Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mara
My eyes sting before I even reach the signature. I try to blink through it, to stay composed, but the page blurs anyway. A single tear slips into the margin. I wipe it quickly, almost guilty, like the paper might dissolve if I let sadness linger too long.
Alec says nothing. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t try to fill the silence or distract from it. He just stays—quiet, watchful, giving the moment room to breathe, like he understands this isn’t something that needs fixing.
And it shifts me—unravels a part I swear I buried for good. Because I’ve spent years holding myself together under the quiet assumption that no one else would. That emotions should be folded away where no one can reach them. That breaking down is a lonely ritual I’ve learned to carry by myself.
But Alec doesn’t hover or fix or pry. He just refuses to look away, even when grief shows its sharpest edges.
I fold the letter, hands trembling slightly from the pressure building in my chest.
“He felt it,” I whisper, voice rough. “He knew something was coming for him.”
Alec’s jaw tenses, a flicker of emotion passing through him like a shadow. He doesn’t say anything right away. He just breathes slowly, as if choosing the exact right shape for his reply.
“He also knew what he wanted,” he says at last. His voice is low, but not empty. There’s meaning there—heavy, deliberate. “And he wanted it with everything he had.”
I press the envelope to my chest, as if it might help hold all of it—the ache, the longing, the life that never had the chance to unfold. My aunt’s heartbreak. Thomas’s fear. Their hope scribbled in fading ink.
“I don’t know how to carry this,” I murmur. “The dreams they had. The way they held each other together with words. It’s like touching something unfinished. Like standing at the edge of someone else’s life and knowing you’ll never see how it ends.”
My voice breaks, but I don’t cry. Not fully. Just feel that pressure inside me shift—stretching a space I’ve kept closed for years.
Alec watches me. His attention settles across me like a low current, quiet but impossible to ignore. He looks at me like he’s ready to step in if I crack, but not afraid of the mess if I do.
“It’s unfair,” I say quietly, throat tight. “They . . . they couldn’t finish loving each other.”
“Yeah,” he replies. “Some stories get cut off before anyone understands what they were meant to become.”
The words catch in my chest and stay there. His voice isn’t philosophical or distant—it’s personal. Lived-in. Like he knows what it’s like to have your story fractured before it’s ever told.
A part of me cracks open under it, the ache unfamiliar and all-consuming. I’ve been avoiding this moment, this letter, this part of myself that still remembers what it feels like to be held through pain. I didn’t expect him to stay. I didn’t expect to want him to.
I inhale slowly, trying to steady the beat of my heart.
“Do you think . . .” I pause, not because I don’t know what I want to say—but because it terrifies me to say it out loud. “Should I read another one?”
Alec meets my eyes.
“Only if you want and you think you can handle it,” he says. “I’ll be here for as long as you need me.”
I want to respond.
I want to tell him that it isn’t just tonight.
That whatever thread keeps pulling me toward him has been tugging at me for days—quiet, persistent, impossible to ignore.
I want to admit that I need him in a way that terrifies me, because needing anyone has never ended well in my life, and I swore I’d never do it again.
But with him . . .
With him, it feels different.
With him, it feels like my ribs finally remember how to move after years of holding everything in.
With him, it feels like I could set down a piece of grief I’ve been dragging around since before Sam died—grief I never learned how to carry properly, grief that shaped me into someone I barely recognize.
I hate it.
I hate that he’s undoing things I’ve kept stitched tight.
I hate that I want that undoing.
It makes something low inside me ache—this stubborn, blooming hope I don’t trust, don’t understand, don’t believe I deserve. I want him here longer than tonight. Longer than a few pages of a letter. Longer than whatever temporary arrangement the universe accidentally carved out between us.
But saying that aloud feels like walking barefoot into the past—with every step reminding me of abandonment, disappointment, and a marriage that broke long before death touched it.
So I hold it in.
I hold all of it in.
Because if I say the words out loud, if I let him see all the fractured pieces I’ve hidden from everyone else . . . he might stay.
And I don’t know if my heart knows how to survive that.