Archive of Our Own

I had barely turned 17 when my dad was dead along with my aunt, uncle, best friend's dad, and a number of other parents. Barely 17, and suddenly it became my responsibility to care for them all.

I knew I didn't technically count as an orphan when my mother was alive. I just had no clue where she was. She'd left on my tenth birthday with no explanation and never looked back.

17 felt too old to be placed in foster care when I'd turn 18 the next year anyway, but the law made it happen. For three months I was stuck there, and music became the only thing that made sense. My cousin Bodhi and best friend Garrick learned guitar with me. When I played, I didn't have to think about the dead parents, the missing mother, the foster home that felt like a holding cell. I just had the strings under my fingers and the vibration in my chest.

Three months later we were separated into different homes. I ended up with a good foster father named Lindell who'd also stopped two siblings from being separated  Liam and Sloane. Liam became as close to me as Bodhi and Garrick were and they became the brother and sister i'd never known i needed or wanted.

Meeting Brennan Sorrengail was a pure accident. I was hanging out at a park, strumming songs on a late Saturday afternoon. He was in his Air Force uniform, watching us. He started a conversation, gave me his number, and kept coming back each time we played. Eventually I trusted him enough to accept an invitation to his parents' house.

The Sorrengail house was massive. Old brick, ivy up the side, a porch swing that creaked. The kind of house that had history in its bones.

I walked in and the first thing I saw was photos everywhere. Military graduations, deployments. And one girl same hair as Brennan, same sharp jaw kept appearing in frame after frame.

What I would learn that night was the baby of the family. She wasn't a baby, not really,   her and her siblings just had massive age gaps. She'd nearly died at birth and was treated like she was fragile because of it.

I never saw her as fragile. I thought she was spectacular.

I first saw her tucked into a corner of the couch, half-hidden behind some massive book. Her long brown hair with almost silver-like ends was falling out of a braid. She looked up when she heard the door open. I didn't know whether to smile or nod, so I did neither and looked the other way.

"Vi, this is Xaden," Brennan said. "The ones I was talking to you about before I went on deployment."

She closed her book. Looked at me. Fourteen years old and already had a way of seeing through shit that made me want to check if my skin was still on straight.

"Hi," she said.

"Hey."

That was it. That was the whole fucking thing.

I kept coming back. Not just because Brennan kept inviting me. Not just because Liam had become best friends with her. I came back for her.

She'd sit at dinners and watch me when she thought I wasn't looking. I'd catch her staring and she'd look away, but never fast enough. Her hair was always falling out of whatever she tied it back with. Dark. Thick. I wanted to touch it so bad it made my hands ache.

The first real conversation we had was at two in the morning in her kitchen. A few months after I'd met her, Brennan made me stay the night. I couldn't sleep. Came down for water. Found her at the table with a notebook and cold tea.

"Couldn't sleep either?" she asked.

"Something like that."

I sat across from her. She pushed a box of crackers toward me without being asked. Silence stretched between us, but it wasn't awkward. It was the most comfortable I'd felt in months.

"Brennan says you play guitar," she said.

"Yeah."

"Play me something."

"Right now?"

"Yeah. Right now."

I played her a riff I'd been working on. She listened with her chin in her hand, eyes half-closed, and when I finished she said, "That's about losing someone, isn't it?"

I stared at her.

"Just a guess," she said, and went back to her notebook.

I didn't sleep that night.

The years blurred after that. I remember fragments.

Her at fifteen, laughing at something Liam said, head thrown back, hair catching the light.

Her at sixteen, wearing my hoodie. The one she'd stolen months ago and never gave back. I never asked for it. I wanted her to keep it.

I got better at guitar. Fast. By eighteen I was insane with it. By nineteen I started a cover band with Garrick and Bodhi — The Marked Dragons. I taught myself to sing. Crowds grew. Agents called. Labels offered.

She wasn't allowed to come. Underage. Her mom couldn't stand me. I hated it. Hated that I'd play a set and look for her in the crowd even though I knew she wouldn't be there.

I kept telling myself there was no way I could ever fall for her. That she was just my friend's baby sister. I kept avoiding the inevitable truth until Garrick picked up on it before I did.

Then Brennan cornered me in the garage.

"She's fifteen, Xaden."

"I know how old she is."

"Do you? Because the way you looked at her tonight —" He stopped. Ran a hand over his face. "She's my baby sister. She nearly died coming into this world. And if you so much as look at her the wrong way again, I swear to fucking God I will end you."

I didn't say anything. What was there to say? He was right.

"I swear to you," I said finally. "I'll stay away from her."

I tried. God, I tried.

I started pulling away. Fewer texts back. Shorter visits. I stopped meeting her eyes across the dinner table. She noticed — Violet Sorrengail noticed everything. She started pulling away too, and I told myself that was what I wanted.

I was wrong. But I didn't figure that out until years later.

The night everything broke, she was fifteen. I was eighteen.

She snuck out to see me play. Liam had convinced her. I saw her the second I walked off stage, tucked behind a pillar, hood up, shaking.

I pulled her outside.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

"I wanted to see you play."

"Vi, your mom is going to kill me."

"Nothing's going to happen to me. I'm with you."

The way she said it. Like I was safe.

But I'd just found out about my father that week. Found out what he really was. Found out about the engagement contract he'd signed in my name.

She stepped closer. Went up on her toes. Her hand touched my chest.

And I lost it.

I shoved her back. Not hard enough to hurt physically, but hard enough that she stumbled.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"I, I thought "

"You thought wrong." My voice was venom. "You're a child, Violet."

"I don't care about any of that."

"Well I do. You're a distraction. A liability. I don't have time to babysit my friend's little sister while she plays dress-up at my shows."

She flinched like I'd hit her.

"Fuck you, Xaden."

"Go home, Violet. And don't come to my shows again."

I turned and walked back inside. I didn't look back.

She didn't try to contact me after that. Liam ignored me for a month.

The years after blurred. The Marked Dragons became a name that meant something. I signed a deal.

Cat happened somewhere in there. Not a choice. A contract. My father's handwriting on paper I didn't know existed until his lawyer pulled it out at the reading. I was seventeen when they told me about it. Eighteen when they made it official. Nineteen when I ended it.

Nine months in. I broke it off.

But contracts don't just disappear. Her family kept pushing. Kept calling her my fiancée. Kept pretending the deal was still alive.

I spent years trying to untangle myself from it. And through all of it, I stayed away from her. Because it was easier to let her hate me than to risk destroying her.

I heard things about her over the years. From Liam, mostly. She was doing okay. Studying creative writing. Still in Boston. She asked about me sometimes — not in a way that meant anything, he'd say quickly, just in passing.

I never asked him to tell me more. I just let the information sit in my chest like a bruise I kept pressing on.

NOW

I'm standing in a dorm hallway, rain dripping off my jacket, and Violet Sorrengail is looking at me like I'm a stranger.

She's twenty. She's beautiful. And she's staring at me with six years of unanswered questions in her eyes.

And Cat walks through the door behind me, links her arm through mine, and says, "You must be Violet," like she's been waiting for this moment her whole life.

I watch it all fall apart in real time. Vi's face goes through about six stages of something I can't name. Recognition. Hurt. Then that wall she's gotten so good at building slams down.

She doesn't answer Cat. She looks at me. Just me.

And I can't say anything. Because what the fuck do I say?

She's not my fiancée. She's my father's mistake. I've spent six years thinking about you and I'm a coward who couldn't figure out how to come back.

None of it comes out.

Vi walks away. I watch her go. Watch her hand hit the stairwell door. Watch her disappear.

Cat's voice, light, cruel. "Relax, Xaden. I'm not going to tell your little friend anything she doesn't already need to know. That's your job, isn't it?"

I spin on her. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Me?" She laughs. "I'm not the one who let her walk away without telling her the truth. That's all you, darling."

I want to hit something. Instead I go after Violet.

We talk. It isn't left on good terms. I know I need to go, but I can't leave it like this.

"Vi, wait."

"What?"

"I have to go. But I didn't pull away from you because of anything you did." My thumb moves once, absently, over the inside of her wrist. "I pulled away because I couldn't trust myself not to"

"Liam gave me your phone number. Don't be mad at him. It's my fault. I told him I wanted to surprise you and give you VIP tickets for tomorrow night."

I'm gone before she can respond.

I get in the car. Cat's already driving before my door closes. She doesn't speak. Neither do I. The dorm disappears behind us. Rain on the windshield. Streetlights blur past.

I pull out my phone. Open her contact. Liam already saved it. Violence — Violet.

I stare at it for a long time. Then I type. Delete. Type again. My hands are shaking.

Cat glances over. Says nothing.

I hit send before I can lose my nerve.

I know I don't deserve it or have any right to talk to you but I have years of explanation that I need to talk to you about. I'm sorry for that night. I'm sorry for leaving. I'm sorry for every day I didn't come back. I've been in love with you since the moment I met you and I've never stopped. Not once. Not for a second. Please. Just let me explain.