Chapter 14
fourteen
. . .
Violet
The next morning, I’m blinking against the fluorescent lights and the buzz of the reception printer, the memory of Rowan’s voice echoing somewhere in the back of my mind. It slinks in briefly before I shove the thought away and slip the clipboard into my palm.
Deep breath. Professional smile.
I tug open the exam room door and call into the waiting room, “Mr. Biscuit?”
A woman stands.
Quinn Whitaker. The girl who spent half of our junior year draped over Rowan every chance she got.
She’s exactly the same and yet completely different with her shiny blonde hair, high-waisted jeans, and too-casual smile.
She approaches like we’re about to grab mimosas and talk about our husbands at brunch.
She’s holding a tiny tabby with murder in its eyes and a pink carrier dangling from one wrist like it’s a fashion accessory.
I don’t know if my smile holds. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, because my lips feel like they’re made of glass, and one wrong move will shatter the whole fragile thing.
“Quinn,” I manage, keeping my voice professional even though my stomach just dropped somewhere around my ankles. “Hi.”
She lights up like we’re old friends. As if she isn’t already delighting in the fact that I’m standing here in cat hair and Crocs while she’s channeling a Pinterest board.
“Oh my god, Violet! I didn’t realize you worked here!
” She shifts Mr. Biscuit to her other arm, and the cat hisses, clearly sharing my sentiment. “It’s been forever!”
I nod once, my face frozen somewhere between polite and professionally numb. “Come on back.”
She trails after me into the exam room, settling Mr. Biscuit on the table like he’s royalty. I turn to pull gloves on, buying myself a second to breathe.
Quinn leans casually against the counter. “I swear, this cat is testing me. He’s thrown up three times in the last two days—once in my Fendi tote.”
I hum, checking the chart. “Any other symptoms? Lethargy? Appetite changes?”
She shrugs, glossy lips twitching. “Not really. He eats, knocks things off shelves just for fun.”
I jot a few notes, keeping my eyes down. I can feel her watching me, the quiet stretching too long.
“So…” she starts, voice lilting with sugar. “I ran into Rowan last weekend.”
I don’t look up. “Oh?”
“Yeah. At that hole in the wall place. He was with a couple guys we graduated with. Good lord, he looks good.” She laughs, breezy and cruel without meaning to be.
I force a neutral hum. Quinn was the resident high school mean girl who apparently never outgrew the need to stick her perfectly manicured fingers into everyone else’s business.
She was never heartless in the obvious ways—no shoving people into lockers or stealing lunch money.
No, Quinn was surgical. A well-placed comment here, a too-sweet smile there, always showing up exactly where she wasn’t wanted with that innocent “I’m just being honest” routine that made you feel crazy for being upset.
She made it her mission to know everyone’s secrets. It was like she could smell vulnerability the way sharks smell blood in the water.
“We got to talking,” she continues, absently stroking Mr. Biscuit’s fur. “He mentioned he ran into you.”
My hands still for just a moment before I resume examining the grumpy tabby. “Let’s focus on your cat, Quinn.”
“Oh, come on, Violet. We’re not kids anymore.” Her voice has that practiced casualness that never quite masks the curiosity underneath.
“I think it’s cute,” she goes on, flipping her hair over one shoulder, her bracelets jingling. “High school sweethearts finding their way back to each other.”
“We weren’t sweethearts,” I say a little too quickly. Mr. Biscuit gives me a judgmental look.
Quinn laughs, the sound like wind chimes but somehow shriller. “Right. Just two people who stared at each other for four years and never did anything about it.” She leans in, lowering her voice. “I know you always had a thing for him.”
My cheeks flush, and I hate myself for it. Professional. I need to be professional.
“Mr. Biscuit probably has a hairball issue. We can prescribe a paste that should help.”
Quinn hums, clearly amused by my attempt to steer the conversation back to the cat. “Relax,” she says, waving a perfectly manicured hand. “You don’t have a thing to worry about. I’m a married woman now.”
My eyes flick up in spite of myself.
She smirks. “Owen’s in finance. Hedge funds or something equally soul crushing. My dad set us up—said it was time I started choosing stability over thrill.” She laughs again, too loud for the quiet exam room. “Had to leave the bad boys behind.”
She says it like it’s a joke, but my insides are currently staging a full-blown riot.
I wonder how many other women have thought the same thing about Rowan, and I hate it because he’s not that.
They saw the scuffed shoes, the quiet moods he never explained, and they wrote him off as some brooding cliché.
A thrill to chase, a mistake to outgrow.
They didn’t see him drop off groceries for the neighbor he swore he didn’t like.
They didn’t catch the way he flinched when his dad’s truck pulled up too fast in the driveway.
Rowan was never just a “bad boy.” That label never fit right, but he wore it anyway because it was easier than proving them all wrong. He was always more.
It guts me that I’m the only one who ever saw it. That maybe he stopped believing he could be anything else.
“Right,” I say, tone clipped as I scribble words onto Mr. Biscuit’s chart. “We’ll get him started on the paste and keep an eye on things from there.”
Quinn doesn’t notice the shift. She’s too busy looking at her reflection in the steel exam table, checking her lipstick.
That still doesn’t squash the familiar trace of protectiveness that rises in me. Whatever this is, it’s deeper than old crushes and unrequited teenage pining.
After Quinn breezes out, floral perfume trailing behind her, I rest my palms on the counter and exhale through my nose.
Professional. I’m professional.
Mr. Biscuit’s chart stares up at me like sure you are, and I flip it shut with a little more force than necessary.
I grab the file for the next appointment and head toward exam room two, trying not to think about the fact that Rowan is apparently a highlight reel in Quinn’s memory.
The next patient is a golden retriever with a limp. His owner’s an older man who smells like pipe smoke and tells me all about his granddaughter’s rodeo ribbons while I check the dog’s paw.
It’s a welcome distraction, until I look down at Moose’s hopeful face and imagine Rowan at sixteen, sprawled out on my parents’ lawn when they weren’t home with our dog’s head in his lap, sun turning his skin gold.
I blink, shake it off, and focus on the job in front of me.
If I let myself go there…I’m not sure I’ll be able to climb back out.
My limbs are like overcooked noodles, and my brain’s still chasing Quinn’s words in an endless loop. I toe off my shoes in the entryway of my condo and toss my keys into the ceramic bowl. It clinks too loudly. I wince.
The kitchen stares at me like it’s expecting effort. I stare back like absolutely not.
I order Chinese from the place that always forgets the sauce, shrug into one of my oldest hoodies, the cuffs loose and frayed from where I used to tug on them, and sink onto the couch with a sigh.
I’m halfway through convincing myself that lo mein counts as self-care when my phone buzzes against the arm of the couch.
I stretch for it without moving anything but my fingers—peak exhaustion—and when I see Rowan’s name on the screen, my pulse does that traitorous little stutter.
Rowan:
Be honest. Did I always look this much like a lumberjack or does the five o’clock shadow age me ten years?
I huff out a laugh through my nose, the sound muffled by fleece. My thumb hovers over the keyboard, but my brain’s already wandered somewhere it shouldn’t.
Because truthfully? The stubble works. Makes him look less like the boy who left and more like a man who came back.
And god, he wears it well. That scruff along his jaw, the way it frames his mouth… It’s wildly unfair, but I’m not about to tell him that.
Me:
You look like you give cryptic advice to hikers and then vanish into the fog.
Rowan:
So…rugged and wise?
Me:
More like “possibly feral.”
I can practically hear his laugh through the screen, and something in my chest loosens. This part of him was always mine. The quick wit. The inside jokes.
Rowan:
Just wait. I’m about three weeks away from talking to squirrels and living off-grid.
Me:
You always did have Big Hermit Energy.
Rowan:
Is it weird that I miss you more when you’re roasting me?
My fingers still over the keyboard. I don’t have an answer that doesn’t give too much away. Thankfully, the doorbell saves me.
I grab the food off the porch, clutching the warm bag against my chest as I kick the door shut with my heel. My phone blinks with Rowan’s message, still unanswered.
It’s always been like this between us. The banter flows like water—effortless, natural, a current we both know how to navigate. We could trade quips for hours, our words dancing around each other in perfect rhythm. It was the easiest thing in the world.
But the moment something real threatens to surface, one of us freezes. Like now. His simple admission of missing me sits there, impossible to ignore yet terrifying to acknowledge.
I set the food on the coffee table and sink back onto the couch, staring at my phone. Funny how we can joke about him being a mountain man hermit and I can roast his life choices, but the second he mentions missing me, I’m tongue-tied and terrified.
We’ve always been masters at saying everything except what matters.