Chapter 80 The Long Way Back

• LEX'S POV
• Recovery doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t arrive with swelling music or a clear turning point. It comes quietly, disguised as routine, hiding inside the repetition of days that blur together until you realize—too late to name it—that something has shifted.
• Time slows. Not in a cinematic way. In a grinding, intimate way. Measured in pill bottles and intake charts. In steps counted across hospital hallways. In the sound of Olivia’s breath when she sleeps deeply enough that her shoulders finally loosen.