Page 12 of The Fate of Us

“What did you have in mind?” I joke.

He shakes his head as he stands from the bed. “Real food.”

He hands me my clothes before he pulls on his briefs and jeans. The letter falls out of my cardigan pocket and he scoops it up before I can take it from him.

“Don’t read—” I try to snatch it from him but he pulls away from me and holds it above my head. Asshole.

“Is this the letter Jed gave you?”

I stop trying to reach for it, stunned he knew what it was. “Jed told you?”

He shrugs. “He told me he gave you a letter from Kyle. That’s it. And from the looks of the paper, I would say it’s pretty old, not a song you wrote recently.”

I sit back on the bed and look down at my feet. He has no idea what’s in that letter. Hell, he probably thinks it’s some beautiful apology and love letter. “It’s not what you think.”

“What do you mean?”

I shrug and brush back tears that threaten to spill out of my eyes. “It doesn’t change anything. Yet it changes everything.”

“I’m confused. Is it not closure?”

I shake my head before looking up at him. God, he is so beautiful. Inside and out. I can see and feel how he cares about me. How was I so stupid not to see that with Kyle?

Noah kneels in front of me. “That ghost is in your eyes again, Mayberry.”

I try to look away from him but he won’t let me. I have no idea how to explain that letter to him. How to tell him I was a fool from the get-go. How all that letter did was make me feel like I wasted years on a man who was never worth my time.

“Baby.” Noah grabs me off the bed and settles me into his lap. He wraps his arms around me, holding me as tight to his chest as he can. “Talk to me.”

I take a deep breath before speaking. “That letter… that… it let me see him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not crying over him,” I manage to get out. “I’m crying over the time I lost mourning him.”

I can feel the tension in Noah’s body. His need to protect me from everything is tangible and I know when he reads that letter he won’t be happy.

“Let’s eat,” he says with unease in his voice.

We walk into the tiny kitchen that barely fits us both. I pull some cold cuts from the fridge I picked up yesterday and make us each a sandwich. We sit at the tiny dining table by the window that looks out over the sand dune. We eat in silence, the letter sitting on the table between us. I know he is brewing from the few words I said about the letter. And I am just waiting for him to ask about it. But I really don’t know what there is to say.

The only reason I’ve reread the letter so many times was to find some kind of redeeming quality about Kyle. But with each read-through, my hatred only got worse. His apology was a cop-out. An excuse to get me back.

I don’t know how to tell Noah what the letter says. I can’t summarize the awful shit inside of it. “Read it.”

He looks at me with surprise.

“I can’t tell you what’s inside. It’s just better if you read it.”

“Are you sure?”

I nod and look out the window watching a storm cloud move in. Rain sprinkles the windowpane and I watch the drops fall as Noah reads the letter. I don’t dare look at him. Don’t want to see the rage I know will be on his face.

His chair scrapes against the linoleum floor as he stands. He walks out the front door, slamming it behind him. I look out the window and watch as he storms across the dune and down to the beach. I can see lightning in the distance. Idiot just ran out on to the beach in a damn lightning storm.

I knock my chair over as I run after him. I grab an umbrella from the stand by the door before I run into the rain and down to the beach.

The letter is in his hand as he falls to his knees on the beach, screaming at the top of his lungs. Thank God for the storm. There are no people out here to watch his crazy.

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