His voice cuts through mine, and I can't respond.
He’s starting to piss me off now.
"You think I can't see it?" Ollie says, quieter now. "Every time she walks away? Every time you let her go because you think that's what love looks like?"
"It's called respecting her choices."
"It's called being a fucking coward."
"Careful."
"Why?" He steps closer, and there's desperation in his eyes now. "What are you going to do? Hit me? At least that would be something. At least that would be you actually feeling instead of this—" he gestures at me, "—this martyr act you've perfected."
My hands shake with the effort not to grab him.
"I'm trying to do what's right for her. I’ve always tried to do what’s right for her.”
"No. You're doing what's safe for you. What lets you avoid getting destroyed."
I turn away, stare at the mixing board.
At the work that's always been easier than this.
"She said she has nothing here. That her career, that’s important to her, is there and that’s where she needs to be right now. What am I supposed to do with that?"
“Uhh… show her she's wrong?”
"How?"
"The fucking letters Nate.”
He's holding a stack of envelopes. Ones with stamps I recognize because I bought them.
“I told you go get rid of them.”
“Yeah, well I’m glad I never listened to you.” He holds them out to me, waiting for me to take them. "Show her, tell her, but she needs to know you never stopped loving her.”
"No."
"Nate—"
"I said no. Those letters were from a different person. A different time."
"You were fighting for your life and pouring your heart out because you thought she'd read them."
"Yeah, well, she didn't." The bitterness surprises even me. "Because you kept them from her."
There it is.
The thing we've been dancing around for five years. Since his wedding when he got drunk enough to confess what he'd done.
It was why she never wrote back, why she thought I just stopped.
Ollie flinches and his shoulders drop.
"I know."
"You took that choice from her. You decided she was better off not knowing. You decided that?—”
