= Elias =
Despite everything I had done—despite the cold certainty of the words I had thrown at her the night I cast her out—she was alive.
The realization struck deeper than I expected. It didn’t come with relief alone. It came tangled with something heavier, something sharp enough to make my chest ache.
She was alive.
After all the anger, all the pride that had driven me to send her away, after convincing myself that it had been necessary—she had survived it.
“I prayed she would be,” I murmured quietly.
The words slipped out before I could stop them, barely louder than the breath that carried them. I wasn’t even sure who I had prayed to.
Greg shifted beside me. I felt the movement more than I saw it, the subtle scrape of his boot against the floor. But he didn’t interrupt. He didn
