“I didn’t know that was still in there,” I say quietly. My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else. “I wrote it the morning after you left the cabin.”
Her eyes flick up to mine, wide and disbelieving. “You wrote me a letter?”
“Yes.”
The silence stretches, thick and unbearable. The past presses in on us, no longer something I can keep tucked away in a drawer. She looks down at the envelope again, her fingers tightening around it like it might vanish if she loosens her grip.
“Why didn’t you send it?”
It’s a fair question. One I don’t want to answer.
I run a hand through my hair and lean back against the headboard, suddenly needing the support. There’s no deflecting this. No minimizing it. Not now. No matter how I feel, she deserves answers.
“I walked to the mailbox… I’m not sure how many times.” The words come out rough, scraped straight from somewhere I don’t usually let myself go. “I stood there with it in my hand. Just stood there like an idiot, staring at the slot.”
Harper doesn’t interrupt. She doesn’t move. She listens.
“I was afraid. Of being vulnerable. Of you rejecting me. Of proving to myself that I wasn’t good enough for you.” I swallow hard. “So, I kept it. I’ve read it and re-sealed it probably a hundred times over the years. It was my reminder of what a coward I am.”
Her breath stutters, a sound so small but it still cuts straight through me. She looks up at me again, eyes swimming. “And you kept it.”
“I couldn’t let it go. Even if I tried to let you go.”
She lowers her gaze back to the envelope, fingers trembling now, and I know what she’s about to do before she does it. She opens it.
I could snatch it now, beg her to let it go. But I’m not that guy anymore. She deserves better.
Harper unfolds the paper slowly, like she’s afraid it might tear if she moves too fast.
I recognize the creases immediately. I put them there myself, smoothing it flat over and over again, reading and rereading the words until they felt burned into me. Watching her hold it now makes my chest ache in a way I don’t have language for. This letter was never meant to be read out loud. It was meant to exist quietly, like me.
Her voice shakes as she starts. “Harper,” she reads. “Last night was not a mistake. You were not a mistake.”
I close my eyes.
Hearing it spoken instead of remembered is brutal. The words sound younger than I feel now, raw and earnest and terrified in a way I’d wanted to forget.
“But I am a mistake,” she continues, tears slipping free and streaking down her cheeks. “You’re twenty-two with your whole life ahead of you—college graduation, career, a future full of possibilities. I’m a thirty-four-year-old firefighter with more scars than sense and a father who taught me that men like us don’t stick around. We aren’t supposed to. Because we hurt people when we do that.”
My throat tightens painfully.
“You deserve someone whole,” she reads. “Someone who isn’t terrified of love. Someone who can give you the life you deserve. I’m not that man. But God, I wish I was.”
She has to stop for a second, pressing her fingers to her mouth like she’s trying to hold herself together. I don’t interrupt. I don’t move. I don’t deserve to make this easier on myself.
“When you looked at me last night,” she continues softly, “you saw someone worth saving. But I’m not sure I am. And I can’t risk dragging you down with me when I inevitably fall apart.”
Her voice breaks completely on the next line.
“I’ll remember last night for the rest of my life. Please be happy, Sunshine, even if it’s not with me.”
The room goes quiet in the aftermath, the words hanging between us. Harper lowers the letter slowly, her hands shaking openly now, her face crumpling. She looks up at me through tears, devastation and clarity colliding in her expression.
“You really loved me back then.”
“Yes,” I answer immediately, the word torn out of me. “But I was too broken to do anything about it.”
She lets out a sob that sounds like it’s been waiting six years to exist and folds in on herself. I sit up without thinking and pull her into my arms, holding her as tightly as I dare, my chin resting against her hair as she cries.
