Prologue
Arden Rivers didn’t look back.
Some shadows followed her anyway.
Morgantown had once been her escape—not just from her past, but from the weight of a name she never wanted to carry.
Nursing school was her exit plan. A lifeline. A path carved through sheer will. A reason to put distance between herself and the life she’d been born into. She buried herself in trauma nursing, numbing what she couldn’t change.
For a while, it worked.
Until it didn’t.
She thought she could outwork the loneliness. Outlast the exhaustion. Outrun the feeling of being watched.
The first note appeared in her locker. Neatly folded. Tucked into the metal slats like it had always belonged there.
You deserve to know how special you are.
The handwriting looped, deliberate. Like someone had written it a hundred times before committing. At the bottom:
Your secret admirer.
She’d laughed it off. A prank, maybe. Or some awkward attempt at romance.
But the notes kept coming.
Each one more personal. More precise. Each one knowing her in ways she hadn’t offered.
Then came the flowers. The first was a single red rose, slipped into her locker with a note signed?—
J.T.
After that, they started arriving at her apartment. Always pristine. Always without a card.
A friend joked she had a secret Romeo.
Arden didn’t find it funny.
The precision rattled her. Each petal was immaculate. Each delivery silent. And somehow, someone had found her.
Chad didn’t even look up; he just rolled his eyes, fork hovering midair.
“Probably some loser with no game,” he said, shrugging. “You’re reading way too much into it.”
Then the calls started—late at night, breath against the line, no voice behind it.
That’s when she told him she was scared.
He smiled. “You worry too much. No one’s actually going to hurt you.”
That was Chad’s answer to everything.Don’t worry.
She’d known the relationship was over long before it ended. But she’d held on out of habit.
He was comfortable. Predictable. Safe, at least on the surface. And when he mentioned moving back to Silverbranch, his hometown, she’d brushed it off.
Arden swore she’d never end up in another nowhere town—the kind with gossip for gospel and quiet that crept under your skin.
