Loving Violet (Rockers' Legacy Book 4)

hrough Instagram and Facebook. But I figured if there were no pictures of Violet when it was already two hours past her curfew on the West Coast, then there likely weren’t going to be. Blowing out a relieved breath, I rolled over to charge my phone, only for it to ring.

Seeing it was Violet, I felt my heart move into my throat, and my hands began to shake. Gulping in a deep breath, I prayed I wasn’t dreaming and lifted it to my ear. “Baby?”

“H-hey,” she murmured, and I could hear the tears in her voice. “Did I wake you? I wasn’t really thinking about the time difference.”

“No. I was just lying here thinking about you,” I told her honestly. “Are you okay? You sound…” I could hear her sniffling. And I knew I was most likely the reason.

“I’m not okay,” she whispered, and my own tears filled my eyes. “I don’t know how to be okay, Luca. I hate you and I miss you and I think I might still even love you and I just want to stop feeling like the world is upside down.”

“I’m sorry, Vi. So sorry. I know I can’t tell you that enough, that it won’t make anything better for either of us. But I am sorry from the bottom of my heart, baby.” I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“I know you are,” she said with a shaky exhale. “But I don’t know if I can ever forgive you. I trusted you with everything, and y-you b-broke me.”

“If I could change what I did, I would without hesitation. I would give up everything in the blink of an eye if it could fix this.” My tears fell down my cheeks, and I scrubbed my fist across them. “You were right. I am still too immature. I hate that I let you down and broke your heart. All I want is for you to be happy.”

“I don’t know how to feel happy anymore. That feeling seems almost alien to me these days.” She groaned as if in physical pain, and the sound was like a kick to the gut. “I’m so tired all the time, Luca. But sleep doesn’t help because I wake up even more exhausted than before I closed my eyes. Sometimes I think I’m just in a really bad dream, but the pain that makes my entire body hurt reminds me this is my new reality.”

“Vi…” But I didn’t know what to say to that. There were no words to make it better for her. I was the reason she was going through this, and I had no idea how to fix it for her.

“I just want it to stop,” she sobbed. “Please, Luca. Please, make this pain end.”

“I wish I could, baby,” I choked out. “I wish…”

“I don’t know how much more I can take.”

Something in her voice had goose bumps popping up all over my body. Fear like I’d never felt before made my heart stall in my chest. “What does that mean, Violet?”

“I just want to stop hurting,” she whispered.

“Violet, where are you?” I stood up, needing to pace. Anxiety was twisting in my gut, making me sweat as nausea lifted into the back of my throat.

“Home.”

“Where at home?” I tried to keep my voice calm. She wouldn’t really harm herself…would she?

“Bed.” She released a heavy exhale and then laughed softly. “I’ve been having these crazy thoughts lately, Luca. Thinking about Lucy and why she would always hurt herself to make the noise in her head stop. When we were little, she tried to tell us why she did it, but I didn’t understand. I still don’t, if I’m being honest.”

“Baby, you’re scaring me.” I couldn’t think straight. She was talking about Lucy’s cutting, and it terrified me. My sister was still in therapy for self-harming herself when she was in her teens. It was something she continued to struggle with, but as far as I knew, she hadn’t harmed herself since before she’d married Harris.

“Don’t be scared. I’m not going to hurt myself.” Her sobs filled my ear, and I dropped down weakly onto the edge of my bed. “But I was thinking about it. And not just hurting myself. I wanted to make this pain go away, Luca. It’s exhausting, and I’m so fucking tired of hurting.”

“Baby—”

“I found my crafting kit in the back of my closet, and I got out that sharp as hell precision knife. Remember how I sliced my finger open with it when I first got it? You were only eleven, but when I started to freak out because I was so scared, you calmed me down and took such good care of me.”

“Violet—”

“I remember how it sliced through my skin like it was butter. So sharp that it took a moment before the pain kicked in. I’d never seen so much blood, but you grabbed the hand towel out of my bathroom and wrapped my finger. Your hands didn’t even shake. At least not then. Later, when it was over, you cried so hard it broke my heart. But first, you picked me up like I weighed nothing at all and carried me downstairs to the moms and told them I needed stitches.”

I closed my eyes, the memories flashing through my head. “I remember.”

“Tonight, I thought about how easy it would be to just let that knife slice through my wrists and be done. There would be no more pain. I wouldn’t have to miss you and hate you and love you. My heart would be free, and my head could just shut the hell up.”

“Oh God, baby. Please—”

“I just sat here in bed, looking at that knife and missing you more and more with each beat of my heart. Wondering if you would cry harder than you did when I cut my finger if I died.” She breathed in raggedly and slowly blew it out. I wanted to tell her of course I would cry even harder if she died. If she wasn’t somewhere in the world breathing, then she might as well kill me too. But I couldn’t speak. It was like my vocal cords were paralyzed, and I couldn’t even make my throat work.

She released another shaky breath. “But then I realized I was missing a guy who never really existed except in my head. I’d built you up along with this world we were going to create together, until it was all I could see. You and me and our future was my endgame. And I started to get pissed at myself. Not just because you turned out to be someone I didn’t even know, but because I was so focused on you and us, that somewhere along the way, I lost sight of me.”