Summer blurred into a rhythm that almost felt like normal.
Micah spent mornings at the counseling clinic downtown, shadowing licensed therapists, learning how to sit quietly beside other people’s pain without absorbing it as his own.
Some days came home proud.
Some days came home hollow.
He never fully predicted which.
Elara worked afternoons with the community arts program—teaching creative writing to kids who carried too much weight behind young eyes. She loved watching shy voices turn brave on paper.
She also came home drained.
They learned something important:
Love didn’t erase exhaustion—it required navigating it together.
---
One evening cracked the illusion.
Micah arrived late, shoulders tight, words clipped.
The session he’d observed had hit too close—an abused teenage boy who mirrored pieces of Micah’s former self.
Elara was absorbed in a deadline, scattered pages on the table, laptop blinking angry emails.
Neither asked the other how their day had been.
And the silence grew sharp.
---
“You didn’t text,” Elara finally said without looking up.
“I was busy,” Micah replied.
“So was I,” she snapped.
He exhaled.
“I can’t always be the emotional one.”
Her words stilled.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“But that’s what it sounded like.”
The air thickened.
Old ghosts crept closer—his fear of becoming too much - her fear of being unchosen.
---
Micah grabbed his jacket.
“I need air.”
Elara stood.
“Running won’t fix this.”
He turned back, wounded.
“I’m not running—I’m trying not to say something I’ll regret.”
She softened, but the damage was already taking shape.
“Why are you suddenly so distant?” she asked.
“Because some days I still feel broken,” he said quietly. “And I don’t want to bring that into your life.”
Her breath caught.
“You don’t get to decide what I can carry,” she whispered. “I chose you, Micah—every piece, not the healed parts.”
His eyes filled.
“That’s what scares me.”
---
Micah left the apartment anyway.
Not out of anger—
Out of fear.
Elara didn’t chase him.
She sat on the couch, pressing Micah’s old notebook to her chest, wondering when loving someone had started to feel like standing on thin glass.
---
Micah walked until the noise of the city softened into a distant hum.
He sat on a bus bench beneath flickering streetlight and did something he hadn’t done in months:
He wrote.
---
I forgot that healing isn’t linear.
I look strong until I realize I’m scared again.
But love means letting someone see the fear—
not hiding it behind distance.
---
He closed the notebook.
And turned back.
---
When he returned home, Elara had curled on the floor surrounded by drafts.
She looked up.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Micah crossed the room and sat beside her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I let old habits speak for me.”
She pressed her forehead into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I assumed instead of asking.”
They sat quietly.
Not fixed—
But honest.
Micah finally said, “I still have days when I feel like the boy from Hollow Creek.”
Elara squeezed his hand.
“And I still get scared that tenderness makes me weak,” she admitted.
They exchanged small smiles.
“Guess we’re both still learning,” Micah murmured.
“Together,” she replied.
-----
That night, they made something new:
Not a vow of permanence—
but a promise of presence.
No disappearing.
No pretending.
No silently retreating into old survival modes.
Honesty first.
Even when messy.
Especially then.
Micah tucked an arm around her.
“You’re not my cure,” he said quietly.
“And you don’t need to be healed for me to love you,” she answered.
On the rooftop later, city lights glittered below them.
Elara pointed upward.
“You still think the stars are farther away here?”
Micah shook his head.
“No,” he said softly. “I just realized something.”
“What?”
“They were never distant.”
“It was always me who thought I was.”
---
Their future didn’t feel like a perfect roadmap.
It felt like an unfolding page.
Messy.
Real.
Alive.
And for the first time—
they weren’t just writing alongside one another.
They were writing the same story.
Together. 🌙✨
YOU ARE READING
✨ "When the Light Returns" ✨
Spiritual🌙 PROLOGUE At 17 years old, Elara James believed God lived in the space between her heartbeat and her breath. She felt Him when her mother hummed hymns in the kitchen, when sunlight broke through storm clouds, and when she whispered bedtime prayers...
