Ronan rushed to her side, inspecting the faint scratches on her palm as if she’d been mortally wounded. His expression turned cold as he looked at me. “Ayla, it’s just a broken trinket. There’s no need to overreact.”
Before I could protest, he lifted his boot and crushed the remnants of the music box beneath his heel, grinding the pieces into dust. “Throw this junk out,” he ordered, his voice laced with disgust. “I don’t want to see it in my house again.”
He scooped Violet into his arms and left without a backward glance.
I stayed on the floor, staring at the shattered remnants of the only gift that had ever felt real. The music box wasn’t just a trinket—it was the one thing that connected me to the Ronan I had once known. The boy who had shielded me during a storm, who had gone out of his way to make me smile when I thought the world was crumbling.
When I was sixteen, my parents’ divorce had left me adrift. Desperate for comfort, I had gone to my best friend Lizzie’s house. Instead of finding her, I ran into her older brother, Ronan, sweaty from a game of basketball. He had frowned when he saw my tear-streaked face and sent his friends away, dragging me inside despite my protests.