4. Violet #2
Leo’s head whips toward her. “Dinosaurs?”
She holds up the coloring book, and Leo is off Crash’s lap and across the room so fast Crash has to grab his beer to keep it from tipping. Shelby takes Leo to a corner booth, spreads the coloring book open, dumps a handful of crayons on the table, and sits across from him.
“This one,” Leo says, jabbing a finger at something like a tenured paleontologist.
Shelby leans in. “That’s a Triceratops.” She pulls a blue crayon from the pile. “But he looks sad. Should we make him blue?”
Leo grabs the green crayon with his whole fist. “Green.”
“You’re the boss.”
They bend over the book together, and Leo scribbles across the page with full commitment. Shelby colors beside him, staying inside the lines. They’re an odd pair, the president’s Old Lady and a two-year-old, and they’re both completely absorbed.
Duke is watching them. His iced tea sits untouched. His eyes stay on Leo, brown hair falling across his forehead, a dimple appearing in his left cheek when he grins.
He’d be a good father. He’s already a good father, and he doesn’t even know he’s being one. And that’s what keeps me up at night. Not what happens if I tell him and he’s furious.
Fury, I can survive.
What keeps me up is the other version, the one where I tell him, and he steps up, and he’s perfect, and he wants Leo.
And doesn’t want me.
And then we’d be co-parents, and nothing more. Handing Leo over on weekends, driving past his house, and seeing someone else’s car in the driveway.
When we were together, he never brought another woman around. Two years, and it was me. Only me. But he never said what that meant, either. No label. No promise. No conversation about where we were headed.
I told myself that was enough, that a man who showed up every night didn’t need to say the words. And it was enough until I found out I was pregnant.
Maybe I was kidding myself. Maybe I was just the woman who was there until a better one came around.
The afternoon stretches. Shelby keeps Leo occupied through a few coloring pages and a round of peekaboo that involves hiding behind the laminated menu and shrieking. Crash leaves for the clubhouse.
Viper reappears from the back hallway, drops a set of keys on the bar, tells Duke, “Handled,” with no further context, and leaves.
By four, the bar is dead. Leo is asleep in the corner booth on top of the coloring book, a green crayon in his fist and a line of drool connecting his cheek to the Triceratops. Shelby is in the booth next to him, doing inventory on her laptop with one eye on my son.
Duke and I are alone.
He’s behind the bar, restocking bottles on the top shelf.
I’m wiping down the counter. The bar is empty except for Shelby and Leo in the booth, and the quiet is doing things to me.
Every time Duke reaches up, his shirt pulls free from his jeans, and there’s a strip of tan skin above his belt that I can’t stop looking at.
I know what that skin tastes like. I know what his stomach does when I drag my mouth across it.
He turns, and I’m right there. The bar is narrow behind the counter, and I didn’t step out of his way, and we both know I had time to.
He’s close. His belt buckle is almost touching my hip. My body doesn’t care that we’re behind a bar in the middle of the afternoon. My body wants to close the gap.
His eyes drop to my mouth. He doesn’t move.
I don’t move.
My hand is on the bar. His hand comes down next to mine, pinky finger a quarter inch from my thumb, not touching.
His head tilts. A fraction. The distance between his mouth and mine is shrinking, and I’m not stepping back, and his breath is warm, and I’m going to let this happen because my body wants him more than it wants oxygen.
And then Leo shifts in the booth. The coloring book slides off the table and hits the floor, and the sound cracks through the bar.
I step back. Duke’s hand leaves the bar.
“I should get him home.” My voice comes out steady, and it’s the best lie I’ve ever told. “He’ll be up all night if he naps past four.”
Duke doesn’t answer for a second. His eyes are on me, and behind them is everything he’s been carrying during our time apart. The wanting. The anger. The loss. All of it right there, so close to the surface I could touch it.
“Yeah.” He picks up the diaper bag from the stool. “I’ll get him. Finish up, and we will wait outside for you.”
He walks to the booth. Slides one arm under Leo and lifts him, and Leo curls into his chest, one hand fisting the edge of Duke’s cut. The green crayon falls to the floor. Duke holds Leo against him with one arm and grabs the diaper bag with the other and walks toward the door.
I stand behind the bar with a wet rag in my hand and watch them go.
My son in his father’s arms.
Duke’s house at night is the most dangerous place I’ve ever been.
Not because of the club. Not because of the Crimson Warriors, the guns, or the business I pretend not to know about. It’s dangerous because at night, with the dishes done and Leo asleep and the Arizona sky pressing black against the windows, this house turns into something it isn’t.
A home. Our home. The home we might have had if I’d stayed.
Duke is at the dining room table with a stack of receipts and a calculator. The dining area and living room are one big open space, so I have a clear line of sight to him. His pen moves in short, deliberate strokes across a yellow legal pad.
I’m on the couch with my phone, scrolling through apartment listings I’ve bookmarked and haven’t called about. A one-bedroom on the south side. A studio above the laundromat. A place on Third Street that allows kids and pets, with a cracked window in every photo.
“There’s a one-bedroom on Mariposa.” I hold up my phone, even though he’s not looking. “Six-fifty a month.”
“You’re not going to live in that shithole.” His pen doesn’t stop moving.
“It will be fine.”
He flips a receipt over, scans the back. “You’ve been making good money. Bank it. Give it six months, and you can afford something better.”
I pull a throw pillow against my stomach. “Six months is a long time to be in your guest room.”
“It’s a long time to rush into a lease you can’t cover if Leo gets sick again.”
He’s right. He’s always right about numbers. It’s his job.
“You don’t owe me anything, Duke.”
His pen stops. His hand goes flat on the legal pad, and his thumb presses hard enough into the paper that I can see the indent from across the room.
“I know what I owe.”
I set my phone down. The apartment listings vanish into the dark screen.
“Who’s Leo’s father, Violet?”
The question lands like a slap. He asked me this at the diner, and I dodged it. He hasn’t brought it up since.
“It doesn’t matter.” I keep my voice even. “It didn’t work out.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s what I’m telling you.”
He’s quiet for a long time.
“I had a cut made for you.” His pen rolls between his fingers, back and forth. “Before you left. Property of Duke. I had it stitched and ready. I was going to ask you to be my Old Lady.”
The room tilts.
He sets the pen down and traces the edge of the legal pad. “And then you were gone.”
I can’t breathe. My fingernails are digging into the throw pillow, and my lungs have stopped working, and he is telling me that the man I left because I didn’t think he’d ever commit was days away from committing.
I left anyway. I left with his baby inside me.
“Duke.” It comes out broken.
He stands. Pushes the chair back. Gathers the receipts into a pile.
“I never stopped loving you, Violet.”
He walks past me toward the hallway. I open my mouth, and nothing comes out.
His boots are already on the hardwood, and his bedroom door closes, and I am alone in his living room with a throw pillow crushed against my stomach and a truth I didn’t know I was missing and a lie I don’t know how to survive.
I press my back against the couch and close my eyes.
He was going to ask me. He was going to claim me. And I ran.