POV: Violet
The jacket was heavy in my hands.
Not in weight, but in meaning.
Ryan’s leather, smelling faintly of smoke and pine, still warm from his body. I shouldn’t have taken it, but my fingers betrayed me, curling into the fabric as if it was some lifeline.
And when my eyes flicked up to his, the intensity there nearly unraveled me.
“You didn’t have to wait,” I whispered, already exhausted by the sound of my own voice.
“I wasn’t waiting,” he said, voice low, rough. “I was making sure you came back.”
The words lodged somewhere in my chest, painful and protective all at once. Because if Ryan was a storm, then his devotion was the lightning—blinding, dangerous, impossible to ignore.
I hugged the jacket to my chest and tried to find air. “Ryan, you can’t keep—”
“Caring?” His jaw t
