
He steps inside. The room shrinks.
Leo looks up. He stares at Duke with huge blue eyes and holds up a fistful of fruit snacks.
“Hi,” Leo says. “Want fruit snacks?”
Duke crouches. Leather creaks. He’s enormous next to my son, this man built for bar fights and desert highways, and he takes a single fruit snack from Leo’s open palm. “Thanks, buddy.”
Leo grins. The same grin Duke used to give me across the pillow at four a.m. when neither of us could sleep and he’d say dry, stupid things until I laughed so hard my stomach ached.
I have to look away.
“Camilla.” Duke stands. “How’s the baby?”
“Perfect. Fat and cranky, like his dad.” She tips her head toward the kitchen. “Coffee’s on if you want some.”
“I’m good.” He turns to me. “You said you’re leaving in a few days?”
Ugh. I don’t want to tell him what’s really going on. “Plans changed.”
“How long until you’re gone?” he asks.
I don’t answer.
Camilla, bless her, tries to help. “She’s going to stay with us until she’s on her feet again. Leo was sick for a week, and she lost her job over the missed shifts. She’ll find a new one. We’ll figure it out.”
The room goes very quiet.
Duke’s eyes move from Camilla to the suitcase against the wall. To Leo, who has ditched the fruit snacks and is running a toy truck across the coffee table. Then to me.
“You lost your job.”
“I got fired.” I say it flat. If I put anything on it, anger or shame or the hot sting that climbs my throat every time I think about it, I will fall apart in front of him, and I will not do that. “Leo had the flu. I couldn’t go to work.”
“Where were you working?”
I sigh. “Does it matter?”
“It matters.”
“Billing office. Medical group in Tucson.” My chin lifts. “It’s fine. I’ll find another job.”
“And now you’re sleeping on Camilla’s floor with a kid?”
“Couch,” Camilla corrects gently.
Duke looks at the couch. It’s a loveseat—five feet long, max.
A door opens down the hallway. Camilla’s husband, Tom, comes out in gym shorts and a T-shirt, hair still damp.
He stops when he sees Duke. They know each other.
Everyone in Ash Valley knows the Kings. The recognition is instant, followed by the specific discomfort of a civilian standing in his own living room with a patched outlaw MC member taking up space.
“Hey,” Tom says.
Duke nods.
Tom looks at Camilla. Looks at the suitcase. Looks at Leo, who is now trying to eat a block. “Babe, I need to talk to you for a sec.”
They disappear down the hallway. The murmur carries. Not what he’s saying, but the shape of it. I know the conversation. Having me there while they have a newborn is too much.
He’s not wrong. And he’s not cruel about it.
The apology was there before he even opened his mouth.
But the math is the math. Two bedrooms. A newborn.
A toddler who doesn’t sleep through the night either.
Camilla would let me stay forever, but her husband has a limit, and I can’t blame him for that.
But I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t have a family. I’ve been alone since I was sixteen, and I ran away from my foster family.
Duke is watching me. “I have a house.”
“No.”
“Four bedrooms. Sits on a couple of acres outside town. It’s quiet. Fenced yard.”
I shake my head. “Absolutely not.”
“Two of those bedrooms have been empty since I bought the place.” He puts his hands in his pockets. Casual. “Leo can have his own room.”
“Duke, I am not moving into your house.”
“It’s not moving in. It’s a place to stay until you sort out a job and get on your feet.” He pulls one hand free, runs it over his jaw. “The house is clean. I’m gone twelve hours a day. You won’t even know I’m there.”
Yes, I will.
I will know he is there every second. I loved him when I left, and I love him now.
But he never loved me.
He enjoyed spending time with me. And he definitely enjoyed fucking me.
Two years I spent in his bed. Two years of him coming home to me every night, and not once did he say the word future. Not once did he talk about what we were building or where it was going. I didn’t need a ring. I needed a sentence. One sentence that told me he saw past next week.
When the pregnancy test came back positive, I sat on the bathroom floor for an hour trying to decide what to do.
Would he step up? Would he want this?
And even if he did, what did that look like? Raising a baby in a clubhouse? My kid would learn to walk in a bar that smelled of whiskey and motor oil, surrounded by men who carried guns and solved problems with their fists.
So I left. And I told myself I was protecting my son. And I have been telling myself that every day since, and it gets less convincing every time.
“Camilla’s fine with us being here.”
“Camilla has a newborn,” Duke tells me, as if I don’t know this. “Her husband is about to walk out here and say something polite about space. And then you’re not going to have anywhere to go.”
My throat tightens. He knows I don’t have any family or anybody else who will take us in.
Leo runs over and plants himself in front of Duke, one hand on Duke’s knee, chin tipped all the way back to see his face. “You’re big,” Leo says.
Duke crouches. They’re eye to eye now.
Brown hair. Blue eyes. The birthmark on Leo’s left hand that I have stared at a thousand times in the dark, tracing it with my thumb while he slept, thinking about the identical one on his father’s skin.
But Duke isn’t paying attention to that, thankfully.
“Your kid needs a room, Violet.”
Camilla returns. Her face is embarrassed and apologetic, and she is trying to hide both. “Vi, you know I want you to stay as long as you need to.”
“Violet is coming to stay with me,” Duke says.
Camilla’s eyebrows go up. She looks at me.
I open my mouth to say no. The word is right there, loaded and ready.
Saying no is a luxury I can’t afford. Not anymore.
“Temporarily.” I exhale, resigning myself to this fate. “He has a spare room,” I add, because Camilla’s face is doing a thing and I need her to stop.
“Two spare rooms,” Duke says.
Camilla looks at Duke, then she looks at me. Looks at Duke again. “You’ll take care of her?”
“That’s not what this is,” I say.
“Yes,” Duke says at the same time.
I look at the floor.
Duke is already pulling his keys from his pocket.
“A week,” I say, harder than I mean to. “Two, tops. Until I find a job and a place.”
“As long as you need to stay,” Duke replies.
“And I’m paying rent.”
“No, you’re not.” He’s already walking toward my suitcase. “You can follow me out.”
He’s already at the suitcase, pushing the clothes in and zipping it closed before I can say a word. “Anything else in the house?”
I glance around the room. “Just the pack-and-play and Leo’s toys.”
He picks up the suitcase and jerks his head toward the door. “Then let’s go. Grab Leo’s toys. I’ll take the suitcase and come back in for the pack-and-play.”
Leo is at his feet in a second, arms up. “Carry me.”
Duke looks at me. I don’t say anything. He shifts the suitcase to one hand and scoops Leo onto his hip with the other, and my son puts both hands on Duke’s face and grins at him from inches away.
Duke smiles back.
My heart does something I’m not ready for. Duke has missed out on two years and five months of Leo’s life. I’m such an asshole, even though I know it was the right thing to do.
Duke carries them both out the front door. The screen slaps shut behind him.
Camilla grabs my arm. “Vi, are you sure about this?”
I close my eyes for a few seconds. “No.”
She gives me a comforting squeeze. “You don’t have to go with him. We’ll figure it out. I don’t care what Tom says.”
“Your husband is right. You have a newborn, Camilla. You don’t need us here.”
She pulls me in with her free arm, the baby warm between us. “You call me if you need anything. I mean it.”
“I know.”
“And if he tries anything?—”
“He won’t.” I say it fast. Too fast. She catches it, and I see the question forming, but I’m already grabbing Leo’s toys. “He’s not like that. He never was.”
She follows me to the door. “You still love him.”
I don’t answer. I pull on my shoes and walk out into the sun.
Duke is by my car, Leo still on his hip, the suitcase already in the trunk. Leo is laughing, pulling on Duke’s cut, and Duke is letting him.
I tell myself this is practical.
This is survival. A roof. A room for my son.
Nothing else.