Page 62 of No Broken Promises

“I spent so long thinking Remy hated me,” I confess to Kennedy. “Years where I thought he’d rather stay overseas than come home and face me. I stayed in a town that hated me, Kennedy, so that Nox could be near his family. And Remy didn’t hate me.”

Kennedy snorts, holding her pillow tight as she watches my face. “Remy never hated you, Parker. He might not have admitted it. My parents might not have seen it. The entire town might have turned a blind eye, but I saw it. I saw the love, the way he watched you from a distance.”

I pick up the last letter, surprised to find it thicker than the others, and shut out anything else Kennedy may say while I focus on its contents.

My heart is beating so hard I can actually feel my blood pumping through my body. The skin on my arms and neck start to itch, and I have to focus on the task at hand to get through it.

It is dated for the week before he came home for good. Less than a year ago now.

Dear Parker,

I made a promise, and I’m going to see it through. We were drinking the day you two got married, after you left with Rose and Emma, and he said something that made my blood boil. He didn’t mean it, but his words made something in my head snap. If you were mine, I’d protect you. I swore to myself that I’d have your six. That I’d watch out for you.

But now, I realize that it was just my heart fighting with my mind over the fact that it should have been me putting my ring on your finger. Now, I’m coming home. And I don’t know what I’m going to find. But I have to try, right?

How can I claim you when I’m the reason our lives are the way they are? How can I keep a promise when it means breaking everything I’ve pushed so hard for? How can I possibly earn your love? I know I don’t deserve you, but I’ll do anything.

If that means cutting out my heart and handing it to you, so be it. Tell me, and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.

I’m coming home, finally, to Birch Harbor.

Even if it kills me, I’m going to make sure that you’re taken care of. I won’t come close, because I know by now that you hate me and that I will never deserve you in my life. I haven’t gotten a letter from you since the end of my first deployment, so you must have given up. Good. I can’t blame you, considering I’ve never had the balls to send a single response back to you.

One day, I’ll have the courage to give you these letters. To tell you how much your words meant to me and how I’ve always felt about you.

I know you’re the one who made it so Daisy could come with me, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank you enough for that. I’ll find a way, though. I’ll figure it out, like I always do.

You’re the reason I survived this place during my deployments. This is the last one, and if my sister hadn’t died, who knows if I’d have re-enlisted again.

I keep the picture of us, from before I ruined everything, in my pocket so I can see your smile and imagine what we could have had.

Danny told me once that he took you, but he knew that I loved you. I don’t know about that, because if I loved you for real, I don’t think I would have been able to let you go like I did.

The man that I am now? I would never have given you up. I know that if you give me a chance, I’ll never let you go.

I’m rambling. I know I am. Fuck. I’m not even going to send you this letter so I don’t know why I’m bothering to write it.

No one, in all the time I’ve been gone, has come close to making me feel anything even remotely close to the way you’ve made me feel since we were in second grade.

Maybe one day, when I figure out how to earn your forgiveness, we can be more?

Just let me know, and I’ll be there.

I’m yours, I think.

Remy

“That asshole copied my letter.”

Kennedy watches me like the lunatic I am, tears streaming down my face unchecked as I rage against her brother stealing the ending of the letter I’d written him before he graduated boot camp. Before he broke my heart.

She opens her mouth, no doubt to ask me why I am cursing her brother now, when the front door slams open again, and Remy storms in, his chest heaving like he’d just run ten miles.

“Look, Parker. You’re not leaving me,” he practically shouts, even though we are staring right at him. “Those letters… You don’t understand.”

25

PARKER

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