Chapter Forty-Five Violet
Chapter Forty-Five
Violet
I woke up still lying on the couch. The room was washed in early-morning light pooling across the floor. The candle I’d lit last night was nothing but a burned-out stub in a fingernail’s depth of wax.
I stared at the television, now dark. My neck ached from the angle I’d taken on the couch, and I shifted, pulling my arm, which was thrown above my head like I’d been reaching for something in sleep, back down to my side.
The apartment was cold enough to make breath visible when I huffed out a sigh. It was my fault that I forgot to turn the space heater on.
For a few seconds I didn’t move. I watched dust drift in the beam that sneaked between the curtains and listened. Not for footsteps, not for the old building’s moans and groans.
I listened for that other silence, the one that was loud-quiet. But I didn’t hear it no matter how hard I strained.
Something this morning felt different, as though the knot that had been holding me together for so long had finally loosened.
I remembered the dreams as if they had been stitched into my marrow. They started with the barn. The pain. They ended with . . . something else.
I’d woken, my cheeks wet, my throat raw from sobs I hadn’t even known I’d made. But it wasn’t sorrow that clung to me afterward. It was the sensation of something breaking open inside me, a seam I had held tight for too long tearing loose.
The pressure I’d carried for years had felt like a fist clutching my chest. But as I sat there for what seemed like hours, that pain slipped away with each tear.
And though the dream had been nothing more than figments of my mind, it felt like a revelation, an epiphany whispered in a language I didn’t know but understood.
It was then, when I was totally depleted, that I realized I was tired of being tethered to my trauma. It was like something inside me flipped, so sudden, sharp, and blinding in its clarity.
For the first time—after an exhale that felt like I’d been holding in my whole life—I let myself believe release was possible. Maybe the breaking, the unraveling, wasn’t the end after all. Maybe it was the start of becoming whole.
I closed my eyes and dragged pieces of the dream back with me. Sharp fragments, but they didn’t cut the way they used to.
I wasn’t standing in front of the barn this time.
I watched it from the edge of the field, spared, as the roof flared into a crown of orange before it caved.
Then the scene bent, and I was inside the blaze.
The fire swallowed me, but then I was rising from it, my figure cut out against the light, ash lifting like the flames had finally agreed to let me go.
Not wings. Not a myth. Just me. A survivor.
When I opened my eyes, the afterimage stayed. It didn’t make me want to crawl out of my skin. It made me want to stand.
I sat up slowly, and when my feet touched the floor, the cold jolted me into a presence sharper than I’d ever known.
This was life. And I would be okay.
I turned on the space heater, set the kettle on the stove, and pulled the curtains open.
Fog still crouched low in the street, but the sky above it was a shade lighter.
It was as if the day had tried to be positive even in the face of gloom.
The thrift shop downstairs was closed, though I knew the lamp by the register still burned.
I stood at the window watching the world wake. The kettle hissed, and I pulled it off before it whistled. I poured a cup of tea and just held it, letting the heat seep into my palms.
This morning felt different. Lighter. I dressed without rushing, tugging on a sweater brighter than I usually dared, and slipping on jeans that didn’t pinch. When I caught my reflection in the mirror, I stopped.
For the first time, my face didn’t scare me. The hollows around my eyes weren’t gone, but they weren’t as sharp, either.
I still looked tired, sure, but it was the fatigue that came from refusing to quit. I wasn’t some phoenix, dramatic and blazing out of fire.
I was something harder to break. I was a woman standing on her own feet, facing her demons without flinching. Because I was sick of being terrified.
The mist was already lifting by the time I stepped outside, sunlight pressing through like it had been waiting all morning for its chance.
I stood still at the edge of the boardwalk, head tipped back, eyes closed, and let the warmth sink into me.
My breath left in a long stream I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, and for once I didn’t brace for it to turn into a shiver.
Overhead, gulls wheeled in sharp arcs, their jagged cries splitting open the quiet.
I opened my eyes to catch them vanishing into the fog, then watched as a jogger pounded past, his focus so absolute it seemed to carve out his entire presence.
The world moved around me, shifting, breathing, and alive.
And for the first time, I was no longer an observer clinging to the edges.
The sea rolled with a laziness I hadn’t seen in months. Its swells folded into themselves, shouldering against the rocks as if they were greeting them instead of punishing. Alive. Present.
So many mornings I’d stood in this same spot and felt only heaviness, like the ocean itself had been a mirror to everything inside me. But today it felt like the world was telling me it was okay to be okay.
And for the first time in longer than I could measure, Grayson wasn’t the first thought to claw its way forward.
The gray jackets, the broad shoulders, the profiles blurred by fog .
. . they didn’t spark false hope anymore.
My heart still pinched at the thought of him, but it wasn’t a knife in the chest. It was scar tissue reminding me I was healed.
I walked on. Slow, steady, and unhurried.
My shoes thudded against the slick boards until the little bookstore came into view.
Wedged between a café and the laundromat, it looked like it held old secrets.
The bell above the door gave a high-pitched chime when I pushed it open, and the familiar spicy-but-sweet scent of incense filled my nose.
The smell lingered low in my throat, grounding me in a way my chamomile tea never could.
The owner sat behind the counter, her glasses sitting half perched on her nose, pencil poised above her crossword. She looked up, and the corners of her mouth softened. “Morning,” she said.
“Good morning.” My smile answered hers, quiet and unsteady but real enough that it startled me. For so long, it had only ever been forced.
I drifted between the shelves, fingertips trailing over spines. I’d done it a hundred times before, chasing texture, the comfort of repetition. But today I paused long enough to read the titles, to let myself consider them.
Nonfiction. History. Memoirs. Rows of trauma texts that once felt written for me alone. I used to pull them down and devour every page, convinced progress meant knowledge, that survival was something you could earn if you studied hard enough.
But my hand hovered elsewhere. In the fiction section, tucked between bright thrillers and soft-edged paperbacks, a love story waited as if it had been placed there for me.
Romance. Happily ever after.
Even thinking about the words made my throat tighten. Happily ever after had always felt like a language I’d never learned, something other people spoke fluently, but I’d never get to try. Yet here, now, it felt different. So I pulled it free.
I traced the title with my fingers, heat sparking in my chest. I’d denied myself this for so long, convinced I didn’t deserve it. But in this moment, a different truth pressed through the dark. It was like sunlight breaking through this morning’s clouds.
Maybe it wasn’t about erasing the past. That was impossible. Maybe it was about remembering that not every story ended in ruin. That sometimes endings could point toward something else . . . something brighter.
At the counter, the owner’s eyes flicked down at the book, then back up at me. A grin tugged at her mouth as she tapped the cover with her pencil.
“Oh, this one’s good. Gets a little spicy, too.” She winked.
Something inside me burst open, sharp and clean. A laugh slipped out. It was quiet at first, rusty from disuse, but real. I hadn’t heard that sound in my throat for so long I’d almost forgotten it belonged to me.
I paid, tucked the book into my bag, and stepped back into the sunlight. Its weight pressed warm against my hip as I walked the boardwalk, the sea steady at my side. I slowed my pace, let the wind thread through my hair, and felt the pull of a smile I didn’t have to force.
For months I’d convinced myself I saw Grayson everywhere. Every crowd held his face, every stranger’s voice echoed his. It was grief playing its cruel tricks, and I let it, because holding on to the pain felt safer than letting go.
But today, the ache wasn’t sharp. It had softened, no longer cutting me open. And for the first time, I believed my emotions didn’t have to vanish with the fire.
Maybe they were making room for something else. Something new.