Page 108 of Letters to Molly (Maysen Jar 2)

It didn’t take long to read the letter. The first time through, a stab of pain pierced my heart so deeply I nearly collapsed. But my knees held strong. They locked tight, enough for me to read it again.

Then again.

By the fourth time, the pain faded away.

I was numb.

Maybe Finn had been right. Maybe I should have ripped this one to shreds. But he’d told me at the beginning these letters were his way of expressing his feelings. They were raw and real.

And since he’d hidden the raw and real from me, kept it back, these letters were the only way to see into his soul.

The gushing wound was there, laid out with blue ink on white paper. It was devastating. I’d destroyed him.

I’d destroyed us both.

There’d be no tears for this letter. I didn’t get to cry. We’d had problems in our marriage, but the person who’d torn it apart was me. I deserved every single lick of his pain. I deserved to read this letter every day.

What I didn’t deserve was Finn.

“Okay,” I whispered, folding the letter back up and sliding it into the envelope with shaking hands.

“Okay?”

I nodded and handed Finn back the letter. “Okay.”

He took it, staring at me like he was waiting for an explosion. There wasn’t one. I went to the sink and resumed my cleaning.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it.”

Finn stalked close and slammed the letter on the counter. The paper didn’t make much noise. His palm did. “That’s it? You make a big show of opening this letter, and that’s it? Why?”

“I had to.”

“Why?”

“Because.” I whirled on him. “You don’t trust me enough to tell me how you feel. You kept things from me for years, choosing to write things in letters you never sent. You escaped our problems by running to work. You kept me in the dark. After all this time, after everything we’ve been through, I have a right to know how you really felt.”

“I kept them from you because it was for your own good.” He swiped the letter up, shaking it in his fist, the paper crackling. “Did you really want me to leave this lying around?”

“At least it would have made us talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

I clenched my jaw. “You can’t forget it happened.”

“I can sure as fuck try.”

“And that’s why we’re never going to work,” I shot back. “I had sex with another man.”

He grimaced, the pain on his face rolling over his entire body. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t say it out loud? It happened. I made the biggest mistake of my life and this letter is the first time you’ve actually admitted out loud that I hurt you.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes. Yes, it is. I told you the truth. I came to you the next day and owned my mistake. And instead of yelling or crying or showing me any kind of emotion, all you said was, ‘Get a la