The Wedding #3
"You're right. She's happy. She's built a life. She's with someone who can give her what she needs. Why would I destroy that?"
"Because she still deserves the truth."
"The truth will just make her question everything. It’ll make her look at you differently. It’ll—“
I stop, force myself to breathe.
"She's finally okay, Ollie. I'm not going to be the reason she falls apart again."
"What about you?" His voice is soft now.
I look at him and the guilt written across his face. At the brother who made a terrible choice thinking he was protecting someone he loved.
"Burn them."
"What?"
"I mean it. Get rid of them. Burn them. Whatever. She can never know."
"You can't be serious."
"I've never been more serious about anything in my life." I turn to face him fully. "You want to fix this? You want to make it right? Then you keep this secret. You let her be happy. You let her have the life she's built. And you never, ever tell her about those letters."
"She's going to keep asking why you never reached out. What are you going to tell her?"
"I'll think of something."
I find her twenty minutes later, standing alone by the edge of the lake, Liam nowhere in sight. The sun has set completely now and it’s just string lights that reflect off the water.
She doesn't turn when I approach, but I know she hears me.
"You deserve an explanation."
"Do I?" She turns now, and her eyes are bright with unshed tears. "Because from where I'm standing, you made your feelings pretty clear two years ago when you decided I wasn't worth even a phone call.”
This is it. The moment where I could tell her everything. Where I could explain about the letters, about Ollie, about the truth. But I look at her and see someone who's finally found solid ground after years of drowning.
And I know what I have to do.
"You're right." I force my voice to stay steady. "I made a choice. I chose to focus on my recovery without the distraction of trying to maintain a relationship that was never going to work."
She flinches like I slapped her.
"A distraction?"
"We were kids, Nora." The lie tastes bitter, but I push through it. "We were teenagers who thought what we had was more than it was. But I needed to get sober. Needed to rebuild my life. And I couldn't do that while holding onto some fantasy of us."
"Fantasy." She repeats the word like she's testing it. Like she's trying to understand how I could reduce everything we were to something so small.
I feel fucking sick.
"I'm not saying it wasn't real at the time. But I was sick. I was an addict. And what I needed was to let go of everything from before so I could become someone new."
"Including me."
"Especially you." The words come out harder than I intend. Crueler. “If I'd kept that door open, I never would have fully committed to getting better."
Tears are streaming down her face now, and every instinct in me is screaming to take it back. To tell her the truth and pull her close and explain that none of this is real, that I've loved her every single day, that the letters exist and prove it.
But I don't.
Because loving someone sometimes means protecting them. Even if it means they hate you for it.
"So that's it?" she asks, voice barely a whisper. "Two years and you're just over it? Over us?"
"There is no us, Nora." I force myself to look her in the eye. To sell this lie completely. "There hasn't been for a long time. We were kids holding onto something that we both outgrew. We became different people."
"I never outgrew you," she says, and the admission breaks something in both of us.
"Then you should have." I take a step back, creating distance. "Because I'm not that guy anymore. I'm not the boy you fell in love with. I realized that a lot of what I thought was love was just desperation. Codependency. Unhealthy attachment."
The words are weapons, and they land with complete precision.
"So what we had—"
"Wasn't built to survive real life. It was built on proximity and trauma and being each other's escape. And once we didn't have that anymore, there was nothing left to hold onto."
She's staring at me like she doesn't recognize me.
Like I've become a stranger.
Good.
That's what I need.
That's what will let her move on completely.
"I'm happy for you," I say, gesturing vaguely toward where Liam is probably looking for her. "With him. With your life in London. You deserve all of it."
"Don't do that." There's anger mixing with the hurt now. "Don't act like you're being noble and you're happy for me."
The accusation lands true as we stand there in the darkness, the party continuing behind us, two people who used to know each other completely now strangers.
"I wish you'd just said this two years ago," she finally says. "Instead of making me wonder. Making me wait. Making me think there was still something to hope for."
"Go back to your life, Nora. Be happy with Liam. Build your career. Forget about this.”
"That's not fair."
"None of this is fair." I turn to walk away, then pause. "But for what it's worth? I meant it when I said you deserve to be happy."
I leave her standing there by the lake.
I don't look back because if I do, I'll break.