“And her parents. Her brother. I hardly have the monopoly on this one.”
She said nothing. Not for a long moment. The sound in the truck was nothing more than the engine, the slight rasp of tree branches on the windows as they drove down the narrow, rocky road, and his own heartbeat in his ears.
“Do you still love her?” she asked, finally.
He thought about that. Because sometimes he couldn’t see her face, not clearly anymore. And his clearest memories were reduced to snapshots rather than moving film. And her voice, thinking about what she might want him to do, had gotten him through quite a bit over the years, but hadn’t been enough to keep him away from Violet. But still.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“Okay.”
“Sawyer said I should have told you earlier. Because it was going to come up when people met you. I don’t know how to talk about it, though. So I didn’t. That wasn’t fair to you.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s fine. Wolf, I made the decision to be with you before I knew anything about why you were the way that you were. I’m not changing it now. Not now that I have more information. That we need to make this work isn’t going to change.”
The beast inside him calmed down, because it seemed that this was going to be the end of the conversation. And he had to wonder what he’d expected. Maybe for there to be more emotion. In himself.
No, he didn’t like thinking about it. So he didn’t.
But it was a marvel, the detachment in his soul. And even he recognized it. And every so often, that beast seemed to rise up and take him over completely, not snarling in the distance regarding old wounds, but roared to life. It had done so when Violet had stripped her dress off for him in the living room. Hell, it had done that when he’d first met her. But now it stood apart. Comfortably away from him. Comfortably circling all the things inside him that he wanted left alone. He managed to tell the story without touching the wound. And that, he supposed, was a victory.
They pulled up to the house then, and for some reason, it was surprising that she walked up the steps with him. She had been staying with him now for a week. It shouldn’t be a surprise that she was coming inside with him. And yet, there was something about it that jarred him. Perhaps that he was used to being alone. He didn’t usually have to navigate other people. Especially not when he didn’t want to. But she was there.
And he walked in, and the Christmas tree was there, too, and he couldn’t deny that things were different because he was sharing a household with Violet.
And he realized right then just how solitary he typically was. Particularly when he was on the verge of having an emotion.
It was pretty early yet, and not quite time to call it a night. He tried to think of what he would do with the time if Violet weren’t here. He might have stayed longer at the town hall. Might have had another drink with Sawyer and Hunter. He just sat on the couch, though, right in front of that Christmas tree. And Violet sat next to him. She didn’t say anything. She just sat there.
He wasn’t thinking. Not really. But there was a strange sort of disquiet in his body. An anxiety that he didn’t like. That he wasn’t used to. Like he was on the verge of disaster. But it was just that memory.
A desire still to do something about it. To fix it. A hatred of the helplessness that he’d felt in that moment.
Violet reached out and pushed his hair off his forehead.
He looked at her, and the corner of her mouth hitched up.
“I think I’ll head to bed,” he said.
“Okay,” she said softly.
She got up along with him, and he walked ahead of her down the hall, turning toward his room.
“You’re sleeping in your room?”
He huffed a laugh. “Not really in the mood.”
She looked hurt. He might as well have stabbed her. But it was in service of the being alone thing, which he was feeling the need for pretty hard, and didn’t want to admit it.
“I don’t need you to be in the mood to share a bed with me, Wolf.”
He clenched his teeth together, his jaw tight. He didn’t really know what to do with that.
“You really want to sleep in that tiny twin bed?”
He grunted, moving to her room instead. She undressed slowly, and he turned away from her, taking his own clothes off with swift efficiency before getting under the covers. When she joined him, she was wearing a nightgown. A nightgown that could have almost been considered virginal.
Usually, time in bed with Violet was sexual if they weren’t sleeping. They made love, and it drowned out all thought, all feeling. Everything. But instead, tonight, they just lay under the blankets, a healthy amount of mattress between them.