Sasha’s Pov
The cottage had begun to feel like something it was never meant to be.
Home.
Not in the storybook sense. Not warm hearths and flowered quilts and the smell of bread rising in the oven. No, it was cracked stone, warped floorboards, a fireplace that hissed more than it crackled. Moss crept along the outer walls. The air inside always held a faint trace of smoke and damp wood, like the past never fully left.
But still... it was ours.
For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, I wasn’t hiding.
I was healing.
And there’s a difference, however small.
Outside, the forest stretched green and gold under the late afternoon sun. The air was thick with pine and crushed leaves and the slow breath of spring, trying to remember how to live again. The wind moved through the trees
