Chapter 1
one
. . .
Violet
"You're okay," I whisper to the dog in front of me. My fingers brush lightly over his fur between his tired eyes, just the way he likes it. “It’s just your senior checkup, nothing scary today, I promise.”
Charlie exhales a slow, rattling whine and gives a lazy thump of his tail against the cold metal table.
It’s late February in Kentucky—mud season, as my mom used to call it.
That limbo between winter’s sharp edge and spring’s first bloom.
The air smells like thawing dirt and rain-soaked gravel, and everything is a little gray around the edges.
Behind me, Dr. Langford mutters something about blood panels as he rummages through one of the upper cabinets.
“Did he eat this morning?” he asks without looking over.
“No. Mrs. Ashby said he’s been picky again.”
He flips through the clipboard. “You checked his ears?”
“Left one’s a little inflamed. I can prep drops if you want.”
He gives a low grunt, which usually means he’s giving the go-ahead without saying much else, and scribbles something on the chart.
Being a vet tech at his clinic for the last few years, I’ve gotten used to Dr. Langford’s language of quiet gestures and half-spoken words. He’s gruff, but he trusts me. That matters more than anything he could say out loud.
Charlie’s tail thumps again, this time with a little more heart.
“You’re my brave boy,” I murmur, leaning in to press a soft kiss to his forehead. “We’re almost done, promise.”
The exam room door creaks open, and Callie sticks her head in, ponytail swinging. “Violet? There’s a guy at the front desk asking for you.”
I glance up from Charlie, brows pinching. “Me?”
People don’t usually ask for me by name. Not unless I’ve forgotten to fax records or someone’s pet lost a tooth in the waiting room.
“Yeah. He’s got a big dog.” Her brows lift like she’s expecting that to mean something to me.
It doesn’t.
“I’ll be right there,” I mutter, smoothing down my scrubs. “Dr. Langford, you need anything else before I grab the ear drops?”
“Nope.”
I finish up with Charlie, pressing one last kiss to his nose because he’s earned it, and head for the lobby.
And then I see him.
I stop cold, the door bumping my shoulder as it swings back. I barely feel it—my attention is already locked on the figure in front of me.
Standing in the middle of our cramped, cluttered waiting room is a man who looks like he took a wrong turn on his way to a high-stakes poker table or a high-fashion photoshoot—or maybe both.
He’s holding a massive dog in his arms like it weighs nothing.
Which is rude, frankly, because I know that dog weighs a lot.
He’s tall, broad-shouldered, and too intense for a place that smells like peanut butter treats and flea shampoo.
His black baseball cap is on backward, dark hair curling at the edges. The T-shirt he’s wearing clings to his chest and arms, and I do mean clings. It hangs on for dear life over muscle that wasn’t handed down by genetics but carved out with grit and maybe a little rage.
But it’s the ink that catches me. His arms are sleeved in tattoos that aren’t the generic ones you point to on a wall at some shop off the highway. They trail all the way down to his wrists, curling around forearms and smoothing over veins and tension.
Then he lifts his head.
And sweet mercy.
Glacial blue eyes slice straight through me, sharp and searching and so achingly familiar. I swear the floor shifts beneath my feet. My mouth goes dry. My heart fumbles a beat. I forget how to breathe.
I used to see those eyes across campfires and gym bleachers and from the passenger seat of a beat-up Chevy truck with broken AC. This isn’t just some tattooed stranger with a dog the size of a baby horse.
It’s Rowan Wolfe.
I saw him for the first time on a Tuesday afternoon before I knew his name, before I knew how deep he’d get under my skin.
Freshman year had just started, and I was the kind of girl who clutched her books like armor and triple-checked her class schedule. I’d gotten lost, again, and wandered too far past the science wing when I saw him leaning against a dented locker that never quite shut all the way.
He was flipping a pen through his fingers with this lazy rhythm, a bored kind of focus that made it look effortless. Hoodie too big, hair too long, shoes scuffed and unlaced. He looked like trouble in the kind of way that made your stomach flutter.
He didn’t look at first. But then he did.
Those eyes. Curious and unreadable all at once. He looked at me like I’d interrupted something important, even though he didn’t say a word. And something in me shifted.
I walked past him without a sound. But even then, part of my heart stayed behind.
Eventually, I’d find him watching me like I was something precious and dangerous. I used to memorize that look behind closed eyelids and whispered prayers that maybe, someday, he’d look at me like that on purpose.
Those eyes have crept into my dreams on restless nights, and worse, they’ve seeped into my waking thoughts, too. Every what if, every almost, every time I tried to give my heart to someone else, it felt like I was betraying a ghost.
I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can only stare at him, trying to force myself back together before I come apart in front of him.
I spent my high school years loving him from afar, always holding onto the words I never had the courage to say, never feeling the warmth of his lips on mine, never knowing what it might’ve been like to have him see me the way I saw him.
“Rowan?” His name slips from my lips, barely more than a whisper.
God, he looks the same, and yet…completely different. Time has changed him, but somehow, I know him. My bones know him. My heart knows him. My memory, my pulse, and the ache I swore I buried all those years ago hasn’t forgotten a thing.
There are too many feelings trying to claw their way to the surface, and I’m not sure which one to deal with first. Relief floods me. Shock, too. The one that hits hardest, though, is the longing. So deep and raw it’s almost like grief.
Then there’s the anger, hot and bitter, curling in my chest, because he left. He disappeared without a word, leaving me with years of unanswered questions.
I spent six years wondering if he was okay. Now, here he is, standing in front of me like no time has passed at all.
He smirks.
And that smirk almost pulls the sob out of me before I can stop it.
“Hey, Larkin.”
No one calls me by my last name but him. He used to say it with that lazy smile, that same tilt to his lips. Usually when I was tripping over my own feet or getting tongue-tied or sitting beside him, pretending I wasn’t completely, hopelessly in love with him.
His eyes slide from me to the dog.
The dog. The poor thing’s massive, a hulking creature with thick black fur. It’s panting heavily, its head drooping low.
“She’s hurt,” Rowan says, his voice rough but steady. “Found her on the side of the road.”
I nod slowly, glancing back to the dog. Her dark eyes are full of pain, and my heart clenches in a way that feels like it might pull me apart. “What’s her name?”
“Don’t know. Like I said, I just found her.”
“Right. Okay…” I step around the counter. My fingers brush gently over her trembling side, and she doesn’t flinch. She just watches me, her eyes tired, worn down by whatever she’s been through.
I soften my voice, the way I always do when I’m speaking to an animal who’s been through too much. “You’re safe now, girl. We’ve got you.”
I glance up at Rowan. “This way.” I move toward the exam room, slipping into work mode to keep the nerves at bay. I hold the door open to room three, but Rowan hesitates, his gaze sweeping over me, lingering a beat too long. His blue eyes flicker before he nods once and follows me into the room.
I focus hard on the floor, making sure not to trip over thin air as I move ahead, but when I glance up, I find him setting the dog down on the table. Rowan’s movements are careful, with a tenderness that doesn’t fit the hard edges of the man he’s become.
His large hand lingers on the dog’s back, and he mutters in a low voice, “You’re okay. Violet’s gonna take good care of you.”
The sound of his voice carrying my name so easily has me longing for the past. I stare at the scruffy mutt, trying to function as my mind stumbles backward into memories of high school hallways, late-night drives with the windows down, and the quiet, lingering look he used to give me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.
I focus on the supplies, hands moving on autopilot.
Gauze, ointment, whatever I can grab to fill the empty space.
The table. The dog. Anything but him. I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, fingers feeling clumsy and stupid, like I’ve forgotten how to be normal around him.
Then I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, desperate to fill the silence.
“She seems to trust you.”
Rowan’s gaze flickers down to the dog, then back to me, his lips curling up just a little in that way that used to drive me crazy. “She didn’t bite me.”
Well, that’s one way to measure trust. No biting equals a friendly temperament. I can work with that.
My brain picks the absolute worst moment to short-circuit, offering up the utterly inconvenient observation that his eyelashes are way too long for someone who might get into the occasional bar fight.
Then there’s the way he smells—pine, earth, and something wild, like the woods after a storm. It’s the kind of scent that makes you want to lean in just a little closer before you realize, wait, what are you doing?
Which I do not do. Because I am a professional.
I glance at the dog, her soft panting the only thing breaking the silence now. She’s calm. Probably because she’s not the one trying to keep her pulse from racing in the presence of six feet of tattooed intimidation with bone structure that should be illegal.
I turn my focus back to what I know. Heartbeats. Breath sounds. Fur under my fingers. All the things that keep me grounded.
But the whole time, I can feel him watching me. Every shift of my hand, every breath I take, he’s there. Like he’s waiting for something I don’t even know I’m offering.
And I don’t know how to ignore it.