I realized, with a jolt, that I hadn’t sat in this chair once since coming back.I’d stoodnearit.I’d glanced at it.I’d skirted around it like it was a gravestone.But I hadn’t let myself sink into it.Hadn’t let myself remember.
Slowly, I let myself relax into it.My body fit into the grooves carved by years of my dad’s weight.It held me as it remembered me.
A sob tore free, but I didn’t fight it this time.I let it come.I let all of it come.For the life I lost when my mom took me away from here.For the life she forced me to live, the dad she didn't let me love, and for how she left me.I cried for my dad, for everything I had lost.I cried for Nate and the future he dreamed of, that we would never get to live together.
My hand shook as I picked up the first stack, my letters to my dad.I chose one near the top, my name scribbled in the corner, the date blurry from where a tear had once fallen.
I opened it, and I read.
I remembered the girl who had written it.She was so lonely, raw, and desperate to talk to a man who wasn’t there.I felt every word as if it were brand new and years old at the same time.But somehow, teenage me still tried, she still reached out, she still hoped.
When I finished, I set it back in the box gently.
My eyes slid to the other stack.
Nate’s handwriting stared back at me.Terror and longing wrestled in my chest.
“Okay,” I whispered to the empty room.“I can do this.”
I picked the first one up, unfolded it, and as I started to read his words, hisrealwords, the ones he hadn’t filtered through contracts or cameras or fear.
For the first time since he died, I let myself feeleverything.Not just the rage.Not just the emptiness.All of it.I didn't try to filter or analyze my feelings.I felt them.
I knew I needed to do better for our daughter.
This new life that terrified me and tethered me to the world all at once.
And as I read, as my tears fell onto paper and sank into ink, I realized something simple and brutal: If I stayed numb, I would lose him twice.
Once in the crash.
And once in the life I refused to live in his absence.
I didn’t know how to move forward yet.
But in that chair, in that room, with my baby rolling under my hand and Nate’s words in my lap, I finally wanted to try.
Chapter 52 - Tessa
I woke up with the sun.Not from a nightmare this time.Just… awake in a way I hadn't felt in a long time.
The house was quiet in a way that made my chest ache.My throat felt raw, my eyes swollen, but my mind wasn’t fogged or underwater.I could feel everything: my body, the weight of the blankets, the small rhythmic flutter of the baby inside me.Like she knew things had shifted.
It wasn’t peace.
But it wasn’t numbness, either.
Something new.
Something like standing on thawing ice, without fear of the water.
I sat up slowly, pressing a hand to my belly.
“Morning,” I whispered.
She nudged back, gently, like she’d been waiting for me.I cried, but it wasn’t the drowning kind.It was more like… a pressure-release valve finally opening.
When I walked downstairs, I stopped on the last step.
