Page 352 of Mad Girl

All this time, I’ve been waiting on you to show up angry, to confront me for revealing your secret to Michael. But you haven’t. Does that mean Michael never told you he knows who you are? Have you lost two more years with John? If so, how will I live with that, in addition to everything else?

Maybe you’ll give me a chance to win you back after you read these letters. Maybe you won’t. Maybe I’ll never be able to fix what I’ve broken, and we’ll be friends—like you said.

But I’ll need you either way.

To help me with what comes next.

In recounting our past, I’ve picked up on a few troubling details I’d overlooked during those three years we lived together—amidst all the drama and lies and other secrets.

For instance, Hal showing up to intercept me when I tried to leave the house on my own. Everyone’s overreaction when I disappeared to Willoughby’s and turned off my phone. The woman watching the house. The slip in the basement. Even you—taking me to tennis practices, to therapy and dentist appointments, to and from school, to the park.

There’s this undercurrent of…something.

I can’t put my finger on it.

Did Nic hold me so close to keep me from hurting people? Or did he hold me close to keep something out there from hurting me?

Regardless, I have this gut feeling it’s all tied to my mom. If I can get to her, maybe I can get to the truth about everything.

During our visits now, you’re different. You’re putting up walls that haven’t been there the last two years—but I get it. When these jail walls come down, you want me to remember that your walls are still up. So I’ll know to stay back. To keep my distance.

But you know me and boundaries, Casey.

How I like to test them, just to see if they’ll hold.

“Can I just say something?” I asked you earlier today. “About before? About us?”

“Elliot,” you said—half plea, half warning—as you straightened in the chair, tugging at your jacket.

“I wanted to be perfect,” I blurted out. “I wanted to be good. I wanted to be the person you thought I was. But I couldn’t be any of those things, so I…”

“Ruined everything,” you said. Brutal. Hard. Matter-of-fact. “Like you always do.”

Like I’m still doing it. Like you believe I always will.

Coming from you, that stings like a bitch, Casey. Because why would you think any differently? Now that I’ve written it all down, I see how damaging my behavior was back then—not just to us. To everyone.

And I don’t want to be that girl anymore. I want to let people love me, even if I feel like I don’t deserve it.

“I didn’t want to ruin it,” I whispered. “I just didn’t think I was allowed to keep it.” I searched your gaze, waiting for you to soften, hoping to see a crack—however small—in your resolve. “To keep you.”

“You had me,” you said, jaw ticking, fingers curling into a fist against the table, “whether you thought you were allowed to have me or not. I gave you everything.”

Heat gathered behind my eyes, because the only thing cracking was me. My hope. My heart. My plan to win you back. “I know.”

“And that’s the part I hate,” you said. “How I gave, and you took, and I got very little in return. You didn’t have to be perfect. You didn’t have to be good. You just had to be honest.”

Honest. I wish I had been. Not just for us. For the way all those little lies I told stacked up, ultimately leading us here. To a crappy state jail. Brokenhearted and handcuffed.

I pressed my lips together so they wouldn’t tremble.

“I don’t know what hurts more,” you continued, almost conversationally, “not knowing who you really were in that house with me, or realizing how much I wanted to believe the version I saw.”

I could’ve argued with you. Could’ve said, yeah, I left a lot out, but you knew me. Knew me in ways most people never have or never will. Second only to him.

But I didn’t say any of that.

Because it’s all right here. In these letters.