Motherfucker.
It’s all I can do to keep the hate out of my voice. “So, you think she was pregnant?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she sneers. “Alex and I just stood there, shellshocked, watching her slide into the car next to her knightin shining armor.” Her voice cracks. “That was the first time she disappeared from my brother’s life.”
“Mmm,” I snicker, though there’s nothing funny about it. Not one fucking bit.
Alex once told me she came back a year later—completely glossed over the whole graduation-night disaster—and they picked up where they’d left off. He even said they were happy. Got pregnant. Had Emilee. He was modeling then. She was still drawing. Hell, she was the one who designed the puzzle pieces—convinced him to get her artwork tattooed across his back.
And then she vanished again—this time leaving behind a five-year-old daughter.
Christ.
“Here,” Teya says, sliding the envelope toward me. I’d nearly forgotten about the damn thing. “This came in the mail eight years ago. Not long after Meera walked out on Alex and Emilee. It was addressed to him.”
Guilt clouds her face as she pulls on her lower lip. “But I opened it.”
I narrow my eyes. “I take it he doesn’t know?”
She shakes her head. “No. But it pretty much confirmed what I already expected—what webothsaw the night she left with that man.”
She brushes a tear from her cheek and pushes her bangs aside.
“Alex was already hurting so much, Elijah. She’d left him twice.Twice.How much can someone take? There was no way in hell I was going to add to his humiliation.”
With a heavy heart, I reach into the envelope and pull out its contents: a single sheet of paper… and an orange plastic puzzle piece.
I twirl it between my fingers, trying to place where I’ve seen this before.
Could this be the missing link?
Teya nods toward the letter. “Read the note, Elijah.”
Nodding, I pick up the paper and read:
My dearest Alex,
There’s so much you don’t know about me—so many things I’ve kept hidden. But for good reason. I don’t expect you to understand… not now… maybe not ever.
The truth is, I’m still trying to understand myself.
I’m a complicated person. I’ve always been a closed book. You know that. And trust me, it’s better that way. Too many webs to untangle—and even if you did, you’d still be lost.
So please don’t look for me.
Because I don’t exist.
Instead, look for what does.
I pause, blinking at the words. My mind scrambles to make sense of them, but they’re like smoke… just evaporating before my eyes. Instead, I press on.
The tattoo, Alex.
There’s a reason I had it put there. It’s forever.
Something I can’t be.
But it’s the only real part of me you’ll ever truly know?—
