nurtured instead of denied, could turn into something else. She
wanted more than attachment. She wanted to date Cassia. She
wanted to be able to go out and hold her hand. She wanted the
world to know she’d fallen, and it happened hard and fast and
that after nearly a lifetime she finally knew what it meant to
use her entire corroded, shrivelled, terrified heart.
It all came down to what it meant to be happy to her and if
she thought that outweighed everything else. The questions
Cassia had asked her, everything she’d said, stayed with
Adalynn. They’d bubbled up all night. She’d tried to fight
them at first, but then she’d stopped. It wasn’t complicated.
She was making it complicated herself. She was digging her
own hole, deeper and deeper and deeper, when she could just
set down her shovel and bask in the sun.
Sitting at her desk as the first watery rays of dawn crept up,
Adalynn knew she was going to post the video she’d just spent
an hour recording. She didn’t bother editing it. There was no
point. She wanted it to be raw and unfiltered. As raw and
unfiltered as the feelings coursing through her that she’d
finally let herself feel.
This was probably the first time in her life that she’d felt
comfortable with being herself. She had been so lost in all the
politics, all the years, all the worries and concerns, her
marriage, reputations that weren’t just hers, and everything
else, that she wasn’t even sure who she was anymore. The first
time she’d felt like she’d been even close to figuring that out,
to feeling just an ounce like the person she was and wanted to
be, was that first night in the lounge when she’d dropped into
the seat across from Cassia and started blurting out long buried
truths for no apparent reason at all.