I turned to leave, but Ronan appeared in the doorway, his gaze darkening when he saw my packed bags. “What are you doing?” he demanded, his tone tinged with urgency. “Why are you packing your things? Answer me!”
I kept my face impassive, refusing to meet his eyes. Before I could respond, Violet’s fingers brushed against the music box on my nightstand. My heart stopped.
“Don’t touch that!” I snapped, but it was too late.
The music box slipped from her hands, shattering on the hardwood floor. Its delicate lid splintered, the tiny figurines lying in pieces among the shards. I dropped to my knees, trying to salvage it, but Violet’s sharp cry cut through the air. “Ronan, my hand! I didn’t mean to—it just slipped!”
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.
That night, he braved the storm to buy me cakes and sweets, piling them on the table with a grin. When I still wouldn’t smile, he pulled out a music box he had won at a festival. “Here,” he said, placing it in my hands. “Don’t cry anymore, okay? You’re stronger than this.”