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It didn’t matter. Her lure was so great, her soul so pure, I fell in love.
Yet the persona I’d built continued to hide. He treated the woman he loved as a story. Someone to investigate. Someone to crack open so he could see what was inside.
But that isn’t love.
I sometimes wonder if moths know that the light will be their destruction. Because I knew. And yet I couldn’t resist.
So I have met my destruction.
No—notmydestruction. The destruction of the persona I’d adopted.
The Julian Bauer that my readers across the world know is no more. He is gone. He has disappeared into the wind. Because he was nothing more than a whisper in the night, a lie.
The woman I fell in love with . . . she never told me she loved me back, but I saw love in her eyes. She loved me, and I betrayed her. But that love, it did something to me.
It made meReal.
Someone wise once said, “once you are Real, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
I’m no longer a legend. I’m simply a man who’s finally found his true self again after hiding it away in the shadows. And it’s because of her.
I am writing this for her. I am writing this to tell her how sorry I am. That I never should have done what I did. I’m revealing myself to the world because I want there to be nowhere for me to hide, no mask to cover up with like before.
For her, I want to be exposed.
For her, I want to be vulnerable.
For her, I want to be different.
This is the hardest thing I’ve ever written in my entire life.
But for her, it is worth it.
Skylar readthe letter through once more and then again and again and again until she all but memorized the entire thing, until it was etched into her heart, until she could hear Julian’s voice himself whispering it into her ear, sending goosebumps down her spine.
Julian showed her his true self in the only way he knew how.
And, she vowed, she would do the same.
* * *
For an entire day,Julian waited to hear from Skylar. Had she seen his love letter? Should he have emailed it to her? He spent the day with his eye on the clock, thetick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tockechoing hollowly through his penthouse. Sleep that night proved elusive.
Day two was worse. Still no word from Skylar. He called Margaux, who first told him he was an utter asshole. Then she told him to be patient. Fate hadn’t brought him here, only to abandon him.
“Should I have the article delivered to her? Maybe with flowers? Shit—I should have sent her flowers.”
Margaux’s chuckle was low and kind. “No. Your words were the precious thing. Flowers are sweet but what you said was profound and deep. She’ll find it, and she’ll read it. And then she’ll find you when she’s ready. The question is, are you ready to be who she needs? Are you ready to embrace love?”
“I meant every word I said in that article. Skylar helped me find who I really am. Who I always was. I think I’m now the man she deserves. And if I’m not, I’ll keep working at it until I am.”
By day three, he thought he’d go insane if he didn’t hear from Skylar. He paced his penthouse, unwilling to leave it in case he encountered a place where he couldn’t get cell service right when she called.
But she never called.
Instead, on day four, a handwritten invitation addressed to him came in the mail.
He opened it with shaking hands. Inside was a single sheet, and written on that was an address with a date and a time and nothing more. Outwardly, there was no clue as to who sent it, no clue to what it was for, no clue to what would befall him if he went.
