I read it once quickly, my chest getting tighter with each paragraph. Then again, slower, forcing myself to absorb every word. By the third read, my throat was so tight, it hurt to swallow.
The childhood stuff hit hard. A six-year-old just wanting to play hockey like any other kid, but unable to because of who his parents were. The loneliness of being special. Never being allowed to fail.
But it was the Alexandra section that really got me. She’d called him bland, desperate, a golden retriever who thought he was a person. Jesus. No wonder he’d wanted one relationship where someone didn’t know. She’d used his trust against him, causing irreparable harm.
And then the part about me. About us.
The terrible jokes you made when you were nervous…
I love that you saw me at my worst—sick, frustrated, failing at basic furniture assembly—and still wanted to be around me.
I love you.
The words blurred as I read them. He loved me. Not past tense, notthought I loved. Present tense. Current. Real.
He loved me. That same big word my father had used, except now it didn’t feel so big anymore. It felt… right.
The anger I’d been carrying didn’t disappear, but it shifted. I was still hurt about the lies, still pissed that he’d made choices for me. But underneath the letter’s formal language was real pain, real fear, real love.
Fuck.
I couldn’t sit here. Couldn’t process this alone in my room like some dramatic movie scene. I needed to move, to act, to do something with all the emotions fighting for space in my chest.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing outside Nils’s apartment door. I’d driven here on autopilot, wearing my base layers I’d had under my gear because I hadn’t even gone back to change. My hair was probably a mess, I definitely needed a shower, and I had no idea what I was going to say.
But I was here, because I knew no other way. Clearly, I wasn’t gonna find an answer brooding by myself because if that were the case, I would’ve had one already. No, I needed to see him. Talk to him. Look him in the eye and say what I had to say. Whatever that was.
I knocked—hammered, really—on his door. “Nils, open up. I know you’re home.”
Footsteps, quick and urgent. The door opened to reveal Nils looking like he hadn’t slept in days. His hair was disheveled, he was wearing sweatpants and an old Rideau University T-shirt, and his eyes widened when he saw me. “Adan?”
“Can I come in?”
He stepped aside immediately. “Of course.”
His apartment looked the same but felt different. The IKEA furniture we’d built together seemed to mock me with its normalcy. How had I spent so much time here and never realized I was sitting on a couch with actual royalty?
“You read it,” he said. Not a question.
“Yeah, I read it.” I turned to face him, the letter crumpled in my fist from how tightly I’d been holding it.
The quiet hope in his eyes was killing me.
I took a breath. “I get it. I get why you lied. That Alexandra chick really did a number on you.”
“That’s not an excuse?—”
“No, it’s not. But it’s a reason. And the stuff about your childhood, about never being allowed to be normal… I can’t imagine that. My whole life, I’ve been fighting to be special. You’ve been fighting to be ordinary.”
“Does that mean?—”
“It means I understand. It doesn’t mean we’re okay.” I started pacing, needing to move while I sorted through everything I needed to say. “Because we have bigger problems than trust right now.”
“What do you mean?”
I spun to face him. “I told my dad about us.”
Nils paled, swallowing thickly. “I imagine he’s furious with me.”
