“Like woman troubles?”
“You could call it that.” Aidan looked at the ring, and then slipped it back into the box. “Are you married?”
“I was.”
“Divorced?”
The bartender shook his head. “I’m a widower.”
Aidan straightened up in his seat, suddenly feeling guilty for moping around when others had bigger problems than he did. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s been ten years now. I wish I could say I’ve gotten over it, but that would be a lie. I’m just getting better at talking about it.”
“Was she sick?” For some reason, talking about the bartender’s problems was easier than worrying about his own at the moment.
“No. It was an accident. One moment we were arguing about something stupid, and the next, she was gone.”
Aidan could see the lines of regret etched into the man’s face. Even a decade later, losing his wife seemed to haunt him.
“We were always arguing about stupid stuff,” the bartender continued. “Her parents never liked me, so they were always causing trouble in our relationship by putting her in the middle. She was constantly trying to keep the peace, but I didn’t want peace, I wanted her to side with me. The stress would build up until we would just pick at each other over little things. It all seems silly now.”
After the night he’d had, Aidan could understand the issues the bartender had with his in-laws. “Why didn’t her parents like you?”
He shrugged. “Name a reason and you’d probably be right. They didn’t like anything about me. I wasn’t educated and I didn’t have a career with a future. My family wasn’t the greatest. I didn’t kiss their rear ends whenever we were together. They never seemed to care how much we loved one another or how well I treated her. She was my world. But after all these years, I’ve finally realized that basically anything I did would be wrong because no one was good enough for their only daughter.”
“I can understand how that is. My... Violet...is an only child. Her parents have very high expectations.”
The bartender nodded. “In the end, none of that mattered, but I didn’t know it. I could never see what was the most important—that she loved me. That should’ve been my
sole focus. Not all that other stuff. Instead of arguing with her, I should’ve been holding her tight. I should’ve been appreciating every precious moment I had with her, because I didn’t have that many left.”
Aidan wasn’t sure what to say, but he knew that the thought of losing Violet permanently made him ill. Or maybe it was the four ginger ales he’d gone through since he arrived. Either way his stomach ached as he thought about living his life without Violet in it. Raising Knox without her. He knew he never wanted to know what that would feel like.
And yet, he’d walked away from her tonight and threw her love back in her face like a fool. What had he been thinking?
“Listen, I don’t know what’s going on with you and your intended. But I know this much—when you find the person you love, and who loves you, you’ve got to hold on to it. It isn’t every day that you meet the person that makes you feel complete. When they come along, you’ve got to focus on what’s truly important because that other stuff is just noise. What her parents think, what society thinks...it doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, most people don’t realize that until they lose that person for good. I know I didn’t. And I regret it every single day of my life.”
Aidan already felt an unbearable amount of regret swirling in his gut. He couldn’t stand the thought of living with a lifetime of second-guessing himself. Reaching into his wallet, he pulled out enough for the soda and a hefty tip. The guy had earned it tenfold. “Thanks for the advice. I really needed that pep talk.”
“No problem. You don’t want to be like me. You’ve still got the chance to make things right with Violet. Don’t waste the opportunity you’ve been given.”
Aidan slid off the bar stool with a new sense of purpose moving his feet. He was going to get a cab back to his apartment and once he was there, he was going to figure out how to fix this mess.
He loved Violet. He just hoped she still felt the same way about him.
* * *
Violet looked at the paperwork on her desk but couldn’t get her eyes to focus on it. It had been that way for the last week, since Aidan walked out of the masquerade ball. She wasn’t able to erase the image of his face as he said his hateful words and walked away.
She’d deserved some of it, she was sure, but she never imagined he would throw her love in her face like that. Violet didn’t agree with her father; she was just trying to explain where he was coming from. Opposites did attract but in the long run, they made for a challenging relationship. She and Aidan had little in common aside from their son. She wasn’t holding that against him, it was just a fact.
It didn’t make her love him any less. It meant that maybe it wasn’t enough. Perhaps being coparents and nothing more was the right answer for them.
She only wished she could convince her heart of that.
A tap at the door interrupted her thoughts. “Yes?”
Betsy opened the door with an apologetic look on her face. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Niarchos, but Mr. Rosso is here to see you.”