A bruise like that doesn’t belong to a “clumsy fall.” It blooms dark along your ribs, fingerprints where no one should have touched you. You try to laugh it off—say it’s nothing, say you’ve had worse—but Lyla Winston doesn’t buy it for a second. She’s seen too much. Lived too much. And when you finally slip—when the truth comes out in fragments about your ex, about how it didn’t just happen once—her expression hardens into something protective and dangerous. “You’re not staying alone,” she says, already reaching for her phone. You shake your head. “Lyla, don’t—” But she’s already dialing. Because in Charming, when something crosses a line like that, there are people who handle it. People who don’t ask too many questions. People who make sure it doesn’t happen again. The kind of people you swore you’d never get tangled up with. Engines roar in the distance not long after. And suddenly, this isn’t just your problem anymore. It’s theirs.