Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There’s a mailbox outside of Leah’s house.
That’s where he leaves a letter for me.
Every morning.
And he’s been doing it for the past two weeks, ever since I got discharged from the hospital.
Every morning I wake up and rush down the stairs to the front door. I run down the driveway in my pajamas to get to the mailbox and rip it open, and every day I find a gray envelope with my name on it.
Inside that gray envelope, there’s always a white, crisp paper, folded once. On that paper, he writes me a reply.
To one of the letters that I wrote to him over the years.
Which makes me think that before returning those shoeboxes to me, he took the time to read my letters.
But more than that, I think he kept them.
He kept some of my letters so he could reply to them one by one.
Is that stealing, I wonder?
I mean, they were meant for him. They’ve always been meant for him.
So I don’t know.
Neither do I know what his plan is.
Like, is he going to keep writing to me like this? Send a letter every day? Also, why hasn’t he gone back yet?
Because he hasn’t.
Two weeks ago when I sent him away after a dramatic display of rage, I thought he’d leave. He’d go back to California, the place where he belongs. The place he wanted to return to, earlier than planned.
But then he brought back my letters and gave me his pretty chain.
I didn’t want to put it on, you know.
I didn’t want anything to do with it; I was so mad at him. For beating himself up as always, for treating me as a mistake, as an obligation.
I was so, so mad.
But I guess I’m weak. I’m a sucker when it comes to him because I did put it on.
I did.
I have it around my neck right now. It sits on my chest – under all my layers of clothing – between the valley of my breasts, stuck to my skin.
Every time I touch it, I feel him.
I hear him too.
I hear his last words before he left.
You’re wrong. Because I want…
Now, what does that mean? What does he want?
And then there’s Leah.
She cut short her meeting in New York when she heard about what happened with me at St. Mary’s. I was expecting her to lecture me, berate me about my sneaking out and, of course, the letters. Maybe even punish me but she didn’t say anything.
Actually, she was… caring toward me.
Leah and I, we’ve always had a complicated relationship. She’s always been a strict maternal figure who has tried her best to make me toe the line. Though she’s never made me feel like I’m a burden to her, she’s never made me feel particularly warm and fuzzy either.
So her sudden change was kind of surprising.
What was even more surprising was the fact that after I was discharged, she gave me two weeks off from St. Mary’s.
I would’ve understood her giving me a couple of days off, especially since the doctor said that I needed my rest, but two weeks was a lot.
Even though that period included Thanksgiving break.
But that’s not the most surprising thing.
The most epic surprise was when she came into my room one night and told me that if I didn’t want to return to St. Mary’s at all, she was okay with it.
She even apologized about Miller and how it was her fault that she gave Miller free rein because she’d always been so busy with out-of-town meetings and conferences.
She continued, “I’ve always been hard on him, on Arrow.
Extremely hard. Harder than necessary. Harder than…
what’s humane even. I told myself that I was trying to mold him into someone Atticus would be proud of.
But now I think maybe I was doing it because I missed my husband.
I missed him so much that I wanted to keep him alive. Through my son.”
Before I could even attempt to respond to that, respond to her frank words about how she’s treated Arrow, she ducked her head and cleared her throat.
“This came for you.” She had a gray envelope in her hand that I’d somehow missed, and she put it on my dresser. “I’m glad he has you.”
She left then, leaving me stunned.
That was the first letter from him, two weeks ago.
In which he told me that he’d leave a letter just like the one I was holding in the mailbox every day.
That’s why I’m here tonight, in front of his motel door.
Because I want to know what it all means.
I want to know why he’s doing these things. Why isn’t he leaving? Why does Leah think he has me when he doesn’t even want me?
If this is some crazy attempt to pay for what he thinks is his mistake, then I want him to stop.
I want him to stop torturing me, making me fall in love with him even more.
Before I can talk myself out of it because holy fuck I’m terrified and this feels exactly like the night I came over to stop him from leaving, I knock at his door.
Two loud sharp knocks that make my knuckles throb.
I rub them to chase the sting away and the door whips open before I’ve even finished the task.
And he’s there.
Right in front of me. Only a few feet away.
The love of my life.
This is the first time I’m seeing him after that day at the hospital, and he looks… exactly the same.
Standing at the threshold, wearing a pair of washed out jeans and his gray V-neck t-shirt, he looks burned out, my sun.
He still has darkness under his brilliant blue eyes and his features are still all razor sharp and severe.
“Salem,” he says in a rough voice.
In a voice that sounds unused.
My lips part. “Hey.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he snaps, his brows pulled together in a frown.
It’s the same question he asked me the other night too, and like that night, my nerves mount but I try to calm myself.
I try to seem unruffled.
“I came to see you,” I say.
“How did you get here?” he asks – again the same question from the other night, which is not helping me stay calm but again, I try.
“I took a cab.”
Something about that makes him clamp his jaw and stare at me severely. “What the fuck are you thinking? You just got out of the hospital. You’re supposed to be resting. You’re supposed to be getting better.”
Despite all my attempts to stay unaffected, I fist my hands at my sides. “I got out of the hospital two weeks ago. It was a minor blood sugar thing. I am better.”
“If you keep running around town like this, you won’t be. You’re not supposed to stress yourself out. That’s what the doctor said, didn’t he?”
“How do you know what the doctor said? You were never there.”
At this, a resigned look comes over his face. “That’s not the point.”
“Did Leah tell you?”
He remains silent but I get my answer and then fuck being calm.
Fuck being collected.
“So you’ve been talking about me to Leah. But you haven’t come to see me.”
Because I’m mad about it.
I’m mad, okay?
Like, he’ll leave me letters every day. He’ll talk to me through them but he won’t come to see me.
And I have waited.
Every. Day.
Every single day that he left me a letter in the mailbox, I actually waited for him to knock at the door. I waited for him to come see me, talk to me, tell me why.
So many times I wanted to catch him in the act myself. I wanted to set up camp at my window and intercept him when he came to deliver the letters.
But I stopped myself.
Because I’ve begged enough and I was giving him a chance to come clean.
To tell me.
Now I find out that he’s talking about me to Leah.
How cruel of him to do that.
How unkind of him that he’d rather drive me crazy with all these emotions and questions than come talk to me himself.
He sighs then, plowing his fingers through his hair. “Come inside.”
I glare at him for a few seconds and he returns it with a calm but somewhat heavy look. Then, I do go inside.
Because I need answers.
But unlike last time when I was careful to keep my distance from him while entering, I touch him.
Well actually, I bump his chest with my shoulder as I pass him by.
Because I’m angry and I want him to feel it.
His only reaction though is a soft inhale, like he’s smelling me or something.
But I refuse to think about it.
I refuse to think about him taking a whiff of me or how heated his body felt or how long it’s been since I touched him.
I absolutely refuse to wonder about anything related to him anymore.
But I break that promise a second later when I get my first look at his room.
I halt in my tracks and run my eyes across the space that I’ve been in so many times. The space that I remember every inch of.
It has always been so clean and organized and neat.
Right now though, it’s the opposite of that.
Sheets are crumpled; pillows are strewn about. His gray blanket lies on the floor as if he’s had a fight with it and threw it away in disgust. Discarded clothes make a tiny hill by the bathroom door.
And there are books. Everywhere.
On the bed; on the floor.
Some are wide open; some are closed. Some are stacked together in a large pile on the desk and in his slim-backed chair.
Since when does he read books?
Since when does he not clean his room?
“What happened?” I breathe out, looking around, my heart picking up speed.
“I just… didn’t clean up. Wasn’t expecting company,” he says from behind me and I spin around to face him.
He’s by the door, standing with his feet apart and his fists clenched, watching me.
“Since when do you not clean up?”
“Since my therapist said that I might have a mild case of OCD,” he replies. “She wants me to embrace the chaos.”
“Your therapist?” I breathe out, thinking of all the times he implied that he hated going to her. “The one… you don’t like.”
His eyes flick back and forth between mine. “I think I was a little hasty in my judgement.”
“So you like her now?”
“I’m still deciding.”
I look around the room again, feeling stunned. “Did she also tell you to read books?”
He narrows his eyes. “No, she told me to get a life.” I frown and he continues, “Apparently, I don’t have one. Well, if you don’t count soccer. And having a life involves a thing called hobbies. She told me to pick one.”
“So you picked reading?”
“It would appear so, yes.”