My Hand, My Song, My Freedom

---- Introduction The smell hit me first, thick, choking smoke, then Lila' s terrified scream ripped through the festival noise. Jax, my fiancé, was a blur beside me, his face tight with a desperate need to save her. He started towards The Swamp Shack, towards the hungry flames devouring the old wooden walls. My body wanted to lunge, to grab his arm, to scream, "No, Jax, don't!" But this time, | didn't. Because | remembered. | remembered the searing pain as burning wood crashed down, crushing my left hand, destroying my music, obliterating my future, in another life.

| remembered Jax' s face, twisted not with concern for me, but with fury, after Lila was dead and my hand a useless, mangled thing. "It's your fault, Scarlett! You should have saved her, not me!" his words, a brand on my soul His family' s money, a weapon that bled me dry, blackballing ---- me from every gig, every chance | had. | remembered the suffocating silence of his plantation, the cold dismissal in his eyes every day of our sham marriage. Oh God, and the smokehouse. Locked in, the Louisiana summer sun beating down, the air so thick | couldn't breathe, couldn't scream, utterly alone.

| gasped, the memory so real | could taste the ash and the terror. Now, in this life, Jax was yelling Lila' s name again, ready to play the hero, just like before. But this time the script was mine. This time, | stepped aside. | just watched him charge into the inferno, pure indifference a cold comfort. My hand, my precious hand, was safe. My music was still mine.