The first week in the Lazaro house felt like stepping into someone else's life.
Every morning, I'd wake to the smell of breakfast, warm butter, brewed coffee, and laughter spilling faintly from the kitchen.
It always threw me off. I was used to silence.
To perfection.
To cold greetings and colder eyes.
Here, Mrs. Lazaro greeted me with a smile every morning, even when I barely spoke back. "You slept well?" she'd ask, like it mattered.
Like she genuinely wanted to know.
Sometimes I'd nod, sometimes I'd lie.
But she never pushed.
She'd just pour another cup of coffee, add milk to hers, and ask if I wanted toast or rice.
It was simple.
But it was everything I'd been missing.
My recovery was slow.
The doctors said I needed another month before I could ride again.
The fracture in my ankle was healing, but my body felt heavier than it should have, weighed down not by pain, but by fear.
Fear of falling again.
Fear of not being enough again.
Every time I looked at my reflection, I saw the girl who fell, who heard her parents' voices calling her weak, useless, an embarrassment.
I heard my father shouting in that hospital room. "You've ruined everything we've built! You think medals are won by pity? You're not fit to carry our name!"
And my mother's silence, cold, cutting, worse than any word.
I pressed my fingers against my temples, trying to shut them out.
But memories don't fade just because you want them to.
They linger.
They rot slowly inside you until you can't tell the difference between what hurts and what's just a habit.
"Don't overthink," Calix said one morning, leaning on the doorway as I stared blankly at the mirror.
I glared at him through the reflection. "I'm not."
"You are." He smirked. "You've been staring at your brace for five minutes."
I looked down at my ankle. "I was adjusting it."
"Sure."
I threw the small towel at him.
He caught it easily, laughing.
The sound filled the room like sunlight.
It was annoying.
But it helped.
He walked closer, kneeling down in front of me to check the strap of my brace.
His touch was gentle, careful, as if my bones were made of glass. "Does it still hurt?"
"Only when I move wrong."
He looked up. "Then move right."
I rolled my eyes. "You're insufferable."
He grinned. "And you're beautiful when you're angry."
"Shut up, Calix."
But I didn't mean it.
—
That afternoon, I sat in the garden with Mrs. Lazaro while she watered her roses.
The sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting golden patterns on the ground.
"You look better today," she said softly. "Color's coming back to your cheeks."
"Maybe it's just the light."
She chuckled. "You really remind me of myself when I was younger. Always pretending I wasn't hurting."
That made me look up.
She smiled faintly, her eyes kind. "It's alright to let people see your pain, Aurora. It doesn't make you weak."
I didn't know what to say.
Nobody had ever told me that.
"Pain means you still feel," she added. "And people who feel deeply… they're the ones who live fully."
I looked down, blinking fast.
My throat tightened.
I wanted to believe her.
I really did.
But years of being told otherwise had carved something permanent inside me.
Still, her words lingered.
—
Days blurred into weeks.
I found myself getting used to the sound of laughter at dinner.
The way Mr. Lazaro would tease Calix about his cooking skills, the way Mrs. Lazaro would always overfeed me, the way Calix would catch my eye from across the table and wink.
It felt… safe.
One night, as I washed my mug after dinner, Mrs. Lazaro came up beside me. "You don't have to do that," she said.
"I want to."
She smiled. "You're polite. I like that."
I didn't know how to respond, so I just kept scrubbing quietly.
Then she added, almost in a whisper, "You know, Calix hasn't smiled this much in months."
I froze.
She looked at me with a knowing smile. "Whatever happened before… it doesn't matter now. What matters is you're both here."
Her words hit something inside me, a soft, bruised part of my chest I didn't know was still healing.
I stood in Calix's doorway.
He was sitting on the floor, surrounded by guitar tabs and sheet music.
"You play?" I asked.
He looked up, surprised. "Badly."
"Play something bad, then."
He chuckled. "That I can do."
The melody drifted through the room, slow and imperfect.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
It wasn't awkward.
It was just… real.
Then he said, "You're healing."
I frowned. "I'm not."
"You are," he insisted. "You just don't see it yet."
I met his gaze, steady, kind, unflinching.
The same eyes that once terrified me for how much they could see.
Now, they felt like home.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe healing wasn't loud.
Maybe it was quiet, like mornings with coffee, evenings with laughter, nights filled with music and words that didn't hurt.