Page 37 of Follow My Heart

“Violet?” I asked, adjusting to a more comfortable position on the bed.

Her face filled my screen. Her eyes were wide.

I glanced down at my body just now remembering I was only wearing basketball shorts. I wasn’t prepared to see anyone tonight.

I reached for the shirt I’d thrown off when I lay down on the bed. “Sorry. You want me to put on a shirt?”

Her cheeks were pink. “Not on my account.”

I chuckled, liking that I was affecting her.

She looked away, and her cheeks flushed pink. “I wanted to talk to you. Your texts?—”

“I shouldn’t have let loose on you like that. You don’t want to hear me complain about my marriage.”

“I don’t mind. I want to get to know you better.”

“For years, I let my wife dictate my choices. I didn’t even realize that she’d isolated me from my family until recently. She used so many excuses. When Faith was young, it was too long of a drive for a baby. Then later, our family was in Virgina.”

“We don’t always see what’s happening in a relationship until later.”

Had she experienced something similar?

“I assume the relationship is one thing,” she continued, “but then it turns out not to be something else. I thought there might be a future, or something more serious, but the guy’s there to have fun.” Violet shrugged. “Maybe I want something that doesn’t exist.”

“What’s that?”

“Love. The kind that lasts forever.” Violet shook her head, letting out an exasperated sigh. “I sound crazy right now.”

“Why is wanting to love and be loved crazy?” That was everyone’s base desire. Whether they admitted it to themselves was another matter entirely.

“Most guys I meet aren’t ready for commitment. They just want to have fun with their friends.”

“I don’t know who’ve you been dating, but they sound immature.”

“I thought I’d be married and have kids by now. Instead, I worked at an office like my parents wanted for years, biding my time to open the shop. If my grandmother hadn’t given me the money, I’d still be in Florida working the front desk of a medical office.”

I shook my head. “You would have figured it out.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “How can you be so sure?”

“You wouldn’t have wanted to give up on your dreams. You would have found a way to make it happen. You weren’t saving those ice-cream decorations for no reason.”

“I think it was good for me to get away from my parents and my sister. When I was there, I felt less than. Like I wasn’t capable or smart. But here I feel so much freer.”

“It takes guts to even start a business. Most people never take that risk. They just talk about all the things that they wanted to do, never taking the first step.”

“It was brave. I had Grandpa’s support, but I did it on my own,” Violet said with a touch of awe in her voice, as if she’d never thought of it that way.

“You did.”

“Thank you. I guess I don’t stop long enough to think about how far I’ve come and what I’ve accomplished. I’m always thinking about how much further I have to go.”

“That’s a good reminder for me too. I felt like a failure when Stacy first mentioned divorce. But I’ve figured out a lot of things about myself. What I want in a partner. Who I am. The nonnegotiables.”

Violet smiled. “We’re both growing.”

“That’s life, right? We keep going. It’s a never-ending process.”

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