ALEX’S POV
My grandmother’s words kept replaying in my mind long after I left her room.
“The woman in your heart… why aren’t you fighting for her?” I’d stood there frozen, unable to answer, because the truth, raw and ugly, was that I didn’t know how. I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t know why she left without a word. I didn’t know what I’d done to drive Lavender away so completely that she’d vanish like a shadow at sunrise.
And yet… she was everywhere. In the scent of jasmine that drifted through the halls.
In the empty chair in my office that should have held her tiny figure, typing furiously, glaring at me when I pushed her too far. In my sleep, where her laughter and her anger and her softness haunted me like a ghost.
But today my grandmother asked me the question I had been av
