For now.
My hands fist my hair, yanking the strands. She can’tdothis to me! She can’t give herself to me and then take herself away. That’s not how this works.
Then I pace the cell, continuously returning to the pile of letters—continuously returning to her.
Aspen. My girl with the multi-coloured hair and sky-blue eyes and the one-eyed cat named Millie and the florist job and the innocence I crave ripping from her soul one orgasm at a fucking time.
Reading the letters from start to finish, I come up with a plan. One I’ll enact soon enough.
She won’t be rid of me for long.
You’re all mine, sweetheart.
SIX
ASPEN
I’m an asshole.
Two days after sending my final letter to Cade—my goodbye—a delivery service appears at my door on Valentine’s Day with a bouquet of calla lilies and a bucket of cat treats from a fairly high-priced pet boutique.
The delivery boy shoves them in my hands and takes off back to his truck, moving to what I assume is the next of many houses. Valentine’s Day is insanely busy in the flower industry, and I’m lucky to have today off.
Am I lucky?I think, staring at the bouquet in my hand. There are only a few people who are aware of what my favourite flower is—and only one who’d do something like this.
Numb, I retreat back inside and kick the door shut behind me, the foyer tainted with February frost that the open door pushed inside.
There’s a card resting inside the flowers, and with shaky fingers, I pluck it out and flip it over, reading the two simple words written in handwriting as familiar as my own.
Be mine.
Cade sent these. Somehow, he sent me flowersandcat treats for Millie from inside prison. If he did this before receiving my letter—assuming he’s gotten it by now—then this makes me an even bigger asshole.
He’s given me something for Valentine’s Day, and my gratitude will be a letter that severs our connection.
My thumb strokes one of the delicate, white petals while carrying the bouquet into my kitchen to retrieve a vase stored in an upper cupboard above the fridge. The florist pre-cut the ends, so after unwrapping them, I slide them into the glass vase and rearrange them to look full.
They truly are gorgeous, and I bring the vase into the living room to rest on a side table Millie never explores. The knot in my stomach continues tightening with every breath.
Should I send one more letter to thank him? By the time it reaches him, he’d have gotten my other one, so any note of gratitude, even only a few words, might seem meaningless.
The guilt I’ve felt since writing the note—and the wine bottle I downed before sending it—was bad enough. Writing him a thank-you note resets any progress made this week.
No, it’ll be better to pretend none of this ever happened. The flowers will die in a few weeks; the letters will remain tucked in a box or drawer, and the only remaining sign of Cade will be in my thoughts and dreams.
Communicating with him was gratifying, but the purpose was for my paper—which is progressing nicely. That’s all he was meant to be, and all that he can ever be.
“I’ll never see him again.” Saying it aloud puts it into the universe, which means it’ll come true. “I’m a stranger passing in his life. He has bigger things to worry about than me. I’ll write my paper, graduate, and move on.”
That’s the plan anyway.
SEVEN
CADE
One Year Later
Freedom doesn’t smellhow I imagined.
