Page 65 of Annika's Aurora

Fuck, it was his fault.Annika had suffered because of his own cowardice. “Christ, Annika, I’m so sorry.”

She sighed. “Logan, please don’t. It’s not your fault I was feeling weak. We’ve both made mistakes in the past. The key to life is to learn from them and move on. You usually learn the most from the worst times and the worst mistakes. I learned from mine.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Are you sure you want to know the whole story?” she countered.

“I need to know.” He knew deep down he was responsible, but he needed to hear the words from her lips.

She took a deep breath and began the story of what she called her worst mistake. “A few months before the third anniversary, the spring semester was nearly over. I’d written to you again and waited. I finished up my exams and still waited. I went home for break and still nothing. It suddenly seemed all so worthless. I was busting my butt to get my degrees, but why? I had no friends, no boyfriends. My brother was gone. And you …”

“I’d left you alone too,” he squeezed her just a little tighter. “I never wrote you back.”

“Yeah. There was always pain after each letter, but this was different. It’d been so long since Jamie … I had fought the overwhelming grief and the depression for so long. I was so tired of fighting. It didn’t seem worth it anymore. There was nothing to live for any longer.” He squeezed his eyes closed, hating hearing those words from her, aware of how much pain he’d caused her.

“What about your parents?” He knew of the close relationship she shared with them and couldn’t imagine them leaving her so alone.

“That was the hard part. I knew it would be devastating to them, but I couldn’t see past the darkness. I wrote them a letter telling them I was sorry and why I did it. I told them I loved them. I wrote you a letter too.”

That surprised him. “Me?”

“I needed to get it out. I had to tell you everything I had been feeling for nearly three years. Even if you never read the letter, I needed to write it.”

“I’m sorry, I had to stop reading all your emails. They became too painful. I saved them all, though.” He might have been able to do something to help her had he read a letter like that. Maybe it would have woken him up and brought him home to her sooner.

“It wasn’t an email. It was a handwritten letter that I hid deep in my desk drawer. I figured my parents would find it someday, but I didn’t want them blaming you.”

Christ, this woman.He was so not worthy of her. He turned his head and placed his lips on the top of her head that was tucked under his chin. “Still trying to protect me even when you were suffering.” He hugged her again then kissed her temple. “Heart of gold.”

“Mom found me and got me the help I needed. But I still had one more thing to do to heal completely.”

“You had to say goodbye … to me,” he guessed, his gut tightening as he remembered reading that message. “That last email … the one that nearly broke me.” He’d known he would probably lose her because of his cowardly actions that night after the accident, but he’d also held out a glimmer of hope that he could come home to her someday. But after that email, his hope had been shattered. After that, he’d felt just like she had; as if there was no point. Without Annika, even as a distant hope, there had been nothing to live for. He’d gone a bit nuts after that, taking risks that could have gotten him killed. He’d broken his last promise to her.

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention. But I had to let you go.”

“I understand why now. I wish I had known how much you were suffering.”

“What would you have done, Logan?” she wondered. “Would you have dropped everything, your career with the SEALs, to come home? We were still pretty young then. Would you have been able to let go of all your guilt? Would you have been ready?”

He wondered that too. He’d liked to believe that if he’d known what she was going through, he would have gone to her. But was that the Logan of today or the Logan of the past talking. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know if I would have liked that. I don’t know if I would have wanted you coming home out of some sort of warped sense of responsibility, out of guilt. If you had known what I’d done, that would have been why you came back. I wanted you to come to me when you were ready. And from that point on, I was willing to wait.”

That surprised him, especially after knowing how much he’d hurt her. Because of that alone, he shouldn’t have been worth the wait. “Why would you wait? Why wouldn’t you move on like your last letter said you needed to do? I saw you with the Petersen girl. I saw the longing. You could have had a child of your own by now. Probably several. Why waste your life waiting for someone as hopeless as me?”

She smiled a secret sort of smile. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Try me.”

“I’ve never told anyone this before. Not my therapist. Not even my parents. It was Jamie.”

Stunned, he lifted his head to look into her eyes. What did Jamie have to do with her putting off her life to wait for him? “When I was lying in that tub feeling my life slowly slipping away,” she continued though he winced, thinking of her precious life disappearing. “Jamie came to me. He told me to hold on. Help was on the way. He also told me that you would find your way home to me. That I just had to wait a little bit longer. Didn’t know he meant twelve years,” she quipped. “Between Jamie and your Grandma Jean both telling me you’d be coming home. I knew it was true.”

“My grandmother?”

“She stayed with me through my recovery. She was there as much as my parents were.”

He shook his head. His grandmother had done what he couldn’t, what he was too chickenshit to do. “I never knew.”

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