Page 8 of Lady and the Butcher

“Simone,” Alana said gently.

I blinked. “What?”

“You’re next.” She passed me a slip of paper and a pen.

Right. Time to write my release intention.

I scrawled one word:Control.

Then, as the group passed the metal bowl, one by one tossing their folded paper into the flames, I stood and stepped to the edge.

“I release,” I said, loud and clear, “my need to carry the whole damn world on my back.”

Then I dropped the paper into the fire and watched it curl.

The flames flared, and something in my chest cracked open.

Maybe it was the smoke. Maybe it was the wine spritzer. Maybe it was just the weight of being the one who held space for everyone else, every day.

But suddenly, all I could think about was being undone.

Not in a poetic way. In a filthy one.

Like—Alpha Mail showing up in the middle of this backyard ceremony, stepping through the circle of women like a god of war, dragging me behind the shed, and?—

“Simone,” Alana whispered, elbowing me. “You’re smiling like a villain.”

I snapped out of it. Cleared my throat. “Just thinking about my new narrative,” I said sweetly.

She raised a brow, but let it go.

After the fire died down, we lay on blankets under the stars, half-drunk on cacao and catharsis, whispering dreams we were afraid to say out loud.

“I want to run a birth center in the mountains,” said Dana Walsh, eyes misty.

“I want to start a podcast about moms who fake their own deaths,” said Kat.

Random. But okay.

“I want to have sex without making a Google doc afterward,” I said.

Heads turned.

“What?”

Alana snorted. “Simone, you write debrief notes?”

“Only sometimes!”

The circle dissolved into laughter.

But later, after the last of the women had wandered home, I sat alone on the back steps, robe unbelted, golden curls frizzed from the fire, and stared up at the sky.

The moon was full and shameless, casting silver over the fig tree and the cedar fence and the last ember in the pit.

I poured myself one final glass of lavender rosé and whispered, “If you’re real, Alpha Mail … I’m ready.”

The breeze shifted.