(Lizzy's POV)
The world had begun to thaw into spring. The snow melted from the corners of sidewalks, the air smelled faintly of wet earth, and students filled the campus lawns again laughter echoing like the world was waking up.
Lizzy watched them from the library steps, her journal tucked under one arm. She should've been studying, but her mind was elsewhere restless, uneasy.
She'd received an email that morning. Just one line that shattered her calm.
"Hope you're doing well, Lizzy. It's been a long time. Caleb."
She hadn't heard that name in years.
Didn't want to.
Caleb wasn't just a ghost from her past he was the reason she stopped trusting easily, the reason she learned to wear silence like armor. Seeing his name felt like standing on a frozen lake, waiting for the crack.
When Ben found her later that day, she was still sitting in the same spot. "You skipped class," he said, sitting beside her. "That's not like you."
"I got an email," she said quietly.
He didn't ask from who not right away. He just waited, giving her space to decide.
"From someone who used to… matter," she finally said. "Someone who hurt me."
Ben's hands stilled. "Do you want to talk about it?"
She shook her head. "Not yet. I just I thought I was past it. But now it feels like I'm right back where I started."
Ben's voice was soft, but firm. "You're not back there, Lizzy. You're here. You've built something since then. You've grown."
Her eyes burned. "Then why does it still hurt?"
"Because healing doesn't erase the memory," he said. "It just teaches you how to stand when it returns."
The words hit her deep, cutting through the fear she'd been nursing all morning.
That night, she sat by her desk staring at her phone. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard the need to reply warring with the urge to delete the message entirely.
Finally, she wrote:
"Please don't contact me again. I've moved on."
She read it over, her pulse thudding in her throat. Then she hit send.
When the message disappeared into the digital void, something loosened inside her quiet, but freeing.
She leaned back, closing her eyes. For the first time, she didn't feel like a victim reliving the past. She felt like someone reclaiming her voice.
The next day, she found Ben in the courtyard. "I replied," she said simply.
He looked at her, pride flickering in his eyes. "How do you feel?"
"Scared," she admitted. "But also… proud."
He smiled softly. "That's what courage feels like."
She laughed, a shaky sound that melted into the wind. "It's ugly courage, though."
Ben chuckled. "The best kind usually is."
They stood there in silence not as savior and saved, but as two people still learning how to live with their scars.
And as the afternoon light warmed her face, Lizzy realized something beautiful she wasn't who she used to be. The distance between then and now wasn't measured in years, but in the strength it took to survive.