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Twenty Seven

Present

T he envelope in my hands makes me feel queasy. I wet my lips and steel myself with a deep inhale before slipping my index finger along the seam to open it.

I pull the page out carefully and unfold it.

Doc,

I read your letter until the ink blurred, until the edges grew soft from my rough hands gripping it too tightly. Until I could hear your voice whispering the words against my skin, against the hollow space you left inside me.

I don’t deserve the grace you’ve given me. I don’t deserve you. But if you are offering me a place beside you—if you are telling me there is still a world where I get to love you, where I get to be yours—I will spend the rest of my days proving I am worthy of it.

You were always enough. You are everything. And I am sorry—I am so sorry—that I ever made you question that. That I stood in front of you, inches away, and didn’t say the one thing that was burning inside me. That I let silence answer when I should have said yes.

Yes, I love you.

Yes, I have loved you since the moment you first looked back at me and actually saw me.

There has never been anything safe about the way I love you. It’s all-consuming, reckless, something I would rip out of my own chest if it meant giving you peace. But I won’t hurt you again.

I won’t lose you again.

If the only person I ever get to lay eyes on again is you, then I will have led a good and worthy life.

Four years. Five months. Every second of it will be spent becoming the man who deserves you.

Because I am all in, Doc.

—Cooper

I carefully fold the letter and tuck it back into its envelope, running my fingers over the edges as if I can somehow absorb his words into my skin. My heart is swollen with emotion—too full, too raw, too alive.

The weight of it—of everything we lost, everything we are still fighting to hold on to—settles deep in my bones, but for the first time in a long time, it doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like hope.

A small knock on the door frame pulls me from my thoughts. I glance up as Lotte pops her head into my makeshift office at NEL, her bright blue eyes scanning my face with curiosity.

“You’re awfully smiley,” she says, tossing her blonde hair over one shoulder.

I grin at her, unable to help myself. “I guess I am.”

She quirks a brow, stepping inside. “Are you going to elaborate? Or am I supposed to just accept this new development in your personality without question?”

I regard her for a moment, this girl who has already come so far in her short eighteen years. She knows what it means to survive, to endure. She knows what it means to rebuild after ruin. My chest swells with pride.

I let out a slow breath, feeling the truth settle warm and steady in my chest. “Love,” I say simply.

She grins at me.

Lotte knows all about love.

“Anyway, Eve said to tell you that if you don’t show up for girls’ night on Friday, she’s going to personally drag you there.”

I chuckle. “Duly noted.”

Lotte turns to go but then pauses in the doorway. “Whoever he is,” she says, her voice quieter now, “he’s lucky.”

As she disappears down the hall, I allow myself one last glance at the letter, tracing the familiar loops of his name. He is lucky I suppose, but then again, so am I.

Four years. Four months.

I can wait.

As I step out of the office, the late afternoon sun spills through the tall windows, illuminating the wide, airy hall.

I walk slowly down the corridor, letting myself absorb it all.

My heart is still racing from the letter, from imagining tomorrow and four years from now and every day in between.

It feels wild in my chest, an untamed thing refusing to be tethered by time or distance.

Cooper’s words pulse in my veins, bright and unfaltering.