Chapter 96 The Cost And What Grew From It

• Jules POV
• Sunday dinner at my house—the Rowan house— happened on a mild June afternoon, ten days before graduation and twelve days before my flight to London.
• I drove myself in Maya’s car—she had come over to mine and I borrowed it. That was intentional. I wanted to be able to leave when I chose to leave, not when someone else's rhythm dictated it — and I wanted to arrive the same way, on my own terms, the girl who had been cut off from this house and this family and had built something real in the absence of both, now returning not because she needed to but because she had chosen to.