Brooks’ Letter
Brooks’ Let ter
Dear Dylan,
I’ve tried to write this a hundred times, but the words never came out right. Maybe because there aren’t words strong enough to hold everything I should have said. Everything I should have done. I let you go. I let you think you were easier to lose than to fight for, and I hate myself for it.
I don’t know where you’ll be in ten years, if you ever made it to Paris or if life kept you stuck somewhere, the way it did me. I don’t know if you’re happy. If someone else gets to love you now. But God, I hope so. I hope you’re somewhere safe, where the walls are covered in art that speaks to you, where every brushstroke reminds you that you were always enough.
If I could erase every moment I made you question it, I would. But I can’t. All I have left is the ink on this page and a hope so violent it rattles in my bones.
I’m not sure how to start this, and that’s honestly fitting—there was never a right way to leave you either. I’m sorry. God, Dylan, I’m so fucking sorry. For walking away. For tearing us apart when you had already lost so much. For every second after Beckett died that I didn’t tell you the truth.
You might tear this to shreds. I wouldn’t blame you if you did. Hell, I deserve worse. But if these are the last words you ever get from me, then you need to understand why I turned my back—why I let you go, even though it felt like ripping out the only pieces of my heart that still knew how to beat.
I have cancer. A rare kind. One that doesn’t offer mercy, only maybes. Maybe treatments will work. Maybe they won’t. Maybe I’ll still be here when you find this, or maybe I’ll just be a ghost—a name you haven’t said out loud in years.
Turns out, it was there before Beckett died. Lurking. Waiting. Hiding behind every dizzy spell, every misdiagnosis the doctors gave me. And I believed them—just like I once believed in forever, in us, in the foolish idea that life moved forward like it’s supposed to. But it doesn’t. It stops when you least expect it, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
I didn’t know how to tell you, Dylan. How the fuck was I supposed to hand you more grief when you were already drowning in it?
So, I fed myself a pretty lie, let it take root in my mind—a parasite gorging itself on every doubt until I mistook it for certainty. That hating me would be easier than mourning me too. That if I burned every bridge between us, made you despise me enough, it would cauterize the wound before it could bleed.
It would hurt less when I was gone.
I let it fester until it felt like the only way forward, because if someone had to swing the scythe, it was damn well going to be me.
But every day since, I’ve been eaten alive by the regret of how I let it all fall apart. I should’ve torn myself open, bled the truth into your hands, and let you decide whether to hold on or walk away. But I was terrified of how saying it out loud would make it real, turning my worst fear into something I couldn’t take back.
And yet, I’m still here. Barely. Some days, it feels like my body is more poison than blood. Chemo is war—one I’m not sure I’m winning. Some nights, I swear I can feel myself dissolving. But when it gets bad, when I’m too sick to move, too weak to fight, there’s one thing that keeps me breathing.
You.
The first night I met you, something in my chest came unstitched. I’d spent my entire life moving through the world in grayscale, and then there you were—color, brightening everything I thought I knew. I didn’t just see you. I recognized you, like some part of me had been waiting for the moment our worlds would collide.
You were the best thing this life ever gave me. You still are. Always will be. If I leave this world, I need you to know—I didn’t just love you. I was created for you. Every breath, every beat of my heart, is yours in a way that defies choice or reason. And if there’s anything after this, beyond the pain, I’ll tear through eternity to find you until forever is ours again.
I swore on everything I had that I wouldn’t leave you alone. And then, when it mattered most, I did exactly that. A betrayal disguised as love. And now, I can’t unmake the empty space I left behind. But God, Dylan, I would carve out my own ribs to go back and keep that promise.
Still, I hope you remember the good. Even if it’s tangled up in everything I ruined. The way we laughed until we couldn’t breathe, the late night drives with the whole world rushing past us, like we could outrun everything waiting for us back home. The outdoors you swore you’d never love, and yet—somehow, you did. You painted it, breathed life into it, poured pieces of yourself into every canvas until the world made sense through your hands.
Time can fade pigment, crack edges, turn masterpieces to dust, but it will never erase you.
And I wouldn’t trade that for second. Not for time, not for a cure, not for salvation itself. Because you gave me something no one else ever has. A reason to stay, to fight, to love. A reason to live . Even when it meant losing.
By the time you read this, it could be too late. But I want you to know—I’m fighting. Every second of every day, I’m clawing against the inevitable because I believe in what we were. In you.
So live, Dylan. Live the life you deserve. Make it everything you ever wanted, and if my name ever crosses your mind, let it be a memory that doesn’t hurt anymore. Because for all my mistakes, for all the ways I let you down, loving you was the one thing I got right.
I will continue to love you beyond what is possible, until forever itself ceases to exist. Until forever falls.
Brooks