Chapter 26
Violet
I couldn’t believe he just told them. Did he not care about my feelings? Did he not care that maybe I had a plan on how I wanted to bring it up to my parents? When I realized he was okay after falling backward, I could feel my blood begin to boil.
My fists were clenched, and I felt angry. I wanted to tell them in a different way, and even though he promised he wouldn’t say anything, Cole told them regardless. He told my parents that we’re in love and he’s the father. I couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t supposed to say anything at all. I didn’t want him to, and this was the reason why. My parents overreacted to everything that wasn’t in their little life plan for me. I hated it.
And now I was upset with Cole, too. Call it hormones or whatever, but I knew it was because he betrayed me. I had wanted to have a private talk with my dad. I didn’t want him to find out this way. I wanted to ease him into the idea of Cole being the dad and us being together and in love. Now that shot was ruined, and he hated Cole. I was growing more and more agitated.
“Get the fuck out of my house,” my dad yelled at Cole.
I didn’t want him to leave, but at the same time, I did feel upset that he had done this. He dropped this bomb on them like this. I wanted him to leave so that maybe I could get everything under control. Maybe I could get my parents to calm down and think about things rationally. I could explain what happened, and we could work through this.
We had to work through this. I wasn’t a little girl, but a part of me hoped my parents would support my pregnancy. What child doesn’t want their parents’ support when they are about to have a child of their own?
My mom went completely pale. I didn’t know if I’d ever seen her that way before, but I felt like this was the look she had on her face when she was on the phone with me last weekend. It was probably also the look when she first found out for herself.
“Get out of my house!” my dad yelled again.
I cringed at how loud he was. The noise level would have been so much worse in my studio than it was here. But then again, the closest neighbors were at least an eighth of a mile away.
“Okay,” Cole said. “I’ll go, but I’m still going to be there for Violet and for my child. I will do right by them. You have my word.”
He kissed my cheek and then showed himself out. Part of me wanted to grab onto him and make him stay because maybe I did need a little moral support here, but I knew my parents would never listen to me if he was still standing there. If he still stood in their home.
I knew then that was the end of their friendship. It broke my heart because they had been friends for so long, and now, here I was, ruining their friendship by getting knocked up. But I loved him. I loved him so much, and I couldn’t help it.
“How the hell could you?” my mother started to say.
I looked at her. “What Mom? What did I do now?” I was tired of the way she made me feel.
“You slept with a man that’s old enough to be your father, not to mention a serial womanizer. Or the fact that he’s your dad’s friend. I know his reputation, and I don’t even know how you could want to be with someone like that, let alone be reckless and get yourself knocked up by him!” My mom was starting to yell, and I cringed. I felt like a child, not like an adult, and I hated it.
She was making Cole out to look like some sort of evil person. It wasn’t fair.
“He’s not a serial womanizer,” I said, sticking up for him. Even though I was still upset at what he had done, I felt I couldn’t just stand here and let my mom attack him this way. He deserved to have someone stick up for him.
My mom’s eyes filled with tears, and as she began to speak, I could hear her voice crack. I didn’t understand why she was being so dramatic. I guessed that was just her thing, though. She always freaked out. Even over the smallest of incidents, she would lose her shit.
I remembered a time when I was five years old. Our housekeeper, Marie, had given me a cup of grape juice. My mom specifically lectured me on how not to spill it on my white dress because then it would be ruined and would have to go in the trash. She went on and on about how she had special ordered it for me and that it would completely break her heart if I ruined it.
I promised her I wasn’t going to spill it, and then as I took a sip, a very small drop slid down my chin and landed right on the top of my dress. It was minuscule and more than likely; no one would even realize it was there. But my mother lost it. She took the cup from me and poured the rest down the sink. She told me I couldn’t have juice or nice dresses ever again because I wasn’t responsible.
“I had plans for you,” she said.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down and choose my next words carefully, but it was hard.
“You had plans for me?” I asked her. “What the fuck does that mean? What about what I wanted?”
She looked at me as if I was dumb and didn’t actually know what I was saying.
“What you wanted was not best for our family,” she said, her voice still raised more than it should be.
Her sentence knocked me off guard. I didn’t know how to respond to that without telling her to shut the fuck up. Because it was bullshit that she could even think she had the right to plan my life out for me. I wasn’t a child anymore, and I desperately wanted her to know that.
“Now who will want you? You’re the girl that the billionaire knocked up. Do you really think he will stay with you when that baby gets here? You think he wants to be tied down? You think he is going to stick around and play happy family with you? No, he isn’t. Wake the fuck up, Violet. And get your shit together.”
“We are in love! He will stand by me, Mother!” I yelled back at her. I was tired of being treated like a child. I wasn’t a child, and she was really making my blood boil. I didn’t want to be here anymore. I didn’t want to have to deal with any of this. I just wanted to go home and hide under a rock. I wanted to hide away from the world.
My mom laughed, and I clenched my fists. I was getting so angry. I knew it wasn’t good for my baby, but why would my mom care? It’s not like she would want to make sure my unborn child, her grandchild, was okay. She just wanted to belittle me. To make me feel like a child she could control again.
My dad was staring at me. I could feel it. I wouldn’t turn to look at him because even out of the corner of my eye, I could see how disappointed and sad his eyes were. Why would I want to look at him and remember him looking at me like that?
They were treating me as if I had just committed some sort of crime. Like I had just murdered someone and told them about it. I had never ever been in trouble with the law, and I had always been very obedient. I had always listened to both of them and followed their strict rules.
Cole had been gone for just fifteen minutes, but I wished he was still there. I couldn’t handle this, my parents and the way they were treating me. The housekeeper brought my dad another brandy. I didn’t think he needed another drink, and I was not sure I wanted to stick around to see how he was after that one.
“How could you do this to your father?” my mom asked. The question knocked me off guard. It made my blood boil. I did not even look at her. I walked out of the kitchen and into the living room. I grabbed my purse from the coat rack and walked out of the front door without pausing or looking back. I didn’t need this. I didn’t need them. I kept thinking how I could do this with Cole. We could do this on our own, and we didn’t need their condescending voices breathing down our necks. We just needed each other. We needed to have faith in only each other.
It was dark, and I had no real way home, but I didn’t care. I needed to walk. I needed to clear my mind and try to get my feelings under control.
My whole life, people told me I should feel so lucky to have parents who cared about me, but if only they realized that my parents only ever truly cared about the image I set up for myself. Anything I did wrong was never discussed at home other than, “Do you understand the sort of reputation you are building for yourself? Do you understand what the tabloids are going to say?” It was endless lectures on how to do the right thing, or how I can make choices differently to be a good adult.
All I ever wanted was the type of parents I could talk to. I saw my friends in high school had that. They were close to their parents. Their parents were open books. I envied them. I had people tell me they wished they had my perfect life. But I wished I could have shown them what really went on behind closed doors.
I walked, and I walked until I couldn’t walk anymore. But by that point, I was standing outside of Cole’s house. I hadn’t realized I was headed this way until I was already at the front door. I wondered for a second if he was even here. Because there could have been a chance that he went back to New York. He could have gone back to his penthouse. But we were in the Hampton’s. So there had to have been a chance that he would still be there.
I rang the doorbell and waited. It took him thirty seconds to answer the door. And when he did, I practically leaped into his arms. I felt relief flood my body. But that relief quickly turned into sorrow and all I wanted was for him to hold me and tell me that everything was going to be okay.
“Violet, what happened? Why are you here?” He pulled me into his arms tightly.
But I couldn’t respond. I was too busy sobbing. The sounds of my cries filled my own ears, deafening me. I couldn’t even think straight. I just wanted to waste away and forget that tonight ever happened. I wanted to get away from everyone and everything.
He pulled me into his house and closed the door behind him. I tried to get a grip on my emotions, and I tried to calm down so that I could talk. But I just couldn’t seem to do that. He didn’t tell me I needed to stop crying. Instead, he soothed me, making me feel better and telling me that no matter what happened he was here for me.