Page 64 of Steel's Secret
SIXTEEN
THE LETTER
ARIA
It takes me three weeks to pack up a life.
Not the physical things, those take only a day. Clothes, files, dishes, books that I haven’t touched since the night I had seen Steel again. The small, framed photo of Leah and me from a summer that feels like another lifetime. Those are easy.
It’s the ghosted things that take longer. His voice is in my memory. His hands are on my skin. His chaos in my bloodstream.
Every night, I lie awake and feel the quiet in my new apartment near my parents’ house in Detroit press down like a weight as heavy as the goodbye we tried to survive.
Every morning, I avoid the news. Avoid Mt. Pleasant. Avoid anything with a chrome shine or engine growl.
I haven’t seen Steel since the day I left him in the clubhouse lot. I haven’t driven near Saint Motors. I haven’t breathed his name out loud.
And yet he’s everywhere. In the way I check shadows twice. In the way I jump when the mail slot creaks. In the way I wake up already bracing for danger.
Some loves leave you soft. Steel’s love left me changed.
And something is growing in me now. Something small, something quiet, something I can’t tell him without destroying the part of him still fighting not to become Tama. Something that demands I protect it the way Steel would destroy the world to protect me.
He can never know.
My secret is both a betrayal and a mercy.
In the end, the only thing left to give him was a goodbye he’ll never get to un-read.
So, I sat on the floor of my old house, surrounded by boxes, breath fogging in the cold room, pen shaking in my hand as I wrote what felt like a letter from a ghost.
Steel,
If you’re reading this, it means I’m already gone. I’m not writing to ask you to come for me. I’m not asking you to change. I’m not asking for forgiveness, or answers, or another promise either of us will break.
I’m writing because there are things I never got to say. Things I couldn’t say while looking into your eyes.
You weren’t my mistake. You were my mercy. I just couldn’t survive loving both the man and the President.
You love with your fire, and it’s beautiful until it burns. You protected me with everything you are, even when it cost you pieces you didn’t have left. I don’t want to be the reason those pieces disappear forever.
You told me once that if the Syndicate ever knew what I meant to you, they’d kill me before you could stop the bullet. You were right. But what you didn’t see… is that they were killing you too.
You were becoming him, Steel. Becoming Tama. And I couldn’t watch that happen, not because I don’t love you, but because I do.
Leaving isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Loving you is.
And here’s the truth I could never say in the dark, the one that terrified me, the one that changes everything and nothing at all. I’m not just leaving because I’m scared. I’m leaving because I’m not leaving alone.
Whatever happens from here, I hope you live. I hope you survive this war, this legacy, and this shadow you’ve spent your whole life running from. I hope you build something better than what your father left you.
You told me love can be a weapon. You were right. But right now, it’s the only thing I have left to give you.
Goodbye, Isaiah.
Aria
Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still see the ink blurring when a tear hits the page. I didn’t stop writing because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant breaking. I’ve done enough breaking for a lifetime.
