Page 124

“And?” Reese’s voice is soft now. Careful.

I stare into the golden fizz of my mimosa like it might offer answers. “Being with him again… it’s like realizing you never actually exhaled. Like the breath was just caught there the whole time, waiting.”

Reese reaches over and laces her fingers through mine. “You still love him.”

“Maybe more now,” I whisper. “After everything. After knowing he stayed. After hearing all the things I wasn’t supposed to hear while I was sleeping.”

The silence settles like a warm blanket over us, thick with unsaid things and overdue truths. Somewhere behind us, the sound of a bell rings—the signal that our mani-pedis are ready. But neither of us moves just yet.

Reese squeezes my hand. “You’re allowed to love him, Mya. And you’re allowed to be scared of what that means.”

“I don’t know how to navigate it,” I murmur. “We’re not where we used to be, but we’re not strangers either. It’s the in-between that kills me.”

“No,” she says with a small smile, standing and tugging me with her. “It’s the in-between that makes it real.”

We’re led into the treatment room like royalty in fuzzy slippers.

The lighting is soft and golden, the kind that makes your skin look better than it has any right to. Scented candles flicker from every corner, smelling of vanilla, lavender, and forgiveness. Gentle music plays in the background—some sort of ambient piano thing that sounds like it was composed specifically to help people forget their trauma and their taxes.

Reese gives me a knowing smirk as she slips off her robe and climbs onto the table next to mine, covered in crisp white linens. “Hot stone massage first,” she says, like it’s a love language.

I ease onto my stomach, the heated table beneath me drawing a sigh from my chest like it’s been held in too long. The massage therapist starts at my shoulders, her hands firm but not punishing, and I melt. Fully. Completely. Like butter on a July sidewalk.

My thoughts blur into sensation—kneading, warmth, the subtle clink of the stones as they’re set in place down my spine. Each one feels like it’s ironing out some tangled part of me. My doubts. My fears. My ache for the babies I can’t bring home yet. The way my body hasn’t quite felt like mine since I woke up. Since I broke open and kept bleeding love I didn’t know I still had.

“I forgot what it feels like to not have knots in my soul,” I murmur, my cheek smooshed against the headrest.

Reese snorts into her massage table. “That’s because you carry guilt like it’s a designer purse.”

“Am I at least pulling it off?”

“Babe, you’re practically strutting the runway of repressed emotion.”

I let out a half-laugh, half-sob sound, and she doesn’t comment on it. Just lets me exist in the moment without fixing it. That’s Reese’s gift. Knowing when to push and when to just be.

By the time we’re ushered to the nail room, I feel like my bones have been replaced with warm honey. My legs don’t entirely work, but I shuffle into the plush chair like a woman who’s been reborn. The massage chair starts humming behind me, and a warm foot soak nearly undoes me.

The nail tech lifts my hand and gives me a soft smile. “You want something simple or something fun?”

I blink down at my fingers, the tiny scars still healing along my knuckles. So much of me has changed. But here, in this chair, with my best friend beside me and my hands submerged in rose-scented water—I finally feel like maybe I can be more than what I’ve survived.

“Something soft,” I say. “But a little sparkly.”

Reese grins across the table at me. “That’s my girl.”

While we sip new mimosas and let ourselves be pampered, the conversation shifts. Easy, floating from one subject to the next like clouds passing in front of the sun.

We talk about Eli’s latest obsession with pancakes and the fact that Thorin has been secretly recording lullabies in his free time. About Carson’s new tattoo and the band’s upcoming album. About how Reese’s dad and Thorin’s mom have become some kind of unstoppable babysitting dream team.

But mostly, we talk about nothing.

Because sometimes, nothing is the most beautiful luxury of all—when you’re used to everything hurting.

And for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like a fractured version of who I used to be.

I just feel like…me.

By the time we make it to Aurum, the spa has worked its magic. My limbs are liquid. My brain is mush. And my heart—still a little cracked, still carrying shadows—is beating steady for the first time in weeks.