"Want some milk?"

Roman leaned against the doorframe, his voice sounding maddeningly gentle.

"I... I need to wash up first."

Violette Ellis rose, but after taking a few steps, she turned back toward the bed to snatch up her phone. For her, the device was nothing more than a tether to the outside world—a tool, not a crutch. She wasn't the type to suffer from attachment issues, yet her reaction today was undeniably strange.

Roman watched her hurried retreat, his expression unreadable, calm as a lake at dawn.

Violette wasn't thinking that far ahead, and she certainly didn't realize how unraveled she appeared this morning. She only knew that ever since she had seen that notification on Twitter, her mind had been dragged back to the moment Blake Pierce first went public to defend her.

Upsets were common in professional sports. At first, Blake’s poor performance hadn't caused much of a stir. It was only the persistent, venomous trolls who haunted the comment sections, day after day, harping on how his "distracting relationship" was tanking his training. It started as baseless gossip, but if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

Soon, even the casual fans began to demand a statement from his management team.

The pressure from his club and sponsors was suffocating. They treated Blake like a product that had stopped yielding a return, mocking him for acting like a playboy instead of a professional.

"If you're not going to pull any results this year, kill the relationship," they’d told him. "She doesn't do a damn thing for you but drag you down."

Back then, Blake was young and boiling over with pride. He couldn't stomach a single word against Violette. They didn't understand—every time he stumbled, every time he felt like a failure, Violette was a better therapist than any professional he’d hired.

All the bitterness, all the frustration—it vanished the moment he saw her.

He would head into his next tournament fueled by a desperate need to prove everyone wrong. But no one else knew that.

Blake, feeling that she was being unfairly maligned, finally snapped. He went on Twitter and unleashed a tirade against the loudest trolls. At the end of it all, he wrote: *The matches are played by me. She has nothing to do with it.*

Violette had been on the app when he hit post. Her phone pinged immediately.

She called him right away. "Blake, you really didn't need to post that."

He was still seething, his voice shaking with indignation. "I can't just let them talk about you like that."

He was always like that—a golden retriever ready to bite anyone who stepped near his territory. Violette had grown used to his impulsive nature; in fact, it was his warmth and intensity that had made her fall for him in the first place.

"You're being so high-profile," she’d warned. "Don't you worry about what happens if we break up? Won't people dig this up later as your 'dark history'?"

Blake had scoffed, muttering, "What are you talking about? Swallow that 'breakup' word right now!"

They hadn't realized that one tweet would trigger such a catastrophic landslide.

Sports are a revolving door of victors and losers. The winners get the glory; the losers get torn apart by the public. Blake had been riding high for so long that he and his fans hadn't experienced the visceral joy of being slaughtered by the internet mob.

When he sent that tweet, the trolls held a festival. The casual observers mocked him, and his own fanbase turned on him. *Still lovesick after a loss? Just busy defending his girlfriend, huh? Was he even focused on the match?*

The self-proclaimed "girlfriend fans" were the first to draw blood. Within days, the barrage of complaints sent to the television station where Violette worked exceeded everything she had faced in her entire career. She found it bitter and ironic, but she didn't want to tell Blake—she didn't want to see him go full-blown "rabid dog" mode.

The situation spiraled. They began picking apart his schedule, turning his recent trip to Deepwater into a smoking gun.

Blake wanted to fight back, but Violette had already seen the ugly heart of the matter. Explaining was just another form of covering up. No matter how silver-tongued you were, they would find a hole in your logic, and that would only spark another avalanche of hate.

A single person, with one mouth and two hands, was painfully small when faced with a mob.

Even if you stated that one plus one equals two, they would attack you for it: *Sure, the answer is right, but your attitude is wrong. You’re just a toxic person.*

It was a stalemate. She didn't have the energy to fight a tidal wave.

That was their deepest rift. He didn't understand her silence, and she couldn't support his reckless declarations. After a heated argument, he left for an Australian training camp, cutting himself off from the world.

Before he left, he’d told her, "Fine. If you want me to shut up, I’ll shut up. Don't worry, I won't have a phone in there. Not a single word."

Violette didn't have the patience left for that kind of bravado. The petty squabbles had worn her down to the bone.

"If you can't understand why I'm doing this," she’d said, "maybe we should just break up."

Blake had stared at her, eyes cold. "You’re really just going to say that? Just like that?"

Violette stayed silent.

Seeing her resolve, he’d ground his teeth. "As you wish."

He thought they were just playing a game of chicken. He was sure that once this blew over, she would see he was right. And if she didn't? He would just apologize. He’d win her back as many times as it took. They had shared so much—she had once promised to wait until he was of age. They had memories that felt like iron.

It was tragic, really. They both wanted to protect each other, but they were walking down completely different paths.

They were two people desperate to stay together, yet failing to see that they were already pulling apart.

The online abuse continued for weeks while Blake was in isolation. Violette, a woman of steel, had come close to walking away from the station and leaving Deepwater entirely. She had even doubted herself, wondering if she should have listened to him, if she should have kept on explaining, keep fighting.

But the reality of the mob always slapped the regret right out of her. The moment she spoke up, hoping for a shred of reason, her words were ground into dust. The death threats against her and everyone around her made the original insults seem like gentle whispers.

After that, Violette deleted her social media.

When a person fights until their very last breath, they start looking for a piece of driftwood to cling to.

Her driftwood had arrived on the Summer Solstice.

A warm car in the middle of a freezing, pouring rain. A heavy, broad-shouldered embrace that felt like a fortress, pulling her into a pocket of absolute safety. Even now, Violette remembered the smell of the air that day—the scent of rain and woodsy spice. It was a kind of safety she had never once smelled on Blake Pierce.

She had almost drowned in it.

*Knock. Knock. Knock.*

Someone was at the door.

Violette gasped, snapped back to reality.

"What's wrong?" Roman’s voice filtered through the wood. "You've been in there for a long time."

Violette’s heart hammered against her ribs before slowly subsiding. She turned on the faucet and splashed cold water over her face. "I'm coming out now. Do you need the bathroom?"

"No rush," he replied, his tone measured and calm. "I was just calling you for breakfast."

He paused, then added, "The milk is getting cold."