Wanting Shaw (Rockers' Legacy Book 5)

Shaw

My eyes were riveted to where Luca and Lyric were just surfacing in the ocean as Violet ran toward the house. My heart hurt even more for her than it had that morning, and the sight of my best friend’s tears made my knees weak as she pushed open the door.

A sob left her, and she stumbled blindly past Jagger and me. Mom and Aunt Harper reached out to steady her, but she pushed them away and fled the room.

I couldn’t imagine the pain she was in. Not only had Luca cheated, but he was going to be a father? That must have been agony to hear from the man she’d thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with.

“Go after her, Dimples,” Jagger urged. “I’ll try to help contain the fighting down here.”

I wanted to fall into his arms and sob, but I only rushed after my friend. For weeks, I’d done everything I possibly could to avoid seeing Jagger, but today, all I’d wanted was to let him hold me as I’d watched the drama unfold outside the house with Vi and Luca.

I got to Violet’s room just as she started to shut the door, both our moms right behind me, and the three of us pushed our way in so she couldn’t lock us out. If she locked that door, I didn’t doubt she would stay in that damn room until someone knocked the fucking thing down.

As soon as we were inside with her, Aunt Harper pulled her daughter into her arms and started rocking her. Violet struggled against her. “I just want to be alone,” she sobbed into her mom’s chest. “Please. I can’t do this right now.”

“Honey, you don’t have to hurt alone. Please, just let me h-hold you,” Aunt Harper begged, her voice cracking.

Mom and I moved so we were each hugging our best friends from behind, trying to give them our strength. Violet was sobbing so hard, she was causing us all to tremble.

But then, as if she had a reserve of strength she’d had to dig deep to produce, she just stopped. The sobbing. The crying. She turned it all off right in front of us. She jerked away from our hug and scrubbed her hands over her face

. Before me stood the strong, resilient Violet Stevenson I knew and loved, but who drove me crazy because she just needed to cry it all out and let me hold her while she did.

Behind me, I thought I heard the doorknob rattle, and I turned with a frown. Mom must have locked it when she’d closed it behind us. The rattle was quickly followed by a slam that seemed to shake the entire room, and then the door splintered as it collapsed inward, hanging off one hinge.

I screamed along with Mom and Aunt Harper as Luca appeared beside the now-broken door. “For fuck’s sake!” Mom shouted, and Aunt Harper and I rushed to put ourselves between Vi and the maniac who had just broken a thick-ass door to get to her.

“Luca, you need to go,” Mom urged him, putting herself between him and Violet as well. “You’re only going to cause yourself more problems.”

I wasn’t even sure he heard her as he tried to get to Violet. “Vi. Baby, please.”

“Are you insane?” Vi demanded just as the sound of stomping feet rushing toward the bedroom reached my ears.

“Harper!” Uncle Shane demanded as the doorway filled with people.

“It’s okay,” Aunt Harper assured him, putting her hand up to hold her husband and the others back in case Luca suddenly felt threatened and did something stupid. But his focus was completely on Violet even when his father demanded to know what he was doing. The boom in Uncle Jesse’s voice didn’t even cause him to flinch.

“Violet, please,” Luca begged.

While she focused on him, my gaze caught Jagger standing at the back of the group in the hall. His pale-blue eyes looked wild, and when our gazes locked, I could tell he wanted to pull me out of the line of fire. But there was no way in hell I was leaving Violet.

When she tried to approach Luca, I attempted to stop her. “He’s lost his mind. Don’t get too close to him. He might hurt you.”

“Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes and pushed away my hold on her. “He’d never physically hurt me.”

She was right. Luca never would have lifted a hand to her, no matter if he’d lost his mind or not. But he’d done more than enough emotional damage. He’d broken Violet so easily. All because he was an immature little boy living in a man’s body.

But the thing about Violet—she was the strongest person I’d ever met. And with that strength came a temper that while difficult to make boil over, once it did, she could eviscerate anyone with her words.

Which was exactly what she did to Luca.

She wasn’t sweet, kind, little Vi, but a seething beast in a beautiful little package.

“I want you to know that today is the last day I ever allow you to hold on to even a small part of my heart,” she told him in a voice so cold I felt goose bumps pop up along my entire body, and I shivered. “Tomorrow, I won’t even allow myself to think about how much I once loved you. I won’t let myself remember how good it felt to just sit beside you and savor the love I thought you felt for me. I refuse to think ever again about the life we could have had. The life we should have had but you were too much of a juvenile little boy to deserve.”

The pain and utter devastation on Luca’s face was hard to witness, but nothing less than he deserved for what he’d put Violet through. What he would continue to put her through now that he’d gotten that skank Megan Hawthorn pregnant.

“Tomorrow,” she continued in that same chilling tone. “I hope you wake up and you remember it all. Every day for the rest of your life, I hope you remember the way it felt to have me touch you, kiss you, tell you I love you. I hope it haunts you until you’re clawing at the last thread of your sanity.” She lifted her hand and ghosted the backs of her fingers over his jaw, making him tremble from the loss of contact and, with it, his entire world. “I hope you die a little more inside each and every time, until there’s nothing left.”