“Baby, he’s already gone,” I tried to remind her. “We buried him today.”
“No,” she denied vehemently and shoved at my chest. “He’s right here.” She glanced down at the bed and saw it was empty and began to crumple. “I just saw him. He was…right there…”
While she was distracted, I lifted her and carried her from the room. Once I had her in the guest room where she’d been sleeping, I shut and locked the door
before tucking her into bed. My shirt was soaked from all the tears she’d cried in the short time it had taken to get her from one room to the other, but I barely noticed as I slid in behind her and pulled her head to my chest.
“I-I’m going crazy,” she rasped out a long while later when her shaking finally subsided. “I saw him. He was just lying there on our bed. Sleeping. He looked so peaceful.”
“You’re not going crazy, Vi. It was just your grief making your head play tricks on you.” I brushed her hair back from her damp face. “Maybe it was your subconscious telling you he was at peace and that it was okay to let him go.”
“I don’t want to let him go,” she whispered. “I love him so much.”
It stung so bad to hear her say that, but I pushed it down and cupped her face. “I know, babe. No one is saying you don’t. But it’s not healthy to hold on to a ghost. You have to let him be at peace, or he’s going to haunt you.”
She snorted at that. “You believe in ghosts now, Luca?”
“No,” I said with a grim smile. “But that doesn’t mean his memory won’t haunt you until you really do go crazy. Let him go. Give yourself a little peace.”
“I can’t.” She pushed away from me and sat up. Placing both her hands on her belly, she rubbed them over the baby bump. “This little girl will never know how much her daddy loved her. I can’t let him go because I need to hold on to every memory we made together so I won’t forget and can tell her all about him.”
“Letting him go doesn’t mean you have to forget about your time with him.” I tried to reassure her. “And it doesn’t mean you have to stop loving him. But you can’t stay locked in the past, Violet. Not when your baby girl needs you to move forward with the present and the future.”
Her purple eyes were full of confusion and so much pain, my heart clenched as she looked down at me. “I know she deserves that, but it’s so hard. It hurts to breathe right now. Like my heart isn’t even in my chest anymore.”
“It will get better, babe. Maybe not right away, but eventually, it will start to hurt a little less until you can draw a deep enough breath again.” I covered one of her hands on her rounded belly. “And we can tell this little love bug all about her daddy.”
“W-we?” she husked out.
I felt the baby kick against me and I smiled, brushing my thumb over the little foot as it pressed against the inside of her momma’s tummy. “I told you, Violet. I’m here for you and your baby. I promised Remington I would watch over both of you until you no longer need me.”
I just prayed that day never came.
She was quiet for a few minutes as she absorbed my words, and I lay beside her, rubbing at the active baby beneath her heart. When the baby started pushing against my hand more and more, I moved closer and pressed my ear to her belly.
Violet’s hand touched the back of my head, and I glanced at her, silently begging her with my eyes not to make me move away. With a tiny lift of her lips, she stroked her fingers down my neck before releasing me, and I turned my face into her expanded belly.
“Hey in there, Love Bug,” I murmured quietly. “I bet you’re missing your daddy reading to you, huh?” I waited for another kick and grinned when I was rewarded with it. “I don’t have a book with me right now, but your momma taught me a few stories when we were kids. If you want to hear one, kick me again.”
When I immediately got another kick, Violet released a startled little laugh. Turning over so my head was in Vi’s lap, I started the story without giving it a second thought. “A million years ago, there was a crazy old rocker who fell in love with a beautiful girl with the most amazing violet eyes…”
She slapped me on the top of the head. “That is not how the story starts, and you know it,” she scolded with a roll of her pretty eyes.
“It’s how I start it,” I argued.
“Dad will kill you if he hears you calling him old.” She bit her lip as if she were fighting a smile and glanced at the door as if expecting Shane Stevenson to barge in and kick my ass.
“I locked the door,” I reassured her. “Didn’t want anyone disturbing you so you could not be okay for a little while.”
“I’m okay now,” she murmured, her fingers stroking down my cheek unconsciously. When she realized what she was doing, she dropped her hand and looked away, a flash of guilt entering her eyes.
Pretending I wasn’t affected by the all too brief touch, I continued the story. “The rocker fell in love and fell hard, but the violet-eyed girl was skittish and didn’t trust his feelings at first. The old rocker was stubborn and wouldn’t take no for an answer, so he worked hard at winning her heart and convincing her that she was the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“She is,” Violet whispered.
“So is her daughter,” I whispered back before continuing the story. “The rocker finally got the beautiful girl to marry him, but their happily ever after was still not complete. Because they wanted a baby. But the violet-eyed girl had a curse put on her that wouldn’t allow her to have the baby she wanted more than anything in the world. The rocker searched everywhere, trying to break the curse on his love, until one day, he met a special fairy who put a beautiful little girl in his wife’s tummy.”
Violet sucked in a deep breath when the baby kicked out harder than before, and a tear leaked from the corner of her eye. “And then the rocker pulled his violet from her mommy’s tummy and dashed her with all the hope they had always had for her. And that’s how Violet Hope became the sweetest, most beautiful little girl the world had ever seen.”