Ashley
It had been a week since I got back from the hospital, and everything had been surprisingly quiet. I kept waiting for something to go wrong, but it didn’t. My body had recovered faster than I expected, although my mother still insisted that I take things slowly. She hovered around me more often, making sure I ate well, rested enough, and didn’t overthink anything. I could tell she was scared, even if she didn’t say it. I was scared too, but I kept pretending that everything was fine.
Things with Hayden had also changed, in a strange but peaceful way. We were no longer avoiding each other in school. At first, we had tried to stay apart, pretending that nothing was going on between us. But the silence became unbearable. The act of pretending we were strangers started to hurt more th
