My First-My Last

CHAPTER SIX: Coming Full Circle

The skies over Navesh rolled with the hush of twilight, streaked in gentle purples and dusky gold. The streets were quieter now, as if the town itself had slowed to breathe. Avelon stood outside her mother’s hospice window, arms wrapped around herself, watching as the fading light filtered through lace curtains. Kristen was asleep, her face turned toward the open window, a breeze brushing across her cheeks like a kiss from a gentler world.

Avelon had spent the day by her side, reading poetry out loud, brushing her mother’s hair, and sharing sips of warm broth between quiet pauses. They didn’t need to talk much anymore. There was peace now — not the absence of sorrow, but the acceptance of it. Avelon had come to learn that healing didn’t always come with closure. Sometimes, it came with simply being present.

She turned toward the parking lot slowly, but didn’t head for the car. Instead, her feet carried her down the winding path that led to the edge of the town. Navesh felt different in the evening — softer somehow. The streetlights cast halos on the pavement. Distant laughter echoed from a nearby bistro. And the breeze carried the scent of wild lavender, blooming at the end of the season.

She walked until she found herself standing by the old fountain in Central Square — the place where she and Damian had once carved their initials into the base of the stone, bold and youthful. She traced the faded marks with her fingers now, memories blooming like flowers in her chest.

“Funny how time folds in on itself, isn’t it?” Damian’s voice reached her gently from behind.

Avelon didn’t startle. She turned to him, a small smile finding its way to her lips. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

He stepped closer, his presence no longer uncertain. He looked different — not in his appearance, but in his energy. Softer. Wiser. Maybe even a little braver.

“I passed by the hospice,” he said. “Saw your car. Thought you might need a walk.”

She nodded. “I didn’t know I did until I started walking.”

They stood together in the glow of the streetlight, a comfortable silence stretching between them like a thread that never quite snapped, no matter how strained it had become.

“I used to think love was all fire and thunder,” Avelon said after a moment. “But I think it’s more like this — quiet, steady. Not the kind that sweeps you off your feet, but the kind that stands beside you when you can’t stand alone.”

Damian nodded, his eyes holding hers. “I’ve loved you in every version of yourself — the girl at the lake, the woman grieving her mother, the storm and the calm. I didn’t always show it the right way, but it’s always been you.”

She stepped closer, heart swelling with emotions too complex to name. “We’re not who we used to be. And maybe that’s a good thing.”

He reached for her hand, their fingers fitting together naturally. “We get to choose what we are now.”

The wind picked up gently, sweeping through the square and ruffling their hair. Somewhere nearby, a saxophone played a slow tune from a café patio. It wasn’t grand. It wasn’t dramatic. But it was real. And for Avelon, that meant everything.

They walked side by side back toward town, past the bookstore where she had once worked summers, past the bridge where they had kissed for the first time, and finally to her apartment.

Before she stepped inside, she turned to him. “Want to come in?”

He nodded. “If you’re ready.”

“I think I finally am.”

She opened the door — to her home, to her heart, to whatever might come next.

The past would always live within her. But now, it didn’t define her. She had survived the cracks, the questions, the grief. And in the middle of all of it, she had found her way back — to herself, to love, to the place she’d always belonged.

Back to where it began.

Back to her first — and her last.