Page 140 of X's and O's

But I could see the worry in his eyes. The concern he’d gone too far. And he had. What he’d done was a complete invasion of my privacy.

But Toby and I had been each other’s ride or dies for fifteen years. I knew what it felt like when someone hurt him, because it hurt me too.

He was more than a best friend. More than a brother. He was a soulmate. Not a romantic one, but I fully believed soulmates came in all different shapes and sizes, and each of those relationships could be different.

Toby had held a piece of my heart for longer than any other living person. He’d loved me when nobody else had. He’d been the one who’d held me when I cried. He’d been the one who put me back together after every heartbreak. It was him who told me I was slaying it whenever I thought I was fat and frumpy. Him who consoled me whenever I thought about how utterly alone I was in this world, with no family and no friends other than him.

I’d gone head to head with the police for him. I could hardly blame him for taking on Levi after he’d had to watch me cry over him.

I plucked the letter from his fingers and opened it.

Words are easy, ink runs free,

But face-to-face, we fall, we flee.

Maybe letters are our space,

A quiet world, our own escape.

But one last time, let’s break the rule,

Meet me where the night is cool.

No crowds, no noise, just you and me,

A place where no one else will see.

We’ll start again, the way we should,

And if we don’t, then it was good.

Come alone, come when it’s late,

I’ll be waiting. Don’t be late.

I frowned, reading it over a second time. There was an address at the bottom. One in Saint View, but I didn’t recognize the street name.

Toby crowded me, reading it over my shoulder. He let out a low whistle. “Wow. Lover boy stepped up his game with poetry?” He shook his head. “Gotta admit, I didn’t know he had that in him.”

“I didn’t either.” My gaze traced the words. “This doesn’t feel like his writing. And it’s typed. He never types letters. They’re always handwritten.”

Toby shook his head. “The other letters I burned were typed.”

“Really?”

Toby nodded.

“Oh. I guess that makes sense. He’s not in jail anymore and he’s staying at the clubhouse with a lot ofother guys. I guess someone there has a computer and a printer he can borrow.”

Something about that made me a little bit sad though. I’d really liked his handwritten letters. The neatly printed type was a lot easier to read than Levi’s messy scrawl, but it didn’t have half the feeling of his imperfectly formed letters.

He had often apologized for his writing though. I knew he was self-conscious about it, since he hadn’t had a lot of schooling, so I couldn’t blame him for switching to typing where a spell check could clean up his errors.

“So what are you going to do?” Toby asked, his voice serious for once. “He clearly wants to start over and try again.”

“We’ve been there, done that.” I put the letter down. “I’m not going. I should have just ended this whole thing once and for all and said he shouldn’t send me letters.”

“But you didn’t. Why?”