~CAKE~
Staying with Elianna was not how I imagined I’d spend my week, but here I was, five days in, living out of a duffel bag in her guest room like I’d been exiled from my own life.
It wasn’t bad. Actually, it was the opposite of bad.
Elianna didn’t give me space to sit and spiral, which I appreciated more than I was willing to admit. The morning I showed up, she didn’t even ask questions immediately. She just opened the door, took one look at my face, and pulled me into a hug so tight it almost knocked the air out of me.
Then she dragged me inside, shoved a glass of wine into my hand, and said, “Start talking.”
I did. Not everything. Not about the journal, not the exact words he said, not how it actually felt like something inside me shifted when he said it. I just told her we foug
