Chapter 26
Violet
The potato feels like a miracle in my hands.
Warm from the soil, smooth in some places, dusty in others, the size of a small apple.
My potato.
My first potato.
I hold my breath, brush away a little more dirt, and grin so hard my cheeks ache.
“Oh my gosh. Jason!” I squeal.
Footsteps thunder across the garden, fast and urgent, that near-panic stride he gets when he thinks I’m hurt. The grass rustles. The soil shifts. His breath catches right before he reaches me.
“What? What happened? Are you okay?”
“I grew a potato!”
The panic evaporates, like it was never there.
I hear the exact moment he skids to a stop. His exhale punches out of him in this wild sound, half-laugh, half-relief, whole-heart.
“A potato?” he repeats, voice warm and disbelieving.
He steps closer, and I can feel the smile stretching across his face even without seeing it, hear it in the softness of his breath, the way it lifts at the edges.
“My very first one,” I say proudly, lifting it toward him like an offering. “Behold, my tiny earth baby.”
Jason loses it. Full, unguarded laughter rolls out of him, deep and bright and beautiful, the kind that shakes his shoulders and steals my breath because it’s so rare and so real.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, and there’s this warm, helpless affection in his voice that makes my chest ache, “that is the most perfect potato I have ever seen.”
He crouches beside me, hands brushing mine as he inspects it like it’s a priceless artifact instead of a lumpy little garden vegetable.
His fingers linger around mine, not quite touching, but close enough that heat curls over my skin.
“You actually did this,” he murmurs, wonder threaded through every word. “You grew something on your own.”
“I know.” I grin. “I’m basically a god now.”
He lets out another laugh, softer this time, but it shakes all the way through him.
“That tracks. Bow before Violet, goddess of dirt.”
“Damn straight,” I say. “My reign will be benevolent but firm.”
His thumb grazes the back of my hand. Just a light, absent stroke, but it takes my breath away.
“Congratulations,” he says quietly. “I’m… proud of you.”
My heart does a weird, fluttery somersault, because he means it. Because it matters to him. Because my silly little potato is enough to make him laugh like I’ve rescued the moon from the earth.
I swallow around the warmth rising in my throat.
“It’s just a potato,” I whisper.
“No,” he murmurs, leaning in close enough for his breath to brush my cheek. “It’s your first victory.”
And for one fragile, perfect second, I forget that the world outside this garden is dangerous. I only know his laughter, warmth, and his hands so close to mine.
The tiny potato sits proudly in my palm, the first thing I’ve grown on my own without any help. Proof that I can still make something thrive.
Jason’s voice dips, soft and honest, “Violet, this is a big deal.”
“Yeah,” I whisper shakily. “It really is.”
I can’t stop the breathless joy that floods my chest, fills my throat, spills into my smile. “Jason, we need to cook something with it. Something special. Something celebratory.”
“We’re making loaded mashed potatoes,” he decides immediately, no hesitation at all.
“With one potato?” I giggle.
“Okay, half a loaded mashed potato,” he amends. “We can share.”
“We’re going to need a very tiny bowl.”
He leans in and kisses my cheek, soft, warm, smiling against my skin, like he can’t help himself.
“We’ll make it work,” he murmurs.
Our hands are wrapped around one silly little potato that somehow feels like the beginning of a whole new world.
But then his fingers shift from playful to still, and something like anticipation hums under the surface of his touch.
“Hey,” I say softly. “What’s going on in that beautiful, wolfy head of yours?”
He clears his throat. “There’s… something I want to show you first.”
He takes my hand, guiding me gently across the garden. The ground changes under my feet, soft earth, then firmer soil, then something even, cool, and patterned.
Cobblestone.
My breath catches.
“Jason…?”
“Keep going,” he says, voice warm and nervous all at once.
The cobblestone path leads onward beneath my feet, each stone familiar under my soles, then shifting subtly as I cross from stone to something softer.
Moss. Springy, cool, and velvety between the grooves, exactly the texture I told him once, half-asleep, that I wished paths felt like so I could “hear” the ground in a nicer way.
My throat tightens.
Then a breeze shifts, brushing across my shoulders. Something wooden creaks gently overhead, like a porch swing or a garden gate swaying in the wind.
“Jason,” I whisper.
I reach out, hesitant, searching.
My hand meets a smooth post of polished wood, warm from the sun. I trail my fingertips along it. The grain is fine, the finish seamless. Someone sanded this with care. Someone oiled it. Someone built it with intentional gentleness. A railing. My breath lifts into a quiet, shaky laugh.
Another step forward, and my foot slides onto a level wooden platform. I sweep my hand outward and there it is.
Another rail.
Then something else beneath my fingers, small ridges, evenly spaced.
Raised markers.
Carved bumps arranged in…
I inhale sharply.
“Jason,” I whisper again, voice barely a breath. “Is this braille?”
He exhales like he’s been holding his lungs hostage for hours. “Read it,” he murmurs.
My fingertips glide slowly over the symbols, the tiny, perfect dots, each one smoothed and sealed so they won’t splinter or fade. I feel them with the same care I’d touch a skittish cub.
H-E-L-L-O
V-I-O-L-E-T
W-E-L-C-O-M-E
H-O-M-E
“Oh.” I press my hand to my mouth, tears falling from my eyes before I can stop them. “Jason…”
He steps closer, so close I feel the warmth of him behind me, his breath trembling against my hair.
“It’s a gazebo,” he says softly. “A real one. With reinforced rails, moss paths, braille markers on every corner, and… ”
He swallows. “And a bench where you can sit and plant things. Or drink tea. Or do whatever you want.”
My fingers shake over the braille again.
Hello Violet. Welcome home.
Home.
Something inside me melts.
The air shifts, not windy, not cold, just different, like the whole garden has leaned in to listen. Like every leaf and every grain of moss and every hand-carved braille marker is holding quiet so I can hear him breathe.
His fingers tighten around mine, then loosen, then tighten again the way a man touches something precious and still can’t believe he’s allowed to.
“Violet,” he says softly, and God, his voice makes my knees weak. “I wanted to give you a place that’s yours. That feels safe. That feels like…” He stops and brushes his lips over my knuckles. “Like the world didn’t get smaller when you lost your sight.”
My breath catches.
It’s not pity or apology. It’s understanding.
The kind that comes from someone who listens with his whole soul.
I lift our hands, guiding his palm to my cheek. “Jason,” I whisper, “it didn’t get smaller. It just got… different.”
He exhales shakily, brushing the apple of my cheek with his thumb. “You make it sound like that’s a good thing.”
“It can be. It is. Especially when someone builds me a freaking moss-lined braille gazebo.”
He huffs a laugh, choked, warm, disbelieving. “I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted you to have something beautiful.”
“I already do,” I murmur.
He freezes, goes absolutely still. Like the world stopped mid-breath.
“Violet.” My name is nothing more than a breath falling from his lips.
My heart does that fluttery, reckless thing it does only around him. I feel his pulse under our joined hands, fast, strong, terrified in a way that has nothing to do with wolves and everything to do with me.
I lean forward until my forehead touches his chest again, his heartbeat steady against my skin.
“You make my world bigger,” I say into the fabric over his heart. “Not smaller.”
His hands slide up my arms, slow and warm. I lift my chin. “Jason,” I whisper, “it’s okay.”
His fingers cup my jaw so carefully, like he’s terrified he’ll break me, and when he speaks again, his voice is raw enough to scrape the air:
“I don’t ever want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
“God, Violet…”
His breath touches my lips. Not kissing. Not yet. Just hovering.
Close enough that I feel him tremble. Close enough that if I lean an inch, everything changes.
“Welcome home, Violet,” he whispers into my hair. “Go on. Explore.”
I feather my fingers over the polished wood. “Garden south entrance,” I read aloud, voice trembling. My other hand finds another set of markers. “Gazebo north alcove. Oh, Jason…”
He’s quiet. Tense. Like he’s bracing for the wrong kind of reaction.
“Thank you for doing this.”
He places a hand gently on my back. “Well. Beau helped with the heavy lifting. And the part where I almost sawed my own hand off.”
A choked laugh escapes me. “Of course he did.”
“And Talon loaned us the power tools because he said he wanted to watch a stray die in a more interesting way than hanging.”
“That sounds like him,” I say fondly.
“And Hattie helped me position the bench so the sunrise would hit your face in the morning. After she made me shift about twenty times. I swear, I thought it was bad when I was Dog-Jason, but it’s worse now.”
I laugh through my happy tears.
Jason steps closer, resting his hands on the curve of my waist. “Do you… like it?”
“I love it,” I whisper. “Jason, this is everything. The paths. The rails. The Braille. How the wind comes through from the east.”
He sags against me in relief. I lean into him, and he wraps his arms around me. The breeze brushes past us, warm and lazy for an autumn day, carrying the scent of herbs and soil and the faint sweetness of the falling leaves.
We stand like that for a long time. Just breathing. Just being.
But there’s a tension in him that hasn’t eased, even with my cheek against him, even with the gazebo he built standing around us like a promise.
I tilt my head up and rest my hand against his cheek. “What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t answer at first. I feel it, the hesitation. The war in his chest. The conflict twisting behind his breath. So, I wait and let the silence open between us without crowding it. Let him decide to walk into it.
Finally, he exhales in resignation. “I have something I need to do.”
My throat tightens. There’s only one thing, one person, one fracture between him and peace.
“Froggy?” I murmur.
His silence is confirmation, a silence with edges. A silence that tastes like old wounds and loyalty and heartbreak.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “Froggy.”
He swallows. I feel the motion of his throat.
“He’s my brother,” Jason murmurs. “And he messed up. Bad. But he’s still mine to handle.”
“I know.”
He lifts a hand to cradle my jaw, thumb brushing the corner of my mouth like he’s memorizing the shape of me before he goes.
His other hand clutches my waist, fingers digging in the tiniest bit, not enough to hurt, just enough to say I don’t want to leave.
He rests his forehead against mine. “I’ll be quick,” he whispers.
Something fragile bruises inside my chest. A fear I don’t want to name.
My hands slide up his chest to rest over his heart. “Jason…”
His pulse stutters under my palms. “I don’t want to leave you,” he admits, voice raw, stripped bare. “Not like this. Not now. Not when I just—”
He cuts himself off. But I know what he was about to say.
He just chose me.
He just let me in.
And now he’s walking toward danger again.
“I trust you,” I say, my voice steady even though my heart is shaking. “And I trust you’ll come back.”
His breath breaks, just slightly, against my cheek.
“I will,” he murmurs. “No matter what happens with him… I will.” Then, softer, “Just… don’t stop being here when I get back.”
My chest aches. “I won’t.”
He presses a slow, reverent kiss to my forehead, one that feels like a vow, a tether, a promise he’s terrified of breaking.
Then he pulls back just enough for me to feel the loss of his warmth.
“Okay,” he whispers, voice fierce and soft all at once. “I’m going.”
But he doesn’t move. Not yet. His hand lingers at my waist. His thumb strokes once more along my skin.
His breath hovers near my lips like he wants to kiss me, needs to, but won’t, not until he’s certain he’s safe to hold again.
“Jason,” I breathe, “come back home.”
A small, broken, beautiful sound escapes, and then he steps away, leaving the warmth of the gazebo. Leaving my hands empty. Leaving the air colder behind him.
But not leaving me.
Never that.
“You better be,” I say, sliding my hands up his arms. “Because this gazebo? This garden? This home we’re building together? It’s waiting for you.”
His breath catches. “I promise,” he whispers. “I’ll come back.”
“Not ‘I’ll try.’ Not ‘I’ll do my best.’” My voice softens but sharpens at the edges. “Come home. Period.”
He cups my face in both hands. “Always.”
The word is firm and solid enough to build a life on.
And just like that he’s gone, running toward the last piece of his past he has to face. And then, hopefully, running straight home to me.