The air in Ashmoor smelled different in spring — like grass and fresh dirt and new beginnings.

Jada woke to birdsong and sunlight streaming through the window. She didn’t check her phone first thing anymore. Didn’t scroll through memories or old messages like they were scripture.

Today, she got up, stretched, and made herself a real breakfast — not just coffee and a granola bar on the go.

She’d started taking better care of herself. Real food. Morning walks. Setting boundaries, even with Naomi, who was thrilled to see her friend rising again.

“You look grounded,” Naomi had said last week after one of their gym sessions.

“I feel it,” Jada replied.

Therapy was no longer a place of unraveling, but of rebuilding. Her therapist said healing wasn’t linear — more like a spiral. You return to the same pain, but each time, you’re stronger. Jada understood that now.

She’d finally stopped waiting for closure to come from someone else.

Instead, she wrote herself new endings.

She picked up books again. Took solo lunches at the park. Canceled plans when she needed rest. And she didn’t feel guilty about it.

One night, she revisited her old journal. There were pages filled with Micah’s name, desperate wishes, prayers for a reunion. She read them without flinching.

And then she wrote:

I was never asking him to come back. I was asking myself to come home.

No dramatic epiphanies. No sweeping declarations.

Just a quiet kind of clarity.

One evening, she bumped into someone from Micah’s circle at a gallery. They spoke politely. Jada felt no sting. No pang. Just distance — not the painful kind, but the healed kind.

She no longer checked his social media. She didn’t wonder who he was with.

She wished him well — and meant it.

Choosing herself didn’t mean choosing loneliness. It meant trusting that her worth didn’t hinge on being chosen.

And for once, she wasn’t waiting to be loved.

She already was.

By herself.