The change didn't happen slowly. It snapped into existence.
One moment, Nancy and Julian were ghosts drifting through the blur of the streets lost in the haze, surviving instead of living.
The next? Everything burned.
Because the moment Nancy heard that Violet the woman who had nearly ruined her was out of prison…
Something inside her didn't break. It froze. Then hardened. Then ignited. Not wild. Not reckless. Cold.
Controlled. Relentless. She didn't just get clean. She rebuilt herself. Piece by piece.
Like she was stripping away weakness and replacing it with something sharper… something dangerous.
Julian never left her side. Not once.
While the withdrawal clawed at them, while their bodies fought back, while the nights stretched too long and too quiet he stayed. Steady. Unshaken. The one constant in the storm.
And together. They dragged themselves out of it.
