Instead, he handed me a folded letter.
“What’s this?” I asked, the paper soft and worn in my hand.
He didn’t look away. “My college essay.”
My brows drew together. “The one that got you into?—?”
“Yeah. Every school. But it wasn’t about basketball. Or my last name. It was about you.”
I stared at him. My throat tightened, breath caught somewhere between disbelief and aching.
“You,” he said again, voice rough like he’d been holding it in forever. “How you earned everything without favors. How you stood up when they expected you to break. You made me want to be better, Jade. I’ve been watching you—silently—trying to be someone who could earn you back.”
I swallowed hard.
“I don’t expect anything tonight,” he added, eyes soft. “Just… read it.”
I nodded, numb all over, and stepped inside.
“Is that Leo Holt’s car?”
I freeze with my coat half off.
Susan’s voice drifts in from the kitchen, casual but sharp enough to let me know she clocked it immediately.
“…Yeah,” I admit. “It was.”
Susan didn’t ask questions. She just handed me a mug of tea and pointed to the chair by the woodstove. I curled into it, velvet and silk pooling around me like the night’s last illusion of royalty.
The flames crackled quietly while I unfolded the letter.
It started like an application essay. But every paragraph felt like a confession. He wrote aboutme. About my resilience. My grit. About the fire I’ve had to keep stoking when the whole world kept pouring water on me.
He wrote about early mornings and lifting weights and running through slush because, as he said,"I wanted to earn something without my last name attached to it—for the first time in my life."
He said I was his reason.
His muse.
Hishome.
By the time I reached the last line, my fingers were trembling.
“They say home is where the heart is.
If you’ll have me back, mine’s wherever you are.”
The fire's almost down to embers now. Just a soft flicker lighting up the old wood stove and the velvet folds of my ruined dress. Aunt Susan went to bed an hour ago after trying—twice—to make me eat something. I couldn’t. My stomach’s still knotted from the gala, the whispers, the police, the paint on priceless wallpaper. From the way Blair’s mother had to be pulled away before she lunged at me. From the way Leo never flinched. Never let go.
I pull his coat tighter around me and stare down at the letter in my hands. His handwriting is neat, practiced. Like he rewrote it a dozen times before he sent it. His college essay—aboutme.
The girl no one believed.
Until now.
She leans around the corner, eyebrow raised, mug in hand. “Huh. Didn’t think you’d be home this early. Was that a love letter?”
I shrug, toeing off my shoes. “Didn’t think you would be either. Yes it was. He changed. For me. For him.”
