The day had drained Iva in ways she could not fully explain, as if every hour had taken a small piece of her strength and quietly kept it, leaving her body heavy and her thoughts slower, yet strangely calmer than they had been the night before.
She moved through the final moments of her shift almost on instinct, her hands working, her feet carrying her from one place to another, while her mind floated somewhere distant, deliberately avoiding the one place it kept trying to return to.
Caleb.
No.
She pressed her lips together as she wiped down the last surface, forcing her focus back to the present, because thinking of him led nowhere good, only to questions that had no answers and emotions that refused to settle.
Still, she could not deny one thing.
She was grateful.
Grateful for the
