POV: Violet
My office door shut behind me with a sharp click.
The sound rattled in my chest, too final, too loud. I dropped into my chair, hands trembling as I set the clipboard down. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and lavender air freshener the same combination I’d lived with for years but suddenly it felt suffocating.
He was here.
Not in a dream. Not in a hallucination conjured by my exhausted brain.
Here.
Ryan Harrison.
Five years. Five years of stitching myself together, of building a life that looked good from the outside but was hollow in places no scalpel could fix. And in the span of three seconds in that hallway, he had ripped the stitches wide open.
My chest burned, the phantom ache of old wounds bleeding fresh. I pressed my palms against my face and willed myself
