6. Violet
VIOLET
Leo is on the floor, running a toy truck along the baseboard and making engine noises. I’ve been sitting on the edge of the bed for twenty minutes, listening to the low rumble of activity in the clubhouse, waiting for Duke to come back from Church.
The door opens. Duke walks in with Shelby behind him. He doesn’t sit. He stands inside the door with his arms at his sides.
“We need to talk,” he says. “Shelby’s going to take Leo for a bit.”
Shelby crouches next to Leo. “Hey, buddy. Want to come color with me? I’ve got the dinosaur book in my room.”
Leo’s head whips up. “Dinosaurs?”
“Big ones.” She holds out her hand. Leo abandons the truck and grabs her fingers, and Shelby walks with him to the doorway.
“We’ll be in my room.” She scoops up Leo into her arms. “Take your time.”
She carries my son out the door. Duke closes it behind her.
We’re alone.
He leans against the dresser. Crosses his arms.
I’m nervous. Really nervous.
His face is all wrong. Not angry. It’s worse. He looks hurt.
I don’t say anything. I give him the space to speak when he’s ready, but every few seconds, I glance at his face, trying to read him.
Duke unfolds his arms. His hands lock around the edge of the dresser on either side of his hips, and his knuckles are white. “Leo is mine.”
I forget how to breathe. “Duke...”
“He’s mine, Violet.” His chin lifts. “Same eyes. Same fucking birthmark. I did the math. You were pregnant when you left.”
My hands go flat on the mattress. He figured it out before I had a chance to tell him. This is not how I planned for this to happen.
“How long?” Low, rough, scraped raw. “How long were you going to let me think he belonged to someone else?”
“I don’t know.” It comes out cracked. Useless. “I don’t know, Duke. I was scared.”
“Scared.” He pushes off the dresser. One step toward me. The room shrinks to nothing. “You were scared, so you took my kid and disappeared. You let me spend years thinking you left. That I wasn’t enough. You let me believe you found someone better and had his baby and built a life without me.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Then you came back. You’ve been lying to my face since the second you drove into this town.”
Tears are running down my face. I swipe them with my knuckles, and it doesn’t help. More come.
“Why?” He’s close enough to touch. “Tell me why, and make it make sense. I’m about to lose my fucking mind.”
“You never talked about the future.” It tears out of me before I can organize it, raw and messy.
“We spent almost every night together for years, Duke. I asked you. I brought it up, and you changed the subject, kissed me, or told me we were good. Two years of we’re good, and I never knew if that meant forever or until you got bored. ”
He stares at me. “I was with you every night I could be.”
“I know.”
“My bike was at your apartment so often that your neighbor thought I lived there. I brought you food. I fixed your car. I held you when you couldn’t sleep. You met my mom. And yeah, we were good. What the fuck did you think that meant?”
“I thought it meant you liked having someone to come home to. I didn’t know if it meant more than that. You never said.”
“I thought you knew.”
“I needed you to say it.” My nails cut into my palms. I’m sitting on the edge of his bed, and he’s standing over me. “And when I found out I was pregnant, I was alone in a bathroom with a positive test and a man who’d never once told me I was his. So I panicked, and I ran.”
He’s quiet. His breathing is ragged, and his body is rigid, and he’s standing so close I have to stop myself from reaching out to him.
“That’s not all of it,” he says.
He’s right. It’s not.
“Your life, Duke.” I swallow hard. “You’re a one-percenter. You’re part of an outlaw MC. You have enemies. I was twenty-three and pregnant, and I couldn’t picture raising a baby in a world where his father might not come home.”
“So, you made sure he didn’t have a father at all.”
I flinch at his words. “That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair.” He closes another inch. “You want to talk about fair? I missed his birth. I missed two birthdays. I missed him learning to walk. He’s been calling me Daddy, and I didn’t even know he was mine until a stranger in a grocery store told me my son has my eyes.”
A stranger told him. Not me.
That’s so messed up, and definitely not how I wanted him to find out.
“I fucked up.” I’m crying hard now, and I don’t try to stop it. “I know I fucked up, and I’m sorry, and I’ve known it was wrong every single day since I left. Every time Leo hit a milestone, I’d look at him and think, Duke should be here. I took that from both of you, and I have to live with it.”
My chest is heaving. Duke’s fists open and close at his sides, and I don’t know which version of him is about to speak—the one who wants to destroy me for this or the one who wants to pull me into his arms.
“We keep the families safe.” He says it lower now. Not arguing. Explaining. “The Old Ladies, the kids. They don’t touch club business. That’s the line. The men handle what needs handling, and the families stay out of it. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s always worked.”
“We’re in a lockdown right now, Duke.” I gesture at the room. The bed. The pack-and-play against the wall. “In a clubhouse. With our son down the hall.”
“This is not normal.” He steps forward, and my knees open, and he’s standing between my thighs. “And you know it. This is an exception.”
“And if the exception becomes the rule?”
“Then I do whatever it takes to keep you and Leo safe.” He pushes my hair behind my ear, and his fingers trail down the side of my neck. “I’ll end anybody who touches you. Or dares to threaten you.”
I know he’s capable of violence.
“But what if that’s not enough?” My fingers find the hem of his shirt and hold on. “Would you leave with us?”
His whole body tightens. “Are you asking me to leave?”
“No,” I say. “I know how much the MC means to you.”
“I don’t want to,” he responds, and it’s raw, pulled from somewhere deep. “The Kings are my brothers. This club is my life, Violet. It’s everything I’ve built since I was nineteen.”
“I know.”
“But you’re asking me to choose, and the answer is you.
” His hand comes up and cups my face. “You and Leo. If it comes to that, I walk. I don’t look back.
I build something new with my bare fucking hands if I have to, because I love you.
I never stopped. I loved you when you were here.
I loved you when you were gone. Even after everything, I still fucking love you. ”
His palm is warm against my face, and my whole body leans into it, starving.
“I think you already knew that,” he says, quieter.
“But I didn’t know. That was the whole problem,” I tell him.
His hand slides to the back of my head, fingers threading into my hair, and he tips my face up toward his. “You’re mine, Violet. And no matter what happens, we will be together.”
He’s standing over me, between my thighs, and I’m gripping the hem of his shirt, and I can’t let go. I don’t want to let go.
“I want to be with you. I want to be together. I love you,” I say, looking up at him. “I never stopped. Not for one day. I’m so sorry. And yes, Leo is yours, and he’s always been yours. I should have told you the second I found out. And I can’t take that back.”
His fingers tighten in my hair. His breathing is faster, rougher, and his free hand comes down and wraps around my wrist where I’m holding his shirt. He doesn’t pull my hand away. He presses it flat against his stomach, and I can feel the muscle contract under my palm.
“Say it again,” he growls.
“I love you.”
He kisses me. Bent over me, one hand fisted in my hair, his mouth comes down on mine and takes. Not soft. Not careful. This is years of deprivation and rage and longing, and I grab his cut with both fists and pull him closer.
His hands leave my hair. They drop to my hips, and he lifts me off the mattress. I gasp against his mouth. He turns, sits on the edge of the bed, and pulls me down onto his lap in one motion.
My thighs spread over his. My knees dig into the mattress on either side of his hips. And the hard length of him is pressed right against me. My hips roll on instinct, and his fingers press into my waist. Hard.
His mouth drags from mine to my jaw, teeth scraping, and his hands slide down to my ass and pull me tighter against him. The friction is so delicious, my head drops back and my spine arches.
“You’re mine,” he tells me. “Leo is mine. And you’re not leaving. Ever.”
“Never.”
His mouth is on my throat. His hips push up into me, and I grind down, and the groan that comes out of him vibrates against my skin. My fingers dig into the leather of his cut.
He pulls back. His hands are on my hips, holding me still. We’re both breathing hard. I’m in his lap with my thighs locked around him and every inch of me pressed against every inch of him.
His knuckles brush the side of my neck. “I’m still angry.”
“I know.”
“And I’m going to be angry for a while.”
“I know.”
He kisses me again. Slower this time. Deep and thorough, his tongue sliding against mine, and I melt into him and let him take whatever he needs.
When he breaks the kiss, his lips drag across mine, and he doesn’t go far. An inch. His blue eyes on mine.
“I should have claimed you before you left.” His hand flattens against my chest, right over my heart, and he holds it there. “I should have claimed you five years ago. After I met you for the first time, I never wanted anybody else. You were mine the moment we met.”
I pull his mouth to mine and kiss him until neither of us can breathe.
His hands slide up under my shirt, palms flat on my bare skin, and his fingers spread across my ribs.
Every cell in my body is buzzing with arousal.
“Shelby has Leo,” I whisper against his mouth. “And the door is locked.”
His hands tighten on my ribs. His hips push up into me one more time.
We are so done talking.