I destroyed us being weak, and now, my punishment is having to do this alone. I’ll hold on for as long as I can in hopes that you’ll return one day.
You are, and forever will be, my better half.
I still love you.
G.’
When he read those words, his heart ached. He never thought that Graham even gave him a thought. That’s why he’d moved on.
Had he known…
Gently, he folded the letter, and placed it back in the order.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered.
The box shook.
Michael couldn’t do this.
It was breaking his already mangled heart into pieces. He’d been the asshole. Not once did he try to find Graham.
Not.
Once.
“I don’t want to read more,” he said. “I don’t want to know that I was the one who hurt him. For all of these years, I lived with the idea that he hurt me, but he stayed true. I didn’t. I moved on and proposed to someone else.”
The box slid closer.
One envelope shifted, standing above the others, and Michael picked it up.
It was dated six months ago.
And it was the latest note.
With shaking fingers, he opened it, and pulled the handwritten letter out.
“My dearest lost love,
It’s been a few years. Seven, to be exact. I’ve marked each one so that one day, when I’m gone, the attorney that I’ve hired to find you can get them to you.
I don’t know why I even should, since by now, you’re married and happy. I don’t believe that you just disappeared. I believe you’ve hidden yourself to avoid me, and I don’t blame you.
I hate myself so much.
I promised to never love anyone else, and I never have, but I’m trying to die. With each time I let some random man touch me, I pray it’s the end. I want them to kill me. My few friends tell me that I’m going to get hurt.
God.
I hope so.
With each one, I pray they end my miserable life, and that it’s painful. I don’t want to be here anymore. For some years, I had hope.
Now, I have none.
I’m completely empty.
By now, we’d be together a decade. We might have had a few children to call our own, and acute little place by a pond where we could teach our children to swim and fish.
