Chapter 47
MEERA
Oh Noah. Don’t do this to yourself. Alex is a good guy. He’d appreciate anything you write. Even poetry. Here… let’s do this together.
He shakes his head—quick but sharp—then pulls the letter back in front of us. He picks up the pen, fingers trembling. The first words are awkward, hesitant, but they are mine…
So, as my brother was saying, he writes poetry.
And he’s good at it too. I know poetry isn’t really your kind of thing.
Then again, neither was being gay. But people grow toward what they need.
People grow toward the truth, even when it scares them.
I’m happy you followed your heart, Alex. Truly, I am.
Elijah will love you and Emilee with everything he has, the way he’s always loved Ana—openly, fully, and with the kind of honesty that never hides who he is.
I made the right choice when I chose Elijah and Gabriel to give our daughter a home.
Some love is steady like that. Like theirs.
It doesn’t waver just because life does.
But—back to Noah.
He’s confused, Alex. Not weak. Not careless. Confused. His love for you comes from two places at once: his heart and his mind. Both are real. Both are tangled. That’s how love survives trauma. It splits. Adapts. Finds corners to live in.
Dissociative identity disorder is my diagnosis.
It became his, too, in a way. He needed a part of me with him to stand watch, to hold the pieces when they threatened to scatter.
I stayed because someone had to. Because if I didn’t, he might have disappeared into the rain entirely—and miss the chance to finally meet you.
What he feels for you isn’t an accident, Alex. Neither am I.
For what it’s worth… I loved you. So much so that I chose disappearance over the damage I knew I could do.
If I stayed, it would have meant letting the worst parts of me touch you.
And god, Alex, you deserved a version of love that didn’t come with warnings.
That’s why I made the choices I did. Mimi, my alter, was growing too strong.
The struggle between us had become something I could no longer contain.
I didn’t want you or Emilee to ever meet her.
Because some things, once seen, can’t be unseen.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you choose to see it, Gabriel crossed her path anyway. And once he did, his fate, and Ana’s, were sealed.
Fate. It feels like a miracle in its own cruel way.
When I gave birth to Ana, I still didn’t know how I would ever bring you two together.
I only knew that someday, somehow, you would have to know her—just not then.
You were too young to be asked to raise a child, and I couldn’t bring myself to place that weight on you.
I couldn’t put that weight on me either.
Loving her would have felt like holding something breakable in unsteady hands. I knew I had to let her go too.
Her birthmark felt like a blessing disguised as coincidence. Something given, not chosen.
My artistic mind took over immediately. Mimi’s did too.
We’re both artists, you know. That’s part of the problem.
My intention was never to blackmail Gabriel.
I never wanted leverage—only a bridge. But I couldn’t control Mimi’s intentions.
I tried, Alex. God, I tried. My hands worked frantically, sketching the puzzle tattoo before Mimi could fully sink her twisted logic into my chaos.
Before she could turn creation into a threat.
Gabriel was right when he noticed the overlap—my mind brushing against another in my artwork. Somehow, I’d known he would see it. He’s a brilliant artist himself.
And Alex… trust him. Trust him to love you. Trust him to be good to Noah. He loves him deeply. I saw it with my own eyes—though at the time I was seeing it through Mimi’s. Still, it was there. Too strong to be ignored, even through her stare.
Love is always at the core of Gabriel’s choices. Perhaps that’s what fate looks like up close—guided by love rather than randomness.
Just look at how it intervened. Despite how impossible it should have been for you to piece together the puzzle, to find the missing link, the universe closed the distance anyway—through Elijah, through the quiet bravery of loving him—and brought you into Ana’s life, gently, inevitably, as if it had been waiting for the right moment all along.
The same goes for my brother. Yes, I initially led Noah to you.
But fate put him directly in your path. It wanted you to figure it out on your own—those were my words, by the way.
I wanted you to look through the rain, see his tears…
figure out where you belonged in his storm, where you would stand in the aftermath.
And now that you have… I can finally move on.
Allow him to slowly release me, Alex. He’s already let a part of me go when he jumped off the yacht and into the ocean. None of us could swim, and he knew that. And yet, he found a way to surface. God, he’s so brave. Make sure you tell him that I’m proud of him.
Also, what happened to our father was on me.
I killed him—Meera, not Noah. Not even Mimi.
It was me. I think he’s having a hard time believing that, but it’s the truth.
There’s no blood on his hands. It matters that he knows this, Alex.
I would tell him myself, but he won’t be able to hear me as clearly as before.
And I can’t risk Mimi breaking into my thoughts and twisting what I mean.
Tell him not to look back. And not to be afraid to cry anymore. His tears are beautiful. They deserve to be seen. Oh, and Alex? Dance with him. Every chance you get. Because he’s finally free… free of me, free of himself… free of the rain.
THE END