In the dream, too, I was engaged to someone else while dallying with another man—one that I had strong feelings for as far as I recall. The details may be fuzzy, but the emotion still echoes in my chest.

God, I'm a mess!

I hunch my shoulders in defeat as I enter the bathroom, my first stop being the sink to brush my teeth. The taste of alcohol is still in the back of my throat. In fact, as I sniff myself, I note that I'm also in dire need of a shower. The smell of alcohol is everywhere.

With a weary sigh of a person with one hell of a hangover, I lift my shift over my head and dump it in the dirty clothes basket before heading to the shower.

But as I walk across the bathroom, I catch my reflection in the mirror. I stop in my tracks as my eyes glaze over my body.

What?

I take a step closer to the mirror, tracing the smooth skin on my chest and arms. For the first time in as long as I can remember, there's no mark. Nothing except a small black spot over my right breast. I narrow my eyes at it. It's a star with fourteen sharp edges. In the middle, there's a tiny dot surrounded by one bubble on each side that contains a symbol similar to the ones I previously had on my skin.

Yet aside from that small mark on top of my breast, my skin is unblemished. There's nothing on my belly or on my thighs. Nothing at all.

"What the hell?" I mutter, utterly stupefied.

Those marks have stained my skin for so many years, I cannot even remember what I looked like without them. They were a bad memory as much as they were a core part of my identity. Because you can't have the good without the bad. You can only appreciate the good when you have the bad contrasting it.

Those marks were evidence of my horrendous past, but most of all, they were proof that I survived.

"Could it be..." I murmur to myself as I turn right and left, studying every inch of my skin. "Could it be that they've disappeared because I've finally come to terms with my past? That I've finally left the ghost of Sergio behind?" I muse aloud, my brows bunched together in consternation.

They appeared the night Sergio hurt me. Maybe they disappeared because my inner wounds have finally healed? That seems like a logical explanation.

But there's one more thing.

A.S.L.'s letter.

Dashing back to my room, I remove it from under the mattress where I hid it. My eyes quickly scan the contents again.