I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced myself to take another bite of food. It tasted like cardboard.
It wasn’t like Sebastian had set off on a year-long trip to the wilderness. He’d gone back to New York, where we both lived. I was due to fly back tomorrow myself, and we still had to see each other at work.
But his abrupt departure was a clear statement: he was done with me.
I didn’t blame him. He’d laid it all out on the table, and I couldn’t even give him a straight answer.
I used to say I hated him, but I hated myself more.
I blinked back another onslaught of tears as I shoveled more food into my mouth. Some of it went down the wrong pipe, and I broke into a fit of coughs.
Neha’s eyebrows pinched together. “Are you okay?” Her usual sharpness softened somewhat. “Did you two get into a fight again?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
“If you did, you’ll get over it,” she said. “You two fight all the time.”
Not like this.A fight would have been easier. It was one and done.
This… this was something else, and I wasn’t sure we could come back from it.
But I had to try.
My despondency hardened into resolve.
I was the one who kept running away, and honestly, I still didn’t know how to deal with his confession. It hadn’t fully sunk in yet. But Irefusedto believe this was the end. Sebastian and I had been through too much and known each other for too long for this to be it.
I’d find a way to fix things. I always did.
But first, I had to figure out what letter he was talking about.
CHAPTER 27
Maya
THE FIRST THING I DID WHEN I GOT HOME WAS SEARCHthrough my belongings.
I had no clue what the letter looked like, when he gave it to me, or if I’d received it at all. It’d probably long disintegrated by now, its contents nothing more than a lost memory.
But something in my gut told me it still existed somewhere. Ifeltit calling to me; I just had to figure out where it was.
As expected, Sebastian didn’t return any of my texts or calls, so I spent a week tearing through my closets and rummaging through my drawers. I looked in every pocket and under every bed. I even went to the post office and pestered the supervisor into checking to see if I had any missing mail.
Nothing.
I sank into a brief bout of despair before I remembered I’d left a veritable treasure trove at my parents’ house. After I’d graduated from boarding school and college, I’d packed up all my things and stored them in their attic. If Sebastian had given me a letter, ithadto be in there. If it wasn’t, then it really was lost forever.
So the weekend after my epic post office fail, I drove toWestchester and asked Diya for help digging up my old storage boxes. She didn’t ask any questions, but the giant bowl of chocolates she left for me communicated her concern.
I’d accumulated a mountain of mementos from my school years, and it took me the whole weekend to sort through them all.
My hope had dwindled to almost nothing by the time I got to the last two boxes. I opened the closest one and sneezed at the cloud of dust wafting up into my face.
Once I got my allergies under control, I flipped through a stack of notebooks. They were filled with handwritten observations from my classes, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
Just when I was about to give up and move on to the last box, I came across a stiff corner hiding between the pages of my social studies notebook.
My heart skipped a beat. I held my breath as I slowly pulled the timeworn paper free.
