AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He would be at the gazebo, waiting for me.
I took off running, leaving my car in the driveway.
SIXTY
LETTIE
I madeit to the center of town and ran straight up to the gazebo, but when I looked around, Tuck was nowhere to be found.
“Tuck?” I yelled.
I walked around, my head spinning and nausea creeping up my throat. “Tuck? Please. Tuck?”
I stepped into the gazebo and found an envelope sitting on the bench with a rock as a paper weight. On the envelope was my name and what looked like a couple of droplets of blood. I opened it furiously, taking out a ripped piece of a paper bag.
Lettie,
There is no way to do this that won’t make you hate me. To be honest, I couldn’t face you. I knew if I saw your beautiful face and those pleading eyes, I would succumb to you. And I can’t.
There are a lot of things you don’t know, Lettie. Things I can’t even bring myself to tell you. Things I’ve never told anyone. My life has not been easy nor is it perfect, and to drag you into the mess of my life before I have everything fixed and figured out would be wrong and unfair.
We don’t know what the future will hold. It’s likely I will be deployed, and the amount of time I will spend overseas is completely up in the air. One year? Two years? How fair is it for me to ask you to wait for me? To put your life on hold when you are just getting started?
I can’t do it, Lettie. I can’t ask you to give me the most important years of your life when I don’t have anything to offer you. When being attached to me could bring negative experiences for you.
I can’t sit back and watch you waste your life on me when you deserve the world and I am barely even a speck on it.
I love you, Lettie. I love you more than I have ever loved anyone or anything in my entire life. I feel like I can’t breathe without you, and to sit here, in my truck, writing this letter of goodbye to you is the hardest thing I have ever done.
I know you’re mad, and I know you think your dad and Theo got in my head, and maybe they did, but I can’t let you sit and wait for me. I love you too much to watch you give up anything for me.
So, live your life. Don’t live for anyone else. Not me, not your parents, not anyone. Live the life that you see for yourself.
I hope that, in time, you will write to me to let me know that your heart has softened and that you have forgiven me for what I have done. When (because I hope it’s when and not if) I receive that letter, and the moment I have something to offer you, I will come back for you.
I promise.
And if that day never comes, I believe fate will somehow bring us back together.
Meet me in Aveline, Lettie.
I love you.
Tuck
I finished reading the letter and dropped to my knees. I could hear the pieces of my heart shattering around me, and I clutched that paper to my chest, weeping until I fell asleep.
Teddy found me the next morning in the gazebo. My eyes swollen from crying, and the letter practically fused to my fingers. He was quiet when he approached me.
“Lettie? Lettie, what are you doing out here?” he asked.
I opened my eyes slowly, not moving my head. I recognized his voice and the pair of loafers he always wore to the office. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t find any words.
“Have you been out here all night? Why don’t you head on home?”
I puckered my lips together, trying to hold back the tears that were begging to be released. I closed my eyes tightly and clutched the letter closer to my heart.
That’s when the floodgates opened, and I curled up into the fetal position with every intention to live the rest of my life on the hard floor of the gazebo. But Teddy swooped in and lifted me up, helping me walk slowly to his truck.
