Fishing out some socks and underwear from my chest of drawers, I stuff them into the interior mesh pouch. “You’re busy. I’ll get out of your hair.”
Fallon’s gaze returns to me. “I’ll be done by four. I promise.”
That’s five hours from now, I think with disappointment. “I’m holding you to that. Don’t make me call Xander to come drag you out of there.”
“Noted. Love you,” he says, and I hear Aurora’s swoony “Aww” right before the screen goes black.
With five hours to kill, I might as well finish packing. Blowing out a raspberry, I scan the bedroom, trying to think if I missed anything. Dust motes lazily dance in the late morning sun that slants through the window, striping the floor and walls in alternating lines of gold and pink. A stream of sunlight shines a spotlight directly into the closet, landing on one of Fallon’s shirts.
I like seeing his things starting to take up permanent residence in here. His shirts and jeans hanging in the closet, a pair of tennis shoes on the floor next to the bedroom door, his leather belt draped over the back of the chair, his electric razor on the bathroom counter next to my hairbrush, his electric toothbrush next to mine.
Deciding to take one of his button-up dress shirts with me to sleep in, I play my fingers over the soft fabric, skimming across the hanging garments like piano keys until I get to the blue one. I glide my hand down the silky sleeve to the cuff and lift it to my nose. It still smells like him, a mix of his cologne and his natural, masculine scent. Removing it from the hanger, I stub my toe on something and look down. A wooden chest that wasn’t there before sits innocuously on the floor, half-hidden under an empty black duffel bag that I recognize as Fallon’s. It’s the one he brought with him the second night he slept over at the house.
I push the duffel off with my toe. I didn’t see him bring this in with his other stuff. Squatting down, I sit back on my heels, my brows knitting together as I unhook the metal latch on the front of the small cedar chest. I know I shouldn’t be nosy, but my curiosity is piqued. The hinges quietlycreakwhen I lift the lid…and I only become even more perplexed. Stored inside are pieces of paper, neatly folded into thirds and tied together with twine.
Sitting down to get more comfortable, I take out each bundle, counting as I go, twenty-four bundles in all by the time I empty the box. Wanting to unravel the mystery, I pick up one of the bundles and carefully slip the top sheet of paper out and unfold it—and my breath catches when I see Fallon’s distinctive handwriting sprawled across the paper.
A letter.
I pull out the next one, then the next and the next. They’re all letters.To me. I scan each one, then count them again to make sure I’m right. One letter a month for twenty-four years. Two hundred and eighty-eight letters that Fallon wrote but never sent me.
My heart starts beating wildly, like it doesn’t know what to do with this sudden flood of something too big to name. I stare down at the pile of letters scattered across the closet floor, trying to make sense of them all. Picking up the first one, my hands tremble as if the paper would disintegrate between my fingers.
Dear Elizabeth,
I don’t know why I’m writing this when I know I’ll never send it. It’s only been a week since I last saw you, standing at the altar with Ry, a vision of absolute beauty in your wedding dress. Maybe it’s because I miss you.Maybe it’s because I keep hearing your voice in my head every night when I look up at the stars. Or maybe it’s because I find myself talking to you several times a day, only to realize that you’re not there. Your smile haunts me with every face I see…
A sob breaks free as I continue reading, my tear-glassed eyes tracking each blurred line like a lifeline through time, every sentence a piece of him. What he felt. What he saw.
When I finish one, I reach for the next. September. October. November. With each letter, his voice spills out of the past—sometimes longing, sometimes hopeful, sometimes jokingly, and sometimes broken beyond repair. He tells me about the places he travels to. Songs that remind him of me. Regrets he still carries like iron shackles bound to his soul.
“I saw a woman at the market today. She wore her hair in a lopsided bun like you so often do. I followed her for five minutes before I realized what I was doing. Fuck, I miss you.”
Some letters end abruptly, as if he couldn’t find the words and gave up halfway through. Others were about important milestones. Letters written on my birthday or on my children’s birthdays. Letters written on Christmas or New Year’s or to remember the Halloween we spent together on his yacht. I devour each letter, voracious for his words, month by month, year by year…until I come to the letter he wrote me on the day Ryder passed away.
Dear Elizabeth,
There are no words big enough or deep enough to convey the ache of his loss. Even writing it feels—wrong, like the universe has cracked open and swallowed all the light we used to know.
Ry was the best man I ever knew. He was my best friend and my brother in every way that mattered. I never imagined a life where he wouldn’t be just a phone call away or where I couldn’t hear his voice. And the silence now is unbearable.
I can’t fathom what today is like for you. My grief is drowning me—but yours must feel like being pulled into hell. I want to be there beside you and hold you while everything falls apart around us. I miss him, Kitten. I miss him so fucking much. The world just doesn’t seem right without him in it.
Ry loved you with a kind of fierce, selfless devotion I don’t think many people ever get to experience. You were his light, just like you were mine. And he never stopped being in awe that he got to be yours.
A week ago, Ry asked to speak to me. He made me promise something. He said, “Don’t let her be alone too long. She needs someone who knows how to love her theway she deserves to be loved. Someone who already does. I’ve always known it was you.”
I didn’t mean to fall in love with you. But my heart made that choice long before I had a say in it. You were sunlight and soft fire and everything good. My life felt brighter—survivable—because you existed in it.
I know today is not the day for promises, and the last thing you need is another heart asking for space when yours is breaking. So I’ll wait until you’re ready. However long it takes. A year or an eternity. I’ll always be standing right there, waiting for you.
I love you, Elizabeth. I have loved you quietly, deeply, and without hope for years. I loved you in all the moments you were Jay’s and all the moments you were Ry’s. There hasn’t been a day that I haven’t loved you.
When you’re ready, if that time ever arrives, I’ll come for you.
Fallon
Oh god. I can’t breathe. I clutch the letter to my chest, deep, aching sobs tumbling out, unstoppable and unrelenting.
