Page 87 of Into the Light

“I knew it,” I repeated, the tears streaming down my face. “This is it.”

I held the letters tight to my chest as if holding them closer meant I was holdinghim. I sniffled and then finally came back into the reality I was standing on this freaking rock yet again, but this time, with all the answers I’d begged for.

I looked up and Rain was tearing up. “It’s okay,” I whispered through my own sobs as I closed the distance between us, and he wrapped me in his arms.

“There are two letters.”

“Yes,” I said frantically, handing him his little Ziploc bag. “This one is yours.”

He lifted it up before doing the same thing I did and clutched it against his chest with one arm while the other held me tightly. The two loves of his life.

“I think I need . . .” I didn’t leave his side because I knew if I did, my legs would buckle from beneath me.

“I want to go read this, too.” He went back to the bike down the clearing. Just as he was about to be out of sight, he turned back around and drank me in, his gaze pausing on me.

I had the same thought as him. I’d wondered if what was written inside this letter would change us. It shouldn’t, but Ash had that power. “I’ll be there when I’m done, I promise.”

He hung his head low and turned back on his path.

I swallowed a few times before settling on sitting atop one of the trunks of the trees near the view where I’d found his phone. It made me feel closer to him.

I peeled the bag open with my sweaty hands. It was so hot even though it was well in the forties, inside, I was burning with nerves.

I took a deep breath.

“You can do this,” I whispered to the trees before I pulled the letter from the bag and smelled it. It smelled like pine which I knew probably was a mere coincidence because we were in a pine forest, but I wanted to pretend like it was Ash. His familiar scent. His words. His script.

I slowly opened the letter, and it was handwritten to perfection. God, this is the closest I’d felt to him in so long. Even with his phone in my hand, he wrote this. His last letter.

Chapter thirty

I felt.

I was feeling.

My body quivered, and the paper in my hands seemed as fragile as my trembling grip. Clutching it tightly to my chest, I closed my eyes and looked up to the sky, as if searching for a connection to him once more.

The sound of her boots reverberated through the forest as I dismounted the motorcycle, my face still drenched from the unrestrained tears. I carefully placed the envelope containing the letter inside the compartment on my bike for safekeeping.

Walking toward the sound of her footsteps, we locked eyes when we finally met, both of us pausing, as though aware that reading these letters might alter the course of our lives. And they did, but in ways we could never have foreseen.

“Ember?” I whispered, my voice quivering with emotion.

She sprinted toward me with unwavering determination, and I opened my arms wide as she crashed into me. Her sobs racked her entire frame, and she crumpled under my embrace, consumed by tears and exhaustion.

“It . . . I . . . Walsh . . .” She struggled with her words, so I held her closer. Swallowing hard, I allowed myself to feel, acknowledging the sadness of losing my brother, the pain I had carried for months until her return, and the guilt that had plagued me for a year.

“It’s all over,” I whispered through my own tears. “It’s all okay now.”

It wasn’t over per se, but the pain we felt finally had some closure to it, and I knew that deep down inside it was our turn to live and we could close this chapter. But closing a chapter of a book doesn’t mean it ends. It was a part of our life, but we could move to the next part of our story.

As our tears gradually subsided, I continued to cradle her in my arms, her head nestled against my chest. She slowly pulled away, and our gazes locked. Her eyes were rimmed with red and swollen from the mixture of physical and emotional pain, intermingled with the catharsis brought on by these letters.

“We need to find Walsh,” she whispered, and I nodded. “I need to figure out why he was there that night.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, refraining from prying into the contents of her letter, as I understood that it was her story to share or withhold, her choice.

“Yes . . . no.” She chuckled as if her answer surprised her. “I just want to finally be able to get the last clue that we needed.”

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