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Tully,
I’ve been staring at this sheet of paper for two weeks trying to figure out what to say to you. Yet every time I start, it’s never good enough. No words will ever be good enough for what I need to tell you, but the longer I wait, the more I’m terrified that I’ll hurt you. In fact, I’m certain that I already have.
You deserve so much better than this. You deserve a guy who’s going to treat you well, someone who’s going to hold your hand every chance he gets, someone who won’t take you for granted, not in the way that I have. You deserve so much more than me. You deserve the world and you’ll never quite understand how much I wish that I could be the one to give it to you.
The world that I live in is not a pretty place. It’s filled with ugliness, hatred, and devastation. I can’t give you the world when the world I know is one that you should never be part of.
I’ve tried to tell you this over and over again. I’m not good enough. I have a dark past, one that I refuse to bring down on you. I hate myself for not being able to open up and share who I am with you, but if I did, I’d destroy you. I’m not a good person. I’ve done things that I’m ashamed of, things that even you couldn’t bring yourself to forgive. I’m not the guy you should be falling in love with, I’m the monster.
I know you want to believe the best and hope that one day we’ll make it work, but it can’t. We can’t, despite how much we want it. I need to stay away.
I love you so goddamn much, Tully. It fucking hurts. I don’t know how to breathe without you, but I need to give you a chance to move on. Being around you kills me. I want to hate you for how you make me want more out of a life that isn’t capable of giving more.
You’re my fucking sunshine in torrential rain. You bring me out of the darkness and give me hope for a better life.
I don’t know how to tell you this, but I had to leave. After the accident, I realized that I’m only ever going to bring you down. You’re a star that was born to shine and all I’ll ever do is hold you back from that destiny.
You need a chance to move on and in order to do that, I had to leave.
I got my GED and enlisted with the Marines. I left for boot camp a few days ago and will be here for a few months. Following this…I don’t know.
I can’t tell you when I’ll be home next and I’m sorry to have told you like this. You deserved a conversation and I should have told you in the hospital, but I couldn’t bear to see you break when you were already so broken because of me.
I’m sorry I’ve made the past few months so hard for you. I never should have hurt you by dating Alyssa and I hope that one day you can forgive me for leaving like this.
Please tell your brother that I’m sorry and that I did what I had to do. I should have talked to him, to both of you, and Henley, but I couldn’t face what needed to be done. Noah will never forgive me for betraying him like this and that’s something that I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life, but you, I couldn’t live knowing that you held that resentment against me.
Remember that no matter what, it’s always you. I love you so much, Tully, and I hope that one day you’ll be able to understand why I had to do this.
Rivers.
And just like that, the incredible morning I’d been having is completely destroyed.
Noah stares at the letter in silence and I slip it out from under his hand before passing the letter to Eddison with a heavy heart, still unable to believe what I just read.
This has to be some kind of sick joke, right? There’s no way Rivers just enlisted in the Marines. Here one minute, gone the next.
I reach over and take hold of Noah’s hand, too terrified to look up and see the pain on his face. He shakes off my hand and pushes up out of his seat, the legs scratching against the floor before he takes off. He grabs his keys off the entryway table and storms through the front door, leaving me desperate to go after him.
The last thing I hear is the loud rumble of his Camaro as it takes off down the street, the tires screeching against the road.
