POV: Violet
Sleep was a stranger that week.
I lay awake most nights, staring at the cracks in my ceiling, listening to the hum of the city beyond my window. Even exhaustion couldn’t drag me under. Because every time I closed my eyes, I saw him.
Ryan.
Storm blue eyes. Whiskey rough voice. The way he said rabbit like it was a prayer and a curse all at once.
I’d survived five years without him. Five years of carefully stitching my world together, of building something solid, something mine. I had my work, my patients, my godmother’s house just down the block, John’s steady friendship, Kendra’s chaotic energy.
It wasn’t a perfect life. But it was safe.
Now? Safety felt like a fragile illusion.
Because Ryan Harrison had walked back into my orbit, and safety had never once been part of w
