Between Shifts and Sips

"If you hold me without hurting me, you'll be the first to ever did."

For sixteen-year-old Clara, touch has always been a weapon. Whether it was the tragic accident that claimed her parents or the heavy-handed "reminders" from the aunt who treats her like a transaction, her world is defined by what hurts. She spends her days scrubbing the floors of houses she'll never own and her nights memorizing medical terms from a tattered textbook, desperate to become the healer she never had.

Then she meets Arkanghel Mendoza.

Ark is the quiet son of a household fueled by its own brand of chaos. He doesn't look at Clara and see a maid or a survivor; he sees a girl who deserves to be held. Their love grows in the stolen moments between her grueling shifts-a shared cup of coffee, a whispered promise, and the terrifying hope that someone can finally touch her heart without leaving a bruise.

But when a life-altering loss shatters their fragile "forever," Clara does the only thing she knows how to do to survive: she runs.

Seven years later, Dr. Clara Vance is back. She is no longer the girl with soap-burned hands, but a pediatrician who has mastered the art of clinical distance. But when a seven-year-old patient walks into her clinic with Ark's last name and his unmistakable eyes, the walls Clara built begin to crumble.

Between the sterile hospital shifts and the bittersweet sips of a past they both tried to bury, Clara and Ark must face the truth: some wounds never really scabbed over, and sometimes, the only way to truly heal is to let the one person who knows your scars hold you again.