"I love you, Violet. Now call Dana and get her on this. You know that she's going to rain hell on Simon for doing this, right? We'll see you when you get home."
"I love you too, Dan. So much."
2.
As I'd suspected, Dana had been ready for this moment, and she told Violet that Simon would have a whole truckload of legal trouble landing on his head as soon as she could get the documents signed by the necessary people. I'm not even vaguely a lawyer, so I won't try to spell out what she did, but it turned out that in the intervening six weeks, Dana had gotten three women ready to come forward to press charges of sexual assault, another who would testify that he'd told her about poking holes in condoms as a joke (and that he had photos of them), yet another who would talk about a covered-up drunk-driving accident, and a whole list more who were ready with evidence regarding fraudulent business dealings (those I did understand, but I'm not going to relate them here). Apparently, all of these women were going to come forward as one group either on his birthday - May 15 - or when he filed suit against Violet, whichever came first.
After the news broke the following morning, Simon withdrew the suit, but it was too late. In the following weeks, another two dozen women came forward with accusations or lawsuits of their own. His dad, knowing that his son's goose was cooked and that if he didn't want to see his business collapse along with it, cut Simon loose (albeit with a million-dollar check). Apparently, he'd put a provision in Simon's trust that would have turned a 51% share in the company over to his son if he'd "produced a male heir" by the time he was thirty. Simon had waited too long to get himself a regular old wife and son, and control of the company was going to go to his younger sister instead, once dear old dad decided he was done. He'd known about Alex, of course (the other condom incidents had either resulted in no pregnancies, abortions, or in two cases, baby girls, which according to his dad's outdated will, didn't count). It wasn't that there was a hard clock on anything, per se, but Simon's sister was already showing that she could run the business, and he was worried that his dad would change the will. Only now, instead of just being a very rich man with a history of bad actions but no control over a massive fortune, he was in a metric fuckton of trouble.
As Dana had predicted, Simon (or someone in his family) ended up covering her legal fees - which I'm sure turned out to be quite spectacular, as complex as it all became. Over drinks the next night, Roger confessed to me that, while he was one hundred percent behind Violet and had not hesitated for a second when Rose had asked him if he was willing to take out a second mortgage on the house to pay for Violet's legal bills, he had "driven to every church, temple, mosque, and shrine" he could find to pray for this outcome. After all, he did have two kids that were going to go to college someday. I would have laughed, but the next suburb over has the most churches per capita of any in the country. He was a busy man.
3.
We hadn't explicitly begun discussing marriage, but we'd reached the point where it was lurking behind every conversation. We were buying a house together, for one. Alex called me "Dada," for another. During the weeks Millie and Adam were with their mom, I lived with Violet and Alex. I didn't even go back to my apartment anymore during those weeks except to check my mail and make sure that nothing had exploded or gotten really nasty in the fridge or anything. When I had my kids, Violet and Alex were at my place more nights than they weren't. She clearly wasn't their mom, or a parent (or a step-parent), but Millie and Adam were respectful to her.
Violet and I talked a lot about parenting. She wanted to understand why I made the choices I did regarding my kids. It was complicated, because I generally tried to keep the same basic rules when they were with me as they had when they were with their mom, but of course, Liz and I were different people, and we did the same things differently. And I made it clear to Millie and Adam that if they were with Violet and I wasn't around, they were to listen to her. She would expect them to follow rules I'd set up about bedtime, homework, food, and that kind of thing, but I also expected that she'd be her own person. If there was conflict, we'd talk about it. On the rare cases where she did something differently than I'd anticipated, we talked afterwards about why. It was difficult in some ways, giving up control over all things (part of me would always be my dad's son, no matter how much I might wish it were otherwise). But in others, it was easy. Violet clearly loved my kids, as I loved hers. And they were growing to love her back.
I certainly talked with my counselor about these kinds of things, having learned early after Liz and I had separated that keeping a journal of the things I ran into in between appointments where I wasn't quite sure how to handle them or where my first reaction was too much an echo of something I could have seen my parents do to feel like it was the right choice for me allowed me to set them aside until I could actually work on them. It didn't keep me from saying or doing stupid things, but it did keep me from continuing to dig once I found myself in a hole.
And having the whole Simon situation behind us opened Violet up to counseling of her own. One night, a couple of weeks after everything went down, we were in bed recovering from a particularly passionate evening of sex. My kids were with Liz, it was a Friday, and we'd stayed up later than usual teasing each other to build up our desire before Violet finally pushed me down on the floor and rode me hard, reverse-cowgirl style. I loved watching her ass piston up and down as she rode me, and I grabbed her hips and fucked up into her while she played with her clit. I held out from coming long enough for her to reach her second orgasm (aided, no doubt, by the quickie handjob she'd given me in the shower that morning) but then emptied myself into her as her pussy squeezed me and she soaked me and the towels we'd learned to put down. We dragged ourselves up into bed, drank some water, and cuddled.
Violet had been unusually quiet during sex that night - usually when we could take our time like that, she talked a lot, knowing how much I enjoyed hearing her talk dirty to me - but while her body had been on fire, and she'd made the usual noises of pleasure, she hadn't actually said much. I held her against me, her head laying on my chest, feeling the softness of her breasts pressing into me, her fingers tracing through the hairs on my stomach, the wetness of her groin against my hip, her leg wrapped over mine. This quiet intimacy meant as much to me as the more furious kind we'd just completed. We fit together both ways.
I thought Violet was falling asleep and was trying to figure out how to grab the blanket when I heard her speak. "I don't want to lose you, Dan."
I recognized her tone as the one she used when she had more to say. This wasn't her asking for reassurance. This was her telling me something. I rubbed her back and waited for her to continue. Eventually she did. "You haven't given me any indications that I'm going to. Lose you. But I still get scared sometimes."
She took a deep breath.
"I've avoided getting help - professional help - for a lot of reasons. Mostly because I'm scared that this can't be fixed. That this part of me will always be like this. That I'll always have to wonder if some day you're just going to completely change who you've shown me you are because it's all some kind of trick. And...
Violet paused. I felt a tear, hot and wet, drip from her cheek onto my chest. I kissed the top of her head but stayed quiet. She sniffed, then continued in a thick voice. "And I don't know if I could take that. But I don't think that's real. I don't think someone like you would treat me the way you do just to trick me. I don't think that your family and my family would all join in and help you do that.
"So I'm going to talk to someone. To see if I can maybe let this fear go. Could...could you maybe ask your counselor if she knows someone - not her, I don't think that would be a good idea - but someone else who could try to help me?"
I kissed Violet on top of her head again, holding my lips there. My eyes were filled with tears now, too. I loved her so much. I knew how hard it was to decide to ask for help, and I was so proud of her. "Of course I can, my love. Of course I can."
Violet tilted her face up to meet mine and she kissed me softly. "Do you have any idea what it does to me when you call me your love?"
I kissed her back. "My love."
Her hand slid down my stomach to cup my cock. Somewhat surprisingly, given the intensity of our coupling earlier, I felt blood start moving towards it.
"You say that, and it makes me want to be with you forever." Violet kissed me again, her tongue slipping through her lips to meet mine.
"Good." I pushed her over on her back and positioned myself between her legs. "My love."
"Make me yours. Now and forever."
Her pussy was absolutely soaked, and her groan when I slid in was deep and primal. She locked her legs behind me and we started to rock together. My face was only inches from hers, but we kept our eyes locked on each other's the whole time, looking for and finding exactly what we needed. My cock wasn't moving in and out of her very much, but every millimeter felt exquisite, and I knew it wouldn't be long until I filled her.
Violet just started whispering the word "yes" over and over, looking into my eyes, and I knew what she was saying. She was calling out her rise to her climax, sure, but she was also answering the question she knew I was asking without words. As her orgasm overtook her, she softly cried "Yes, oh god, yes, a thousand times yes" and I kissed her hard and emptied myself into her.
Afterward, we didn't speak of what I knew we'd decided. I wanted to buy her a ring and ask her properly (at least with a story we could share with others), and I think she needed to go find herself a counselor and talk to them, too. Not that either of us had any doubts. There was just a certain order of things.
4.
I knew it was the house for us as soon as I saw it. From the look on Violet's face, she felt the same way. Sometimes a house looks great in its listing but you see it and discover it's a trick of angles and staging. Other times, it looks good but just isn't right for you for whatever reason. This one, though - this was perfect. It was a Cape Cod that had grown over the years and had space for all five of us (for the every-other-week when Millie and Adam lived with us), plus a lovely kitchen, space for Violet and me to work from home when we wanted to, and a beautiful backyard with a deck that would be great when family came over. Not only did we want to be able to host Rose and Roger and their kids, but I'd gotten the news recently that my brother TJ and his husband Keith and their kiddos were moving back to the area. I'd really missed seeing my family more than at Christmas or once in a blue moon. We would, of course, do our due diligence and all that jazz, but unless something came up, this was it.
When we found the house, it was nearing the end of May. We immediately put an offer in on it (thankfully, the kids liked it as much as Violet and I did), working with our agent to craft the best one we could, and after a week of negotiations, Violet and I found out that our offer had been accepted. With inspections and the loan paperwork and all of that, that meant we were shooting for a closing date at the beginning of August. That was good, because it would give us time to get settled before the start of school and keep the disruption to the kids' lives as contained as we could. They'd be in two new homes, their mom would be married, Violet and Alex would be living with me, and they'd be in a new school, but at least they'd still get to keep the same "every-other-week with each parent" schedule.
Once the offer was signed, things got really chaotic. The kids had to get ready to fly to Florida with their mom for her wedding, we had to pack up two apartments and what was left in a house (she and Liam had begun moving things over to his place as soon as everything was official, but she and the kids were still living there until the end of the school year), I needed to go ring shopping, and there were a few conversations I wanted to have before I officially popped the question. The first was with Liz.
It was still strange to see the "SOLD" sign in front of our old house, and stranger still to see rooms three-quarters boxed up or tagged with price stickers. My personal items had been moved out a long time ago, but a lot of the things that were left were things Liz and I had purchased together. She didn't have any need for most of them in Liam's house, and I'd already gone through and identified the things I wanted (like outdoor stuff and the lawnmower and things - the kinds of things neither Violet or I would have for our apartments but we'd need for a house). The rest would be donated or sold. It was hard not to feel a little melancholy.
I could see that Liz felt it too, but it was mixed in with a thousand other things, as I remembered well from when we'd planned our wedding together years earlier. I helped her for a while, mostly because there was just so much to do, and I let her tell me about all the things she was in the middle of doing. It felt good to be friends with her again, even if it was a strange kind of friendship. We couldn't help but spend some time on memory lane with a few of the items we uncovered, especially as we got into the deep recesses of the attic (I noticed that she was more than willing to let me take on that chore), but neither of us wanted to get lost in the past when there was so much in the future to look forward to. Eventually, we reached a natural stopping point and we grabbed a couple of beers to take into the backyard.
