My eyes fill with tears when I think about how many sleepless nights I spent thinking I’d never feel his arms around me again, how many times I screamed and cried, wishing for just one more moment with him to hold his face in my hands, stare into his eyes, and feel whole again. Feel loved again. Feel alive again. I’ve been dead inside for so long, and in just one night, he brought me back to life.
She smiles at me and gives my hand another squeeze before pushing herself up from the couch and holding one finger up in the air.
“Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
I watch her move quickly across the room and down the hall to the spare bedroom. Running the tips of my fingers over my lips while I wait for her, I realize they still feel swollen from Eli’s kisses and it fills me with so many mixed emotions that I don’t know how to handle them.
He touched my leg like it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He didn’t cringe or look away, and when he told me I was beautiful, I could see it in his eyes that he meant every word. When the sun came up and filled the tack room with bright morning light, I scrambled off his lap and walked away from him without a word. I was embarrassed that I let myself get so carried away with him. That I let things go that far without making him talk to me. I waited all this time to finally hear the reasons why he left me and I threw them out the window as soon as he ran his hand without hesitation up my thigh, told me he needed me and that dreaming about me was the only thing that kept him going for all those years.
I’ve been so starved for how he used to make me feel back when we were together. I’ve tried so hard to replicate those feelings with Landry, but it’s pointless. Landry doesn’t make me feel flawless. He never makes me feel beautiful, and he certainly never makes me feel wanted. I’m his ticket to winning a seat in the state senate. I come from a family with money, power, influence, and everything he needs to attain his goals. He’s using me to get what he wants, just like I’m using him to keep Eli and his family safe. Even though our relationship is one built on a foundation of lies, I still hoped I could someday feel something with him.
After being with Eli again, I know now that he’s the only one who can make me feel alive. He’s the only one who makes me want to be stronger and be the person I used to be. I just don’t know how to do that, keep him protected and forgive him all at the same time without losing my sanity.
“I brought these with me just in case,” Meredith says, pulling me from my thoughts as she rushes back into the room, cradling a shoe box in her hands. “And before you scream and curse at me, you should also know I looked at them already.”
She tosses the shoe box on top of the coffee table, and it slides across the surface until I have to grab it before it topples to the floor at my feet.
“You brought me a pair of Louboutins? Um, thanks?” I question uncertainly, picking up the brown box with white cursive writing on top and resting it in my lap.
“Sadly, no,” she tells me, wringing her hands together nervously in front of her as she looks back and forth between me and the box. “Just open it so we can get the screaming and cursing over with.”
With a roll of my eyes at her dramatics, I lift the lid and look down inside the box, the smile immediately slipping from my face when I see what’s inside. The lid drops from my fingers and my hand shakes as I slowly move it toward the stack of letters spilled all over the inside of the box. The first letter is addressed to me, in care of Meredith at her New York apartment, the return address in the upper-left-hand corner of the envelope from a military barracks post office box in the States. Quickly flipping through all the letters, dozens and dozens of them, I see they are all addressed the same way, with the first five coming from a barracks PO box and the rest coming from several different generic military PO boxes.
“Oh, my God,” I whisper, swallowing past the lump in my throat and blinking rapidly to keep the tears from falling down my cheeks.
He was telling the truth. He wrote to me. And according to the postmark stamp on the letters, he started writing a few weeks after he left for deployment and continued doing so for months. Just like he said. Just like he tried to explain before I called him a liar and stormed away that day in the studio. I was so angry after I searched my mother’s office, wanting to believe he was telling the truth and maybe she hid the letters from me. I was pissed when I came up empty-handed and assumed he had lied to me just to get me to easily forgive him and let him back into my life. I let that anger take over this morning when I walked away from him, still believing he had been lying and I’d just shown how weak I was by not forcing him to tell me the truth before I let him touch me.
I can’t stop the tears from sliding down my cheeks as I grab the letter on top of the pile, pull out the folded piece of notebook paper from inside the already torn-open envelope, and read the three sentences written in the middle of the page in Eli’s messy handwriting.
Everything I said in that note was a lie. I could never love anyone but you. I’m sorry, please forgive me and please, give me a chance to explain.
—Eli
My tears continue falling steadily down my face as I quickly pull out the letters in the next five envelopes, each one with phrasing similar to the first one, aside from each of them being written a week or so apart.
I will never forgive myself for writing you that letter. I love you more than anything in this world. Please forgive me and let me explain.
—Eli
I love you, Shelby. Only you. ALWAYS you. Please forgive me and write me back.
—Eli
It’s killing me that I won’t see you again for a year. Won’t touch you again for 365 days. Won’t be able to look into your green eyes and tell you how sorry I am in person. I love you, Shelby. Only you. ALWAYS you. I’m so sorry.
—Eli
We’re being shipped out of the States tomorrow, but that’s not going to stop me from begging you not to hate me. I’ll be here, waiting for you to forgive me. Please, forgive me. I love you, Shelby. Only you. ALWAYS you. I’m so sorry.
—Eli
Crumpling the letters in my hands, I hug them to my chest and squeeze my eyes closed as I try to catch my breath through my sobs. He was telling the truth and it hurts so much more now that I know it. It breaks me in half seeing his handwriting, reading his words, and knowing that he really did try to fight for me. I don’t even care why he left the way he did at this point. Knowing he hated himself for what he did and tried to reach me even while his life was on the line in a war zone makes me ache for him and how he must have felt when I never responded.