Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79800 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79800 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Foster Vaughn: Professional athlete.
Officially on the Nashville Rampage roster.
Fuck yes!
There are a lot of hugs, handshakes, congratulations, and even more food. Hope really went all out, and now, maybe with my signing bonus and my salary, I can repay the Pruitts for everything they’ve done for me.
Hours later, once the guests have gone home and the mess has been cleaned up, I’m sitting out on the back patio with Violet in my lap. I’ve been waiting for there to be a moment when it’s just the two of us, and this is it.
I had planned to get on one knee, but she’s on my lap, snuggled up to my chest, and I like her here. I like her close, so instead of dropping to one knee, I pull the ring out of my pocket, along with my phone, so she’s not suspicious. I glance at my phone, not really seeing the screen at all, and drop it onto the lounger next to us. The ring is gripped lightly in my palm.
“I love you,” I tell her.
Her reply is soft, almost a whisper. “I love you, too.”
“Thank you for being here with me today.”
“You know I want to support you,” she says, placing her hands over mine that are wrapped around her waist.
“I want that every day, Vi. Every day of forever.” Unclasping my hand, I hold my sweaty palm out to her with the ring. “Marry me, Violet. Come with me to Nashville. Let’s build the life we’ve both always dreamed of.” I kiss her cheek, waiting for her answer.
The one that never comes.
The silence is deafening.
Finally, she moves off my lap to sit next to me on the lounger, facing me. She closes my fist around the ring, and my heart sinks to my toes. “I can’t marry you, Foster.”
Am I having a heart attack? I’m too young for that, right?
“What?” I rasp. I don’t understand. We’ve talked about this—our future, what we want out of life.
“I got into Johns Hopkins. Their program is intense, and their selection process is brutal. I didn’t think I’d get in, but I did, and I accepted. I’m moving to Maryland, Foster.”
“Maryland?”
She nods. “Yeah, it’s my dream school.”
“We had plans.”
She lifts her shoulders in a slight, helpless shrug. “Plans change, Foster. I love you—God, I do—and I’m so proud of you. But I have dreams I need to chase, and I can’t chase them in Nashville. I don’t want to be known as the wife of a professional athlete. I want to be known for being an incredible doctor.”
“Why can’t you be both? You were going to be both,” I say, the words catching as I try to make sense of what’s unraveling in front of me.
Silence settles between us—heavy, stretching, impossible to ignore. “I don’t want both, Foster. I know this isn’t what we planned, or what you ever expected, but I don’t want the life you’re about to step into. I’m sorry. I can’t marry you.”
I can’t marry you.
I can’t marry you.
I can’t marry you.
Her words loop through my head like a broken record, each repetition cutting deeper. I thought Violet was my forever—we planned for it, talked about every detail—so hearing this now knocks the ground out from under me.
“We can work it out,” I tell her, grasping for something solid. “You can go to Maryland, finish school, and we’ll figure the rest out. We always do.”
“Foster…” She exhales my name like an apology. “I don’t want to work it out. This is goodbye for us.” She leans in and presses a soft kiss to my cheek, and I hate how desperately I want to turn my head and catch her lips with mine. Hate that I gave her my heart after it had already been shattered so many times. I wasn’t sure it could ever be rebuilt, and now she’s breaking it all over again.
“So that’s it?” I whisper. “All the plans we made were just empty words? Promises with no weight, already broken before we even spoke them?”
“I never wanted to hurt you, Foster.”
I let out a short, bitter, humorless laugh. “Well, you did.” Heat flares in my chest, masking the ache with piercing pain. Anger mixed with the familiar sting of being left behind swirls in my gut. Violet is just one more person I trusted with my heart, only for her to crush it under her heel.
“Foster—” she begins, but I cut her off.
“Go. Just go, Violet.” My fist tightens instinctively, the ring biting into my palm—a cruel reminder of everything I thought we were building. The life I pictured, the future I thought we shared, all of it going up in smoke in a matter of minutes.
“I love you,” she whispers.
“Go!” I roar. The word tears out of me. How can she stand there and say she loves me while she’s breaking my heart? How can she refuse to marry me and still claim those words?