The Last Letter

by Rebecca Yarros

  “You sure this thing can support our weight?” Ella asked as she watched Colt climb. The kid scurried up the ladder with a freakish quickness. He was going to be one hell of a climber when he grew up.

  “It had half the search and rescue team on it last week,” I told her. “Unless you’re going up there with ten of you, we’re good.”

  “Called in the big guns, huh?” she teased.

  Colt screamed, and I looked up to see him fall from the top of the ladder.

  Shit!

  I stepped forward, arms outstretched and ready as Ella gasped.

  Just before he would have reached me, he caught himself, his little hands grasping the thick center of the wooden rung.

  “Colt!” Ella shrieked.

  He found his footing on the rung above my hands and looked down on us with a huge grin. “That was cool.”

  I sucked in a lungful of air and blew it out slowly, willing my heart to get out of my stomach. That kid was going to be the death of me.

  “That was not cool!” Ella yelled, her voice pitched high and borderline panicked.

  “I’m fine. See?” He let go of the ladder in a quick release and grabbed it again before falling back.

  “Knock it off! I’ve spent weeks in the hospital with your sister, and I’m not prepared to go back!”

  “Okay, okay,” he muttered and climbed back up, making it to the top of the ladder and disappearing through the hatch.

  “You okay?” I asked Ella.

  She took two steps and buried her face in my chest with a huge sigh.

  “He’s fine. It was just a slip.” My arms closed around her, and I kissed the top of her head. “Accidents happen.”

  “I don’t have enough energy for accidents. Can’t we just put them both in a bubble?”

  “I’ll work on building one of those next.” I glanced over at Maisie, who was studying the tree house supports. “What do you think?”

  “It’s awesome!” She grinned.

  “Today, you’re my favorite.”

  “I heard that!” Colt yelled down, directly above us. “Send her up or walk the plank!”

  “No one is walking a plank,” Ella warned me as she left my arms and started up the ladder.

  “There’s no plank,” I promised her.

  “I think you have that backward,” Maisie called up to Colt. “We’re already down here.”

  “Whatever! Get up here!”

  “Watch this,” I told Maisie, pulling the net harness down from where it was stored on the tree. I spread it out with one hand and sat her in it with the other. “Now hold on to the sides.”

  Her eyes lit up as the net rose around her, and she grasped the edges, hooking her fingers through the white loops. “Really?”

  “Ella, prepare to receive!” I called up. I looked through the secondary hatch and saw Ella nod, confused but ready. Then I went to the pulley and started to heft Maisie upward.

  “Ahhh! This is so cool!” she squealed.

  She made it through the hatch, and Ella got her out of the seat. Then I took the ladder and met my little family on the porch. We were about fifteen feet in the air, and we’d chosen a spot where the kids could see the lake. The kids, who were currently checking out the cool things Colt had asked for in the tree house, like a table and chairs, a play kitchen, and a giant cardboard tube we’d painted red because he wanted to call the tree house “the Death Star.”

  “This is amazing,” Ella said, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Ryan would have loved it.”

  “Yeah, but he’d wanted a giant trampoline for Colt to jump on from up here.”

  Her eyes flew wide.

  “Well, Colt asked for a zip line.”

  “From up here?”

  “Hey, he’s your kid,” I said with a shrug and hugged her closer to me.

  “I like this,” she whispered. “Coming home to you, knowing Colt wasn’t lonely.”

  “Me, too.” I kissed her forehead. “It’s all really normal, and I know it sounds crazy, but I’m really loving normal. Spending time with you and the kids, getting you alone whenever I can, it’s really…”

  “Perfect,” she supplied.

  “Perfect,” I agreed, looking over my shoulder to make sure the kids were occupied before I kissed her.

  Our lips met, and then Ella deepened it. I was more than happy to oblige. Our tongues touched briefly, and then we broke apart, hearing the kids coming.

  “Isn’t it so cool? It’s like you’re all alone up here!” Colt said.

  “Almost alone,” Ella answered, shooting me a knowing smirk.

  “Almost, but not quite,” I agreed over the kids’ heads as they looked out at the lake.

  “I love it,” Maisie told me with a grin.

  “Then it was all worth it.”

  They ran to the other side of the house, and Ella leaned against my back, wrapping her arms around me.

  “Can I get you alone later?” she asked, her hands skimming under my shirt to run the lines of my abs.

  “Yes, as many times as you can handle.” God, I wanted her. Needed to get her under me, over me, around me. Needed to feel connected to her in the way that only sex gave us, the moments when there were no worries, no cancer, no kids underfoot, just us and the love we had for each other.

  Before she could answer, my phone rang. I reached between us to my back pocket and pulled it out, swiping to answer. “Gentry.”

  “Hey, I know you’re not on call this weekend, but we’ve got some lost hikers,” Mark’s voice came through the line.

  I sighed. All I wanted to do was have dinner with the kids, tuck their smiling faces into bed, and then get very alone with their mother.

  “How lost?”

  “They missed their check-in four hours ago.”

  “Go,” Ella urged, kissing my arm where skin met shirt. “I know you’re needed. Go.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty.” I hung up the phone and pulled Ella into my arms. “I’m so sorry. This is the last thing I want to do right now.”

  “Oh, trust me, you’re the only thing I want to do right now,” she said with a kiss on my chin before releasing me. “Stay with me tonight after you’re done?”

  I nodded. We limited sleepovers, but I wasn’t arguing. Not tonight. “I’ll be back as soon as possible. I promise,” I told her before kissing the kids on the forehead as they ran by again. “Can you get Maisie down?”

  “I’ve got this. Go,” Ella ordered.

  I let my eyes roam her body and sighed in a pout. “Tourists.”

  She flat-out laughed. “Hey, this is normal life. You were the one championing normal, right?”

  “As long as normal means I come home to you tonight, I’m good with it.”

  And I was. Me, the guy who never wanted roots, was all about laying them deep here. This was what I wanted. This life. Ella. Colt. Maisie.

  Normal. Everyday, ordinary normal.

  I just needed Maisie to live, because there was no normal without her in it.

  Six Months Later

  Chapter Twenty

  Ella

  Letter #5

  Ella,

  Ah, the dating question. I honestly don’t really date. Why? Because my life isn’t fair to any woman. We head out at the drop of a hat. And not like, “Hey, I’m leaving next week.” More like, “Sorry, I won’t be home for dinner…for the next couple of months.” Seems like a crap way to start a relationship when I never know when we’ll get home. Take this trip for example. We figured it would be a couple of months. Definitely not the multiple-stop journey it has been. I couldn’t imagine leaving a girl at home to wait through that.

  So, without sounding…like a douche, I just prefer to not have long-term relationships. On some level, I’m also not sure I’m capable. When yo
u grow up knowing nothing of a working, good relationship, it’s pretty hard to see yourself in one.

  As for Robins, if you want to go, go. Don’t hide behind your life, or your kids. If you’re scared to get out there and risk yourself, then say that. Own it. What you went through would make any normal person a little gun-shy, no doubt. No one is going to think less of you. Just don’t hide behind excuses. You’ll be stronger when you identify what sets you on edge. And honestly, I’ve seen pictures of you. You’re not going to end up as the crazy cat lady, I promise.

  Am I happy single? I think happiness is a relative term, no matter what the subject. I quit striving for happy when I was about five. Now I go for content. It’s easier to attain and doesn’t leave me feeling like there’s something missing. Eventually I’ll get out of the military, and then maybe we’ll see, but that’s a decade or more away. For now, this is the life I love, and I’m content. Goal attained.

  Tell me a little bit about Telluride. If I came into town as a tourist, what absolutely has to be seen? Done? Eaten?

  ~ Chaos

  …

  Content. I’d been looking for the right word to describe my feelings about my blur of a life lately, and that was it: I was content.

  I loved Beckett with an intensity that was almost frightening. That hadn’t changed—and something told me it wouldn’t. But I also knew there were things about him I’d never know. Even seven months as a couple hadn’t filled in all the holes of who he had been before he’d shown up at Solitude.

  Most of the time, he was the Beckett I knew, but there were moments when I caught him staring out at Ryan’s island, or when he woke up from a nightmare, that I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d ever know him as well as he knew me.

  Maybe that was simply what came with the territory when you loved a man like him. I’d learned a few months into our relationship that love was mostly about compromise, but it was always about acceptance. There were dozens of little things about him that could annoy the socks off me, and the same went for him, but for the most part, we were who we were, and we loved each other. There was no point trying to change each other, we either wanted to grow or change ourselves, or we didn’t. After you accepted that about someone and still loved them, you were pretty much indestructible.

  Beckett had accepted that I was always going to be overprotective of the twins and that I wasn’t anywhere near ready to tell them that he’d adopted them. I’d accepted that there were simply parts of him that would always remain shadowed and secretive.

  But there was no denying that my choice to keep the adoption under wraps was directly impacted by the moments Beckett distanced himself when I asked about his past.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. He would die for me. For the kids. But until I knew with 100 percent certainty that he’d stay—that those shadows in his eyes wouldn’t lead to me finding his bags packed—the twins couldn’t know. God, they loved him, and even the chance that Beckett could destroy their hearts by being the second father to abandon them was too big of a risk to take. Not while Maisie was still fighting for her life.

  The thought of losing Beckett stuttered my heart, and I reached across the console of the truck to take his hand as he drove us along the familiar roads to Montrose. He lifted my hand and kissed the inside of my wrist, a habit I happened to love, without taking his eyes off the road. Snow rose on either side of us, but at least the roads were clear. February was always an unpredictable month.

  “You good back there?” I asked Maisie as she played on the iPad Beckett had gotten her for Christmas. It matched Colt’s almost identically except for the case.

  “Yep, just working on a spelling game Ms. Steen gave me for homework.” She didn’t look up, just kept swiping away.

  “Did you bring Colt?” I asked, spotting the pink bear wedged into the seat next to her.

  “Yeah. He was mad that he couldn’t come, so I promised him Colt would come.” She met my eyes in the mirror and forced a little smile.

  “You’re nervous.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Beckett and I shared a sideways glance, and we both let it go. She’d been through thirty-three days of hell a month ago. The mega-chemo had been the most vicious part of her treatment.

  She’d thrown up. Her skin had peeled. She’d had sores down her GI tract and had a feeding tube placed because she couldn’t keep anything down. But as soon as she’d finished that course of treatment and the stem cells had been transplanted, she bounced right back. She was astonishing on every level that a little girl could be.

  I couldn’t say I was happy, not with Maisie still fighting for her life, but we’d passed the year mark in November, and she was still here. She’d had another birthday, another Christmas. Colt was taking snowboarding lessons. Solitude was booked solid through the ski season and summer, and Hailey had moved out a few months ago, knowing I could depend on Beckett, who had taken shifts between Telluride and Denver, to be wherever he was needed most.

  Everything came back to Beckett. He took the worst days and made them bearable. Took the good days and made them exquisite. He picked up the kids, took Colt to school, took Maisie to local appointments, made dinner on nights I couldn’t get away from the main house—there was nothing he wouldn’t do.

  So maybe I couldn’t say that I was happy, but I was content, and that was more than enough.

  Chaos would have been proud.

  It had been almost fourteen months since I’d lost him and Ryan, and I still had no clue why. That was part of Beckett’s past I had a nearly impossible time accepting. Only nearly, because I heard him scream Ryan’s name in the middle of a nightmare a few months ago. That scream told me he wasn’t anywhere near ready to talk.

  Ryan and Chaos were gone.

  Beckett was alive and in my arms, and that meant I had all the time in the world to wait until he was ready.

  We pulled into the hospital parking lot, and Beckett carried Maisie through the slush-filled lot as I followed in his footsteps, thankful I’d worn boots.

  Maisie was quiet through check-in and vitals, and dead silent as she had her blood drawn and went through the CT scan.

  By the time we were put into an exam room to wait for Dr. Hughes, she was almost a statue.

  “What are you thinking about?” Beckett asked her as he sat on the exam table.

  She shrugged, kicking her feet under the chair. They’d made a deal after the second MIBG treatment—she wasn’t sitting on exam tables any more than necessary. She said they made her feel like she was a sick kid, and she wanted to believe that she was getting better. So Beckett would sit on the table until the doc came in, and then they would trade places.

  “Me, too,” he said, mirroring her shrug.

  “Me, three,” I added.

  That earned us a little smile.

  Dr. Hughes knocked and opened the door. “Hi there, Maisie!” she said to Beckett.

  “Busted,” he stage-whispered.

  Maisie grinned and jumped up to take his spot as he took her chair and then my hand.

  “How are you feeling?” Dr. Hughes asked, doing the usual physical checks.

  “Good. Strong.” She nodded to emphasize her point.

  “I believe you. You know why?”

  My hand tightened on Beckett’s. As steady as I tried to appear to Maisie, I was terrified of what she was going to say. It seemed so unfair to put a little girl through so much and not have it work.

  “Why?” Maisie whispered, her arms crushing Colt’s teddy bear.

  “Because your tests look great, just like you. Good and strong.” She tapped Maisie on the nose with her finger. “You are a rock star, Maisie.”

  Maisie looked back over her shoulder at us, a smile as wide as the state of Colorado.

  “What exactly does that mean?” I asked.

  “We’re l
ooking at less than 5 percent on her bone marrow. No change since you left the hospital last month. And no new tumors. Your girl is stable, and in partial remission.”

  That word tripped something in my brain, and it short-circuited just like it had the first time they’d said cancer, except this time it was in the joy end of disbelief.

  “Say it again,” I begged.

  Dr. Hughes smiled. “She’s in partial remission. It means no new treatments for the time being. I’ll probably want to do a session of radiation in a couple months to mop up any of the microscopic cells, but as long as her scans are coming back clean, I think we can give her a little break.”

  Everything went blurry, and Beckett’s hands wiped at my cheeks.

  I laughed when I realized I was crying.

  We listened to Dr. Hughes explain that it wasn’t a full remission. She had made significant progress but hadn’t been cured. She was hopeful that the radiation treatment would wipe out the rest, and then we could schedule immunotherapy.

  Then she reiterated that over half of all kids with aggressive neuroblastoma relapsed after they’d been declared in full remission, that this wasn’t a guarantee but a much-needed break. Her weekly scans could even be done locally in Telluride, and she’d review them in Denver, no need to drive to Montrose.

  I wrote down everything I could process in her binder, hoping I could make sense of it all later. Then Maisie hopped down from the table, and we walked to the car. Maisie and Beckett chattered and laughed, joking about how much ice cream she was going to eat while she had a couple of months off treatment. She declared she was going to eat an entire Easter basket full of chocolate and peanut butter cups.

  Beckett hoisted Maisie into the truck, and she buckled in. Then he shut the door and caught my hand as he walked me to my side of the truck.

  All at once, it hit me. Maisie had been talking about Easter, which was two months away. My vision swam, and I covered my face with my hands.

  “Ella,” Beckett whispered, pulling me against his chest.

  I gripped the edges of his coat and sobbed, the sound ugly and raw and real. “Easter. She’s going to be here for Easter.”