“Because there’s no reason not to be,” Loreena explains. “It’s what I want to choose. Love over hate. Goodness over evil. Kindness over persecution. I hope that one day, if I’m all alone and I asked someone, they’d be there with me too at the end. Everyone deserves that, if it’s what they want.”
Miranda looks over her shoulder, and her whole body relaxes when she sees the love and acceptance on Loreena’s face. She looks at me that way too. That every dark, twisted, shameful, sinful part of me is seen and loved as well as the good, the beautiful, the sane, the peaceful. She doesn’t want me to be perfect, and she doesn’t want that for herself either. She’s about giving love for who we are in this moment.
I didn’t understand that. I fought her on it.
I get it now.
I get that all the jagged edges of us can be picked up and pieced back together. It doesn’t need to be like it was. It doesn’t even need to be whole. It just needs to be us, finding beauty in our imperfections, finding happiness together, and giving some of that good back to the world.
Chapter 24
Loreena
“Ihave something for you.” Maverick’s shy smile and the tremble in his hand as he passes me a sealed white envelope sets my heart fluttering.
Just thinking about him causes my heart to soar, my blood to hum, my heart to thrum wildly. Sharing the same space? It’s a gift, a pleasure, and the greatest honor that I’ve known. We’ve taken things slowly physically, but it’s not for lack of want. We’ve just enjoyed the intimacy of slowly exploring and getting to know each other’s bodies, and really, getting reacquainted with ourselves. It’s been a safe place, but I’m ready.
We were cuddling on the bed together downstairs, listening to a podcast on overcoming fear. It sounds cheesy, but we’ve found one that’s been so helpful. We could both talk to Lockwood, but we have so many great resources that feel like they speak right to us, and we have each other. Maverick slipped something out of his pocket.
The letter.
“I’m going to go upstairs and make a smoothie for us.”
Ididsay that I’ve been craving one, and Maverick bought all the stuff for it after work. I know that he’s going up there to give me a few minutes alone with it.
I sit up, my back to the headboard, and clutch the letter to my chest. “Okay.”
“I’ll bring down some tuna for the cats too. Not a lot. Just a little. I bought these new packets for them.”
“You’re such a great cat dad.”
You’re a great everything.
I know that he knows. He gives me that shy, secret smile that he saves for me. I remember how I used to think that of all the people in the world, he saw me best. I still think so. That first instinct has never faded.
“Strawberry banana?”
“Anything, just as long as the tuna packet doesn’t end up getting mixed in it.”
He grins. “I’ll do my best.”
I blow him a kiss and he actually freaking catches it.This man.I know that I’ll always be able to love him more. I’ll grow and fall more in love with him every single day. My heart just feels so impossibly full already.
After Maverick heads upstairs, I slip my thumb under the corner of the envelope’s flap and edge it open.
My heart pounds so loud that it practically rings in my ears. It’s the first letter I ever sent. The date is up there on the top line. I only wrote on one side of the paper, worried for some reason that if it was double sided, the prison would reject it. I was so scared that I’d do something that would get me barred from the program before I’d ever been able to reach out to anyone. I had thisfeeling. I was compelled to write. I was so sure that it was the correct path.
I wasn’t wrong.
I turn the sheet of paper over because I can see the writing through it.
On the other side, Maverick put today’s date. His writing, blocky but small—writing I’d recognize anywhere—flows right off the page, straight to the living, breathing organ thundering in my chest.
Loreena.
I was a lost, hopeless, broken thing when I first got this letter. I can’t say that I was even a person. More like a wild animal, locked away in a cage. I thought that the system took the best parts of me and broke them. It’s a place devoid of goodness, of sanity, of reason, of the sun and the stars in turn. I thought I had no choice. That my free will had been stripped from me and that I’d spend ten years that way. Your letters humanized me. They slowly healed every part of me, even the ones that I hadn’t realized were so broken. When I had no real pulse or soul or consciousness of my own, the heart of your words cut through me. Your writing burrowed under my skin, cracked my ribs, and breathed life back into me.
You’ve given me breath, hope, wisdom, and a reason to get up and face each day. I know that I’ve already told you this, but you’re the most inspiring woman I’ve ever met. My mom would have loved you, and if she’s out there, I know that she’s looking down on us with a smile. If not, and there’s nothing that comes after this, then I’ll carry her memory within me, always alive. I had no idea how to fulfill my promise to her. You showed me how to change the world. It’s not some grand act that saves a nation. It’s not an invention that keeps the planet from being destroyed. It’s not a political system that fixes all the ills in the world. It’s not curing the incurable. It’s not me trying to eliminate all crime, singlehandedly. All of those things wouldbe nice, and I would love to do that, but you’ve shown me that changing the world happens from a single step, with a single touch, a word, one small gesture of kindness.
