Chapter 10
MADDIE
Maddie sat alone in her chamber, the weight of John’s journal heavy in her hands.
The leather binding was worn at the edges, likely softened by years of handling and travel across the Continent.
She ran her fingers over the embossed cover, heart pounding.
She had wanted answers for five long years, and had imagined confronting him countless times in her dreams. Now, in the quiet stillness of her room, she hesitated, suddenly afraid of what truths the pages might contain.
A single candle flickered on the side table while outside snow fell silently against the windowpane. An icy shiver moved through her body. Maddie settled into the armchair by the fire, tucking her feet beneath her.
Her fingers trembled as she opened to the first page. What she found wasn’t random musings or daily observations, but a letter. She thumbed through the pages with growing amazement. Every entry was a letter. Each one written to her as if in conversation, though he’d never sent a single one.
With a steadying breath, she began to read.
My dearest Maddie,
Today marks two years since I left London.
Two years since I looked into your eyes for the last time.
Did you see it there, I wonder? The goodbye I couldn’t bring myself to speak?
I tell myself I did the right thing in leaving, that you deserve someone whole, someone untouched by this darkness that consumes me.
But in the dead of night, when I’m alone with nothing but my thoughts, I wonder if I’ve made the greatest mistake of my life.
Ryan is gone. I still cannot write those words without feeling as though the ground shifts beneath my feet.
The grief comes in waves, threatening to pull me under completely.
Some days I cannot rise from my bed. Other days, I walk for hours, as if movement alone might outpace the emptiness that follows me like a shadow.
I know it would only hurt you more if you knew. But I have tried to drown this pain in wine and the company of women, but it only leaves me feeling more hollow. Nothing touches this void, this absence where my heart once lived.
Nothing except the memory of you.
I wonder if you hate me. You should. God knows I hate myself enough for both of us.
Forever yours, even in absence,
John
Tears welled in Maddie’s eyes, but she blinked them away, determined to continue.
She turned page after page, reading his journey through grief and darkness.
Some entries were brief, written in a hand so unsteady she could barely make out the words.
Others stretched for pages. Raw confessions poured onto paper when he could not even speak them aloud.
She read of his battle with “the darkness,” how some days he could barely function, how the weight of his melancholy pressed upon him until he could scarcely breathe.
She read of his guilt—not just for leaving her but for surviving when Ryan hadn’t, for not being able to save his friend, for being consumed by a grief that seemed to be endless.
And through it all, she read of his love for her. Constant, unwavering, even when he believed himself undeserving of her forgiveness.
She reached a letter dated nearly four years after he’d left:
My beloved Maddie,
I’ve been meeting with a physician in Vienna who has helped me understand that the melancholy that plagues me is not merely grief, but something deeper—an affliction of the mind that I believe I have battled since boyhood.
There were signs, he says, that I never recognized.
The periods of inexplicable sadness that would descend without warning.
The times when even the simplest tasks required monumental effort.
He has taught me ways to manage these episodes. To recognize when they are coming and to weather them without being completely consumed. I no longer seek escape in a bottle or other vices.
For the first time in years, I feel as though I might someday become a man worthy of the love you once offered so freely. A man who could stand before you without shame. A man who could promise never to leave again and keep that promise until his dying breath.
But would you even look at me now? Would you see the man you once loved or only the coward who left without a word?
I carry your face in my heart, as vivid as the day I left. The way your eyes crinkle when you smile. That small freckle at the base of your throat that I used to love to kiss. The sound of your laughter—God, how I miss your laughter.
You are my North Star, Maddie. Even when I cannot see you, you guide me home.
Yours eternally,
John
Maddie pressed a hand to her mouth, stifling a sob.
She had imagined him living carelessly on the Continent, taking pleasure where he found it, perhaps occasionally thinking of her with passing regret.
Never had she imagined him writing to her night after night, pouring his heart onto pages she was never meant to see.
She reached a letter he wrote the first day of the house party:
Dearest Maddie,
I saw you today. Really saw you. And I wish I hadn’t. Not because you weren’t still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever beheld, but because seeing you in the flesh rather than in my dreams is a far more exquisite torture than I could have imagined.
You are even more radiant than I remembered. More poised. More sure of yourself. And the moment our eyes met across that room, I felt something shatter within me—the last remnants of the fortress I’d built around my heart.
I’ve been a fool, Maddie. A prideful, stubborn fool who ran from the best thing in his life because I was afraid I couldn’t be the man you deserved. It sounds pathetic now, and perhaps you’ll never understand, but somewhere in my broken mind, I truly believed I was protecting you.
I hadn’t thought that I’d ever see you again.
I hadn’t trusted myself to be in your presence, because I have wanted you every day since I left.
It has always only been you, and it always will be.
And now that I’ve seen you again, even as it tears me apart, I find myself pathetically grateful.
At least if I can never have you, I had another chance to feel what it’s like to exist in your orbit, to breathe the same air, to hear your voice once more.
My wish for you is that you are happy. And loved. And as long as there is breath in my body, that latter part will always be true, even if I’m not the one to give you that happiness.
Yours always,
John
Maddie struggled to breathe through her tears. She wanted to run from the room and find him, to tell him she understood at last. Instead, she forced herself to turn the page, knowing she needed to finish what he’d asked her to read.
After composing herself, she read through his entries from the house party—his thoughts after their snowball fight, his jealousy of Louis, his desperate hope when they’d nearly kissed in the conservatory. Finally, she reached the last entry, dated from that morning:
To My Maddie,
I should feel remorse for what transpired between us in the library, but I cannot bring myself to regret a single moment. Your skin beneath my hands, the taste of your kiss, the way you called my name—these memories will sustain me if you choose to send me away.
I thought I had come to terms with losing you. I believed these moments near you would be enough and I might finally let you go. But I was wrong. So catastrophically, gloriously wrong.
I still love you. I have never stopped loving you.
Not for a single moment of a single day in these five long years.
And now I find myself incapable of walking away from you again, unless you ask it of me.
Even though I know I have no right to ask for your forgiveness, let alone your heart.
Does it make me selfish that I don’t want to walk away?
If I could go back and undo the pain I caused you, I would sacrifice everything I possess.
But since I cannot rewrite our past, I can only offer you what remains of me—a man forever changed by loss and regret, but also by growth and hope.
A man who has learned through bitter experience the incalculable value of loving truly and being truly loved in return.
And a man who works every day to understand himself and how to be better for you.
I still love you, Maddie. In this life and whatever comes after. Whatever happiness awaits you, I pray it includes me, though I’ve done nothing to deserve such mercy.
And if you find that you still love this broken, unworthy soul, I’m waiting for you in the library tonight. And I’ll wait for you every night until you give me a reason not to.
Forever yours,
John
Maddie’s hands trembled as she closed the journal. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and she made no effort to stop them. The raw honesty of his words, the depth of feeling contained in those pages, broke through every wall she might have built between them.
She rose from the chair, clutching the journal to her chest. All this time, she’d believed he’d left because he hadn’t loved her enough.
But the truth was far more complex and heartbreaking—he’d left because he loved her too much to burden her with his struggles.
Because in his darkest moments, he hadn’t believed himself worthy of her love.
She wiped away her tears with determination. Pain and hurt had kept them apart for too long. And she was done living a life without the man she loved.
Maddie knew what she had to do. She placed the journal carefully on the bedside table and smoothed her gown. The clock on the mantel showed it was almost midnight. The house would be quiet now, with most guests retired to their chambers after the evening’s festivities.
Maddie took a deep breath and opened her chamber door. Her decision was made. She would find John and tell him that despite everything, her heart had remained stubbornly, irrevocably his.