Shrinking Violet (Colors #2) (21 page)

“But I love him!” I shouted, no longer able to hold back the waterworks. “I love him, and he’s with somebody else!”

Mother sneered. “This is truly pathetic. A real woman wouldn’t sit around sobbing over some guy. A real woman would be out there doing anything necessary to get him back. Seriously, sometimes I don’t even recognize you. No daughter of mine would ever be such an embarrassment. If you can’t even keep the attention of someone like Parker Owens, I worry what that says about your future.”

Each harsh word was like a knife slicing into me, opening a fresh, throbbing wound with every swing of the blade. It was amazing, really, how in such a short amount of time, my own mother was able to make me feel two inches tall. The sad thing was, she wasn’t even really trying. She had a loaded arsenal of much more hurtful words. Everything she’d just said was child’s play considering some of the other insults she’d hurled my way over the years.

Yet the pain in my chest was more acute than it had been in a very long time. Because back then, I had someone else I could focus my energy into, someone I could lose myself in and forget about all the bad in my life.

But he was gone. He was with Freya. He was happy. And every day, I had to wake up and force myself to crawl out of bed and fake friendships with a group of people who were about as deep as puddles. I hated my life. I hated that Parker had found someone else who could make him smile. I hated my so-called friends. But the alternative was being alone.

That wasn’t an option.

So, despite my conscious screaming at me to stop, I did something I knew I would eventually make me hate myself even more.

I asked my mother for advice.

“What should I do? How do I get him back?”

“It’s quite simple, really,” she answered in a bored tone while inspecting her immaculate manicure. “You do whatever is necessary to get what you want. And you run over anybody standing in the way of you achieving your goal.”

“But—”

In the blink of an eye, Mother was on her feet right in front of me, her hand slicing through the air and coming down on my cheek in a stinging slap that brought a whole new wave of fresh tears to my eyes.

“Stop being so weak,” she hissed, “and start acting like the woman I raised you to be. Ashworth women get what they want, no matter the cost. Never forget that, Cassidy.”

Mother walked to my bedroom door as I stood in shock, immobilized as I held my hand to my burning cheek. She paused just long enough to look over her shoulder and dole out her parting shot.

“Now, stop your whining and clean your face. Some of the women from Junior League will be here for drinks shortly. I won’t tolerate you embarrassing me by looking like a piece of trash.”

Right then and there, I swore to myself that if I ever had a daughter, I would never cause her the pain my own parents caused me.

I would never make her feel as though she were nothing.

Like she was worthless.

Like my parents made me feel.

Jerking awake from my nightmare, my head turned to where Carson lay beside me, still sleeping soundly. Moonlight shown through the windows of his bedroom, lighting everything in a soft, pale white glow just bright enough to outline the beautiful features of his face.

Lifting up a shaky hand, I ran it across the clammy skin of my forehead, trying my best to calm my rapidly beating heart. I knew why I’d been plagued with reminders of my past. I understood that it was my guilty conscious nagging at me.

I was a horrible person.

There was no other way to describe myself. After our first night together, Carson had opened himself up completely, laying bare every single skeleton in his closet.

And I had kept my past locked tightly away behind a reinforced steel door. Carson hated bullies. He’d said exactly that, with so much vehemence I felt the chill down to my bones. Yet I still said
nothing
.

I was exactly as he described. I was the worst kind of coward.

It reaffirmed what I’d been telling myself all along. I didn’t deserve him.

But I couldn’t let him go. I just
couldn’t
. What I felt for him was something so different, so much stronger than I’d ever felt for another man. I knew I had to tell him the truth. I just needed to know he wouldn’t turn his back on me. I needed to know he’d
listen
, and let me explain that the person I was back then wasn’t who I was anymore.

But I couldn’t get rid of that feeling of foreboding that sat heavily on my chest. It was as if I held my redemption in my hands, watching it slip through my fingers like sand. And I was helpless to stop it.

As the days progressed and our relationship continued on the path we’d set, I struggled with the truth I was keeping from Carson. But instead of being honest, I let myself sink even further into the man I was falling more and more in love with every single day. I basked in the kisses and touches we shared during the days and lost myself in his body every night I was able to sneak away after Willow had gone to bed. It hadn’t been many with Carson still working at the bar, but we made the best out of the alone time we had together.

It had been two weeks of sheer joy, but the underlying tension I carried around with me was beginning to feel like a weight hanging heavily from my neck.

I had just finished canning the last of the strawberry jam I made when I felt Carson’s arms wrap around me from behind. I smiled as his warmth enveloped me.

“Hey, baby. What are you up to?”

God, I’d never get tired of hearing his voice. The deep rumble of it sent a shiver through me every single time.

“About to clean up and get Bug from Mother’s Day Out.” His forehead dropped to my shoulder and he let out an agonized grunt, causing me to turn around in his arms. “What’s wrong?” I asked as I stroked his stubble-covered cheek.

“It’s Navie,” he answered as he stepped back and rested against the island.

“What about her?”

“We got into it yesterday.” His hands came up and roughly rubbed over his face. It was clear he was upset about fighting with Navie, and my heart tore just a little at the tension in his expression.

“What did you guys fight about?”

“She threw a fit when I tried to give her money for her prom dress. She said I already do too much for her as it is, and she refuses to take another dime from me to get her a dress.”

I could understand where Navie was coming from, but I kept that thought to myself. I understood how she sometimes felt like a burden to him, even though he never once saw it that way.

“Well, what if I buy it for her?” I asked, trying to come up with a solution. “I mean, if she won’t let you help because she thinks you’ve already done too much for her, maybe she’ll let me instead.”

Carson’s head was already shaking before I even finished talking. “Won’t work, Violet. That girl’s stubborn as hell. She said if she can’t find a way to pay for that stuff herself, she just won’t go. I swear that hard-headed girl is gonna be the death of me. Why do women have to be so damn difficult?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. He sounded so much like a whiny little boy, and it was kind of adorable.

“Glad you find this funny.” He glared petulantly.

I walked up to him and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Ah, honey.” I giggled. “She comes by her stubborn streak honestly. You two might not have the same blood running through your veins, but that doesn’t mean you don’t share some annoyingly similar characteristics.”

“What teenage girl refuses to go to prom if she can’t buy her own dress? It’s ridiculous!” he said, throwing his hands up in the air in frustration.

I stopped laughing and tried to think of a solution to their problem. A bright smile spread across my lips when a sudden stroke of genius hit me.

“I think I might have a plan.”

He looked down at me skeptically. “Care to share it with the class, sweetheart?”

“You just leave that up to me. But I’ll need your help at the farmer’s market tomorrow. You in?”

His lips tipped up in the corners as he leaned down to give me a light kiss. “I’m always in, Violet.”

“Carson! Carson! CARSON!”

I turned around to see Willow charging toward me where I stood near the barn.

“Hey, Doodle Bug.” I laughed as she practically threw herself into my arms, giving me no choice but to grab her or risk her falling on her behind. Propping the little girl on my hip, I looked over to see Cassidy walking toward us, about a yard away, laughing at her little girl’s antics.

“Look it! I made you a pwetty pictew!”

Right then, I noticed a bright pink piece of construction paper waving around in her itty-bitty hand.

“You did?” I asked, a little stunned that Bug had actually thought of me enough to make me a picture. I’d been working at Willow Ranch for months and in that time, I’d grown really close to Bug. The little girl was impossible not to love. Once she’d decided you were someone worthy of her time, she was a relentless little thing. She showered you with her love and adoration, making you feel like one of the luckiest people on Earth, but it still stunned me sometimes just how much the little girl had managed to burrow her way inside my heart.

“Yuh-huh. We’s made pictews for ouw daddies today. But I don’t have a daddy cuz Mommy said he lives weally faw away. So I made it fow you cuz if I could pick a daddy, I would pick you.”

My breath hitched as my heart began beating a frantic pace in my chest. I barely heard the sound of Cassidy’s gasp over the blood rushing in my ears.
Holy shit!
This little girl—this amazing, warm, bright little girl—just told me that if she could pick her own father, she’d pick me. I had no idea how to respond to that other than to hold her even tighter against me as my chest swelled with a foreign emotion so strong, I felt a knot form in my throat, making it almost impossible to talk.

Bug looked up at me with those big, innocent eyes and asked, “Do you like it?”

It took everything I had to pull my gaze away from her adorable little face and look down at the picture she was holding up. Glued to the pink paper was a bunch of dried beans in what I could only assume was the shape of a heart. As I stared down at the wonky design only a toddler could create, I couldn’t remember ever loving something as much as that neon piece of construction paper.