* * *
Lyla,
I’ve never been good at saying the right thing at the right time. You know that better than anyone. So I’m writing this down because if I tried to say it to your face, you’d find a way to stop me before I finished, and I need you to hear all of it.
I came here for you. Only you. From the moment I found out you’d be on this show, there was never a question in my mind about whether I’d follow. I would have found my way back to you eventually. This just gave me a reason to stop waiting.
I need you to know that nothing happened with Valerie. Not at dinner, not after. She’s a good woman who deserves to find what she’s looking for. But she never was for me. Nobody here is. Nobody anywhere has been, for ten years, and I’m done pretending that’s something I can change by staying in a place that keeps turning every honest thing between us into a story it can use.
I know you don’t trust me. That you may never trust me. I know I haven’t earned it. And I know that staying here and enduring two more days of challenges and cameras and whatever the producers engineer next won't change that. It’ll only give you more reasons to doubt what’s real and what isn’t. I can’t win you back inside this place. I’ve come to realize that. All this time, I thought leaving was like giving up.
But now I know it’s the only honest thing I have left to give you. So this is me giving it.
I’m not asking you to forgive ten years overnight. I’m not asking you to trust me because I wrote it in a letter. I’m asking you to consider the possibility that what we had was real, that what we found again here was real, and that the man waiting for you on the other side of this is not the boy who left.
Several years ago, when I didn’t know how or when I could find my way back to you, I bought this house that you see in the photo. I bought it for when I could come back to you. So we could truly start our lives together. It’s been sitting empty ever since.
Now it doesn’t have to anymore. You’ll soon understand.
I look down at the small photograph in my hands. What does he mean by anymore? That I’ll soon understand?
* * *
Come find me here when you’re ready. Or don’t. But know that I’ll be there either way.
Whatever you decide, I will always love you, little one.
Yours forever and always,
Scott.
I read it again. Three times. Four.
Each time slower than the last, like slowing down would help me absorb what the words are actually saying.
Why am I getting this? Why send an address when he’s here at the villa?
I still. This isn’t just a love letter. It’s goodbye.
I have to find him.
I fold the letter carefully back into the envelope, tucking the photograph against it. And I rush out of the gap and back into the common area.
I scan the area. He isn’t in the common room. Not on the pool deck, the beach, or even the gym.
He bought a house for us, even when he didn’t know if there was a guarantee we’d be with each other again. And he held on to it for ten years. That’s not the man I thought he was. Far from it.
Which would make everything about Valerie true, too.
I run into the bedroom to find his belongings alongside his bed gone.
I can’t find him. He’s not here anymore.
The weight of that letter finally hits me, crashing through every wall I spent so long rebuilding. He didn’t just say he’d choose me. He left to prove it. He walked away from this show—from the cameras, the competition, from whatever the producers wanted from him—and he did it not to punish or pressure me but to hand the choice back to me entirely. All this time, I’ve been wondering if I should trust him with my heart again, when I’ve known the answer all along.
And he put our future in my hands— What have I done?
Anger at myself flares within me. Those things I said to him this morning come back to my mind. I was so convinced I already knew how this ended. So convinced that protecting myself was the same thing as being right. So convinced that I was better off. But I was wrong.
