NATALIE
I woke up to the kind of morning that felt like it was holding its breath just for me. Warm, slow, quiet. Brooklyn air drifted through the slightly cracked window, soft with a promise I didn’t know how to name yet.
The sunlight slid across the hotel sheets, glowing golden on my bare arm. I blinked at the ceiling, stretched like a cat that finally slept through the night. My body didn’t ache. My mind wasn’t screaming. My chest… wasn’t heavy.
For the first time in what felt like forever, I felt okay.
Not good. Not great. But okay. And somehow, that felt like progress.
I turned to the other side of the bed—empty, of course—and let out a long breath. The kind that came from somewhere deep. Somewhere that had been holding too much for too long.
I felt stupid for jumping back into
