Page 415 of Face Off

With you, I am the most authentic version of myself.

That makes the possibility of seeing you again terrifying.

I fought hard for the woman writing this letter. She isn’t perfect, fixed, or fearless, but she belongs to herself. I’m terrified that touching you will make me want to hand her over. I’m terrified that being yours again will feel so much like relief that I will forget how to stand without you.

I’m more terrified that you will never give me the chance to prove I can love you without disappearing inside it.

You are my home, Ryan.

I know how dangerous that sentence could become in the hands of the woman I was. She would have meant that you were responsible for sheltering her from every storm. She would have expected you to hold up the roof while she remained too afraid to admit she had helped set the house on fire.

That isn’t what I mean now.

You are my home because you are where I have felt most known. You are the place where I don’t need to become smaller, quieter, prettier, easier, or perfect before I deserve to be loved. You have seen my worst choices and the ugliest damage beneath them, yet you still answer my letters with honesty instead of cruelty.

I want to come home.

I want to stand beside you without forcing you to carry me. I want to build something where neither of us has to bleed to prove we intend to stay. I want ordinary mornings, vicious arguments about books, hockey games, burned dinners, your shoes in places I told you not to leave them, and every obscene thing your mouth can do to the Spanish language.

I want the magnificent life you said we could have had.

I want the version we might still build.

Please write soon. I need to know you understand what I am trying to tell you, even if you are not ready to answer it with anything more than another page.

“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Charm

P.S. We both know that was Mr. Darcy, and stealing his declaration undermines my claim that I am finally an authentic woman. Fine. Let me try true, unfiltered romance in my own words.

I love the arrogant, vulgar, tattooed pain in my ass who taught me that books could be weapons, promises required action, and love without trust could still destroy the people inside it.

I love you on the days you write to me and the days you don’t. I love you in Milwaukee, Chicago, Flint, Kimball Falls, and every place you might go where I cannot follow yet. I love the man who left me, the man who answered my first letter, and the terrifying man I hope will be waiting when I am finally brave enough to come to him.

There. Jane Austen can keep her man.

I want mine.

By the time I finish, darkness has covered the boutique windows and snow has softened the empty sidewalk outside. The lunch container beside my laptop is empty because I stopped twice while writing and forced myself to eat every bite, even when grief made swallowing feel impossible.

The email has remained open for hours. I’ve reread it enough times to know editing will only turn honesty into another performance, and I’m finished polishing what I feel until nobody can see how badly it hurts.

Ryan asked me to say what I needed plainly.

I want to come home.

The clock moves past ten as I place the cursor over the button and send him the truth before fear can teach me how to disguise it again.

I hit send.

35

Ryan

I’m three essays into an anthology on the political decline of the Roman Empire when my phone vibrates against the nightstand.

The sound breaks through the quiet of my bedroom and pulls my attention from the page even though I have no intention of answering anyone. Coach is the most likely offender. He spent dinner trying to convince Briggs and me to join several players at his house tomorrow, despite being told repeatedly that I am officially free until Monday and plan to remain that way.