POV: Violet
The city didn’t sleep, but I was desperate to.
Instead, I lay in bed with the sheets twisted around my legs, the hum of New York traffic seeping through my window like a lullaby gone wrong. My body was heavy, my eyes raw, but my mind? My mind refused to shut down.
Because he was out there.
I could feel Ryan’s presence the way you feel a storm before it breaks air thick, electric, impossible to ignore. Even though I’d whispered stay away at the glass, the truth was tangled somewhere between my ribs: I didn’t want him to.
I wanted the opposite. I wanted him close enough to erase the ache in my chest. Close enough that the world Victoria, the threats, the years we lost faded into nothing.
But instead, there was distance. A wall of silence I had built myself, and now I was su
