1.
It was one of those nights, the kind on which Nick Thacker needed three things: to work himself to exhaustion, to drown any surviving discontent with tequila, and to then undo all that hard work by rereading a letter he’d done his damnedest to forget.
He’d already checked the first two items off the list. Nick sat on his bedroom floor, his skin slick with the sweat he’d wrung from himself at the gym. The metal bedframe dug into his back. A fifth of tequila dangled from his grip.
He sipped. He hated the way the liquor’s fire writhed in his gut—already, he dreaded the price he’d pay tomorrow. But at least bravery came in liquid form, because he sure as hell didn’t have the courage to unearth the letter on his own. Never mind that the thing had called to him all day.
Hell, it called to himalways.
Usually, he ignored its siren song. At work, he’d brave the blast furnace’s heat as if wading through oil. He’d watch the glowing iron pour from the hearth until sweat misted his reflective suit and his lungs throbbed in the blistering air. Until the furnace’s roar subsumed the hungry ache inside him.
But today, that hadn’t been enough. Today, he was going to do something incredibly fucking stupid.
With shaky hands, Nick set aside the tequila and slid a shoebox from beneath his nightstand. He let a few desperate heartbeats pass by, in case his faulty sense of self-preservation decided to intervene. But he’d known since this morning that the day would end this way. On the way to work, he’d caught the tail end of a talk-radio segment while flipping through stations—some guy had called in, confessing that he’d hired a ghostwriter to pen love letters for his girlfriend—and Nick’s fingers had frozen on the dial. The letter Aubrey had once written, never far from his thoughts, had leapt to the forefront.
It hadn’t left since.
He swallowed and opened the box. He didn’t know which hit harder—the hand-written sheets inside, or the tequila rocketing through his bloodstream—but the impact made his chest clench, regardless.
He lifted out the letter. The sheer number of times he’d folded and unfolded these pages had reduced the paper to fragile silk, but seventeen years hadn’t dulled the ostentatiousness of the purple title at the top.
An Inexhaustive List of Things I Love About You.
Nick traced Aubrey’s handwriting. It’d been forty-six days since her words had last stung his eyes. Forty-six days since he’d vowed to stop doing this to himself. Yet here he sat.
Again.
I love your way with words.
No one writes a love letter like you do, Nick, least of all me. But here’s my attempt to try, because yours have changed my life. I’ll never forget the first one I found in my locker. It was nothing like those awfulbooks we read for English, which are really just some dead guy’s long-winded attempts to sound smart. No, your words were alive. They shifted the world beneath my feet. And they were all for me.
Please, don’t ever stop writing to me.
Nick dragged a hand down his face. God, had Aubrey ever really loved him like that? With such wholehearted purity?
He tried to feel his way back to that long-dead breath of sunlight, but he couldn’t manage. Probably because, even in high school, he’d never truly settled into her adoration. He’d known he could never do anything for a girl like that except hold her back.
People who shone as brightly as Aubrey MacLean didn’t belong in places like Henderson, Indiana.
Good thing, then, that Nick had broken her heart. Good thing Aubrey had left town and never returned. Good thing he hadn’t seen her in seventeen years and never would again.
Good. Fucking. Thing.
He gulped more liquid flame and thunked the bottle down.
I love that you never back down from a fight.
Not that I approve of guys beating each other up. But you don’t fight for fun. You just stand your ground when your honor is on the line, and always let the other guy throw the first punch. Then, when you hit back, it’s... god, what can I say, other than ‘beautiful’? I know I’m not supposed to think of it that way. I’m not supposed to lie in bed at night and replay the way you defended yourself against Gallant on your first day. But I’d never seen anyone fight like that before. So calm. So focused, like you were completely sure of yourself.
A dark chuckle scorched Nick’s throat.Somethings hadn’t changed. He still fought. Daily. He had to, in order to keep the well of words inside him quiet.
He wondered whether Aubrey would still find it beautiful. If she’d seen him and Jackson pummeling each other at the gym earlier, would she have caught the way Nick funneled his regret into his fists, one punch at a time?
Footsteps sounded. He shoved the letter under the bed, nearly knocking over the tequila in his haste to stand. Thankfully, the mattress shielded everything from view, because Tansy filled the doorway, dripping rainwater. She fluffed her blond waves, scattering droplets across the carpet.
