(Caroline's POV)
Aunt Jasmine's guest room smells like lavender and old books.
It's the same room I stayed in after I left Samuel. The same bed I cried myself to sleep in for three weeks straight. The same walls I stared at while I wondered what I'd done wrong to deserve my husband and my best friend doing this to me.
Coming back here feels like regression. Like proof that I haven't actually moved forward at all. Like I'm still the same broken woman running from the same patterns, just with different names.
But I'm not the same woman. And the situation that I'm in right now, it's not the same as the past either.
Charlie and Rose are asleep in the bunk beds across from me. They went down easy—exhausted from the emotional weight of the evening, probably. They didn't ask questions. Didn'
