But it’s not. This was about something more. Something bigger. It was about you.
For as long as I’ve known you, which is, conveniently, the entirety of your life, you’ve been a go-getter. Determined and sure, confident in your choices and the person you portrayed. But I’ve always known your secret.
You’ve never really believed those things about yourself. Not really. And you’ve never considered yourself worthy of pure, soul-searing love. You’re one of the best actresses I’ve ever seen. It takes real talent to fool yourself.
‘If Blane loves me, it must be because Franny’s dead’, right?
Wrong.
Oh, NeeNee, you’re so wrong. Didn’t you ever stop to think about the fact that you only let yourself fall in love with Blane when you’d done something to make him, supposedly, not love you? Do you really think you spent all those years with him, and you really didn’t know what kind of a guy he was? That he was the perfect kind of guy for you?
Frankly, I never bought it.
As the words poured out of Harvey’s mouth, Blane’s hand squeezed mine, tighter and tighter with every passing second. If he didn’t let up, there was a good chance he was going to break it.
“Why is she making me listen to someone else read this aloud?” I whispered, my mom turning back to look at me with concern and compassion.
Blane had the answer. “She’s making you face it. If you’re not the only one to hear her accusations, you have to address them instead of ignore them.”
“Well, it feels cruel.”
Harvey looked like he didn’t know if he should continue, but when I looked over to find Blane patiently waiting for me to make the right choice, I gave him the go ahead and nodded in his direction.
So why hide the letters? Well, I have to admit at first that it was more about not knowing what to do than anything. I’d sent that first package on a whim, and when a letter came back, I panicked. Naturally, I read it.
Sorry, Blane.
Blane chuckled.
He’d been honest, thankful, but not what he would have needed to be to convince you that the package was worthwhile. So I kept it. I figured I’d send another package and wait for him to warm up a little bit.
When the second letter came, it still wasn’t up to snuff.
Sorry again, Blane.
This time, Blane laughed even harder.
But I knew you, and it was going to take some serious sweet talking to convince you that he could love you after loving Franny, and that despite his struggles after the hard year you’d had, he was ready to heal the breech.
Out went the third package. Back came the third letter. And this one was good. That much I’ll admit. But you were casually dating that guy, Brad or Brian or whoever, and it really didn’t seem like the right time.
You get the point. Twelve years later and I’ve got six letters, none of which I’ve shown to you. You had no idea that I’d been sending the packages. I feared you’d kill me when I told you.
Okay, not really, but that’s what I told myself. And then, just when I was gearing up to come clean, in walks Prince Charming all on his own.
I glanced at Blane.
With the convenient escape of death right around the corner, I decided to let it play out, pushing you in the right direction when I could, and hoping you’d come to the realization that he’d loved you all along all on your own.
Put simply, when you gave up, I kept hoping for you. When you chose to move on, I helped you do both that and hold on. And I don’t regret it.
From the first time I saw you and Blane together, I knew you were meant to be soulmates. I knew you completed each other in a way that’s rarely found, and I knew I’d do whatever I had to do, over whatever span of time it had to last, to make it happen. You made the package. I just mailed it.
He already loved you. I just reminded him.
It’s your job to never forget it.
I know I never will.
All of my love, always, forever,
Gram
Harvey cleared his throat a third time, but this time it was obviously because even he wasn’t oblivious to the emotion her letter evoked.
PS- Here.
The letters landed on his desk with a muted thunk, the bundle of all six of them tied together with a single purple ribbon.
My mom reached forward, picking them up off of the desk and twisting to hand them to me.
When my fingers closed around the edges, Blane’s lips came to my neck as I read the one word scrawled against the back.
Love.
“WHEN ARE YOU GONNA READ the letters?” Blane asked as I lay on top of him in my bed, the sheet sitting right at the curve of my naked hips.
“I’m thinking not now,” I teased, his hard length still inside me after our lovemaking.
His arms tightened reflexively and his eyes sharpened. He obviously wanted a serious answer.
“I’m not sure,” I mumbled.
I was nervous. About what they would say, about how I would feel, and about the prospect of being angry with Gram when I was done.
Moving swiftly, he lifted my hips and pulled me off of him, setting me down in the bed beside him, reaching for the bundle on the bedside table, handing it to me, and declaring, “How about now?”
“Why are you so eager for me to read them?” I asked. “You know what they say already.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Or do you? What’d you have one of your buddies write them for you?”
“Fuck no,” he denied as he rolled on top of me. “Then I would have had to share my Chiclets.”
“I don’t know,” I protested, biting at my lip anxiously and looking down at our bodies to avoid his eyes.
His finger lifted my chin. “Look at me, Whit.” When I did, he whispered his question. “What are you afraid of?”
I shrugged, the heat of emotion making my cheeks burn bright red. “Everything.”
“Okay. Then let’s get something out of the way,” he declared.
“What?”
“I want to move in here. Now that I’ve spent the night in your bed, I don’t ever want out.”
I sucked my lips into my mouth. He didn’t stop there.
“When you’re ready, I want to make you my wife. And I want to spend many enjoyable hours making beautiful babies with you. If I had to guess, they’ll be conceived to the melody of some Celine Dion song.”
His lips touched mine softly.
“I don’t know what you think you’re going to find in there,” he murmured, pointing to the bundle of letters. “But no matter what it is, you won’t find me anywhere other than here,” he finished with a squeeze of his arms.
Moving his weight to the side, still pressed the length of my body, separating it easily from the packet, he handed me the first letter.
I only chewed my lip for a minute.
Tearing it open, I read.
Whitney,
I never thought a package could mean so much.
Thank you for sending it to me. I wish I could come up with something really good to say, but my mind seems to be stuck on two pretty simple ideas.
How you are. And how much I miss you.
Blane
When I finished that one, I only wanted more. Placing a small kiss on Blane’s waiting lips, I reached for the second one and ripped into it.
Whitney,
You’re on my mind every day. The ups and downs, the highs and lows, the gains and losses. I was so stupid to think that the turmoil would be better without you. I’d rather spend my days in the depths of despair with you by my side than alone anywhere else.
I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for leaving. I know I did it long before I was actually gone.
I miss you.
Blane
Gram was wrong. His second letter wasn’t half bad.
“I missed you too,” I told him, even though it was obvious. The movement of him swallowing hard caught my attention and held it.
He
’d wanted me to write those words back to him so badly. I could practically taste it.
Bringing my palm to his face, I watched him close his eyes and lean into it.
He kissed my bare stomach as I ripped into the third.
Whitney,
I’m a fool. I only wish I’d realized it sooner. As time passes and victory against the fight over here seems more and more unattainable, I find that living my life without you seems like another fruitless endeavor.
I miss you. Every day.
But more importantly, I need you to know that I love you.
I hate to say it in a letter, but I would hate not saying it at all even more. Death is a very real possibility over here, and I’m reminded of it every day.
It’s made me ask myself some tough questions, and it seems like, no matter what they are, the answer is you.
Blane
“You knew you loved me then?” I asked, surprised.
“Definitely,” he answered without hesitation.
“But Franny,” I mumbled stupidly, as though one had to do with the other.
Luckily, he humored me. “This is one of the hardest things to explain, so I’ll just do the best I can.”
I nodded.
He took a deep breath. “I loved her. Definitely. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that the hardest part of losing her, other than feeling like I could have stopped it somehow, was losing you.”
I nodded again, because I’d felt the same way, pulling him up for another kiss before tearing the last three letters in succession. I read fast because I wanted to know the words he’d written to me all those years ago.
But I also read fast because I wanted it to be over. I’d made it to the other side, all the mayhem and heartbreak swirling dangerously in the middle, and I knew what it felt like to love someone and have them love me back.
We both needed me to read the letters, to completely clear the hauntings of our past, so that we could finally let it all go.
Whitney,
Have I ever told you how beautiful I think you are? Not just in passing, but specifically, pointedly told you that you’re one of the single most gorgeous women I’ve ever laid eyes on?
I don’t think I have. Add that to the list of regrets.
Please, tell me how you are. Insult me. Tell me I’m an asshole.
I’ll take a piece of you however I can get it.
Love,
Blane
The next.
Whitney,
You always made it easier to find the words. Your side of the banter is what makes my side work. Without you, everything I say seems incomplete.
So, without your words here to make me know mine, I’ll just remind you that I miss you.
Love,
Blane
And his final letter.
Whitney,
It’s hard to make the decision that I’ve said all I can say. It’s hard to say this is the last letter and mean it. So I’ll do the best I can, and say that, for now, it is.
Franny’s birthday. The day you interrupted me at the cemetery.
There was something I never told you, and I feel like you deserve to know.
I was talking to her, and I asked her to tell me what I needed to do. To show me what was right.
And I turned around and saw you.
She was always the most observant of all of us, seeing even the things that you and I couldn’t see.
Whit, no matter what I do, I can’t do it without thinking about you. So I’ll wait. Until something tells me different, until something tells me I shouldn’t, I’m going to wait for you.
Wait for you to come back into life. Wait for you to understand the things I do now. Wait for us to make a life together.
And when waiting for you doesn’t work, I’ll hunt you.
Hunt you down until you’re back in my life.
And when you are, you’re never getting back out.
Love,
Blane
As I read the last words, a single tear ran down my cheek. Sadness for the hearts we had to break, the hard lessons we had to learn, the loved ones we had to lose.
All that time wasted.
My head turned diagonally until my eyes met his beautiful blue ones.
“I hate our story.”
“Me too,” he agreed with a nod. His thumb came to my lips. “But I sure as hell love you more.”
“WHITNEY!” BLANE’S VOICE BELLOWED FROM the office, damn near shaking the windows and almost definitely alerting Cynthia, Tony, and the rest of our neighborhood to our impending disagreement.
Oops. That sounded like a scary version of my name. I hid behind the island counter in the kitchen and hoped he wouldn’t find me.
“Whitney!” he yelled again as I heard him come pounding down the hall, his bare feet slapping the wood floors with every step.
The creak of the floor told me he’d entered the kitchen, and I held my breath and tried not to make a sound.
Almost no time passed.
“Good try, but I can see your foot,” he declared, explaining the reason why.
“Shit,” I said, standing up to meet my fate.
Making sure to bat my eyelashes flirtatiously, I asked innocently, “You called?”
A paper rattled as he shook it violently in front of me. “Did you really put an ad on Grindr—”
Uh oh.
“—that says I like to be spanked?”
I squished up my face, eager to avoid the consequences of my actions. “That doesn’t sound like something I would do.”
He laughed, and not because it was funny. Which it was. “It sounds exactly like something you would do. In fact, it’s something that you once threatened to do precisely.”
Something occurred to me, and it was the perfect way to deflect attention. “Wait a minute. How’d you find it? Are you in there cruising Grindr? Is there something you want to tell me?”
“One of my coworkers found it, pointed it out to me. Of course, that was only after he had a significant laugh and spread it around at my expense.”
I pursed my lips and shrugged. “What is done can’t be undone.”
“No,” he said, a wicked gleam in his eye. “But payback’s a bitch.”
Thinking fast I offered, “What if I let you spank me tonight?”
He narrowed one eye comically, leaned forward, and then lifted his index finger and pointed it towards me. “Deal.”
1 year later…
“I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU MAN and wife!”
His lips crushed mine, the claps of our guests mixing in with the sounds of birds and the creek in the background.
He felt right and real, and for the first time in nearly seventeen years, he was officially all mine.
Stepping apart momentarily, we ran down the aisle hand in hand, the faces of those around us and the smiles on them standing out almost as much as the ones that weren’t there.
After we cleared the aisle and found a private spot of our own, he leaned his forehead to mine.
I breathed him in.
“Do you think they’re happy?” I asked softly, wondering about the fate of all our departed loved ones.
He shrugged, bringing his thumb to my lips, and answered honestly. “I don’t know. But I am.”
AS I LIFTED THE CROWN of Franny’s head to my nose, I knew one thing with absolute certainty.
I’d found the one thing filled with one hundred percent pure love.
Our baby.
“This kid is going to,” lowering my voice to a whisper and covering my newborns ears, I finished, “fucking hate us. Franny Eleanor Hunt. What the hell were we thinking?”
“She’ll be alright,” Blane whispered. “She’s got a few angels looking out for her.”
The End
I’m extremely fortunate to have tons of supportive people in my life. But, as always, the first person I have to thank is my mom. She’s the first person to have eyes on my book, even when it’s in pieces, and is an in
valuable source of encouragement and wisdom. Thanks, Mamalicious!
I also have to thank Joanne Christenson for allowing me to torture her by sending incomplete and out of order sections of my book and expecting her to be able to make sense of it enough to give me feedback. Muah!
My author friends. There are a ton of you, and you’re all AWESOME. Thank you for sprinting with me, pushing me to keep writing, lifting me up, and assuring me that I really COULD do this. Take it to Pound Town!
M. Mabie, my twin sister from another mister, I don’t know what I did before I met you. Love. And lots of it.
My street team! I love you! I value your help, but I also just truly enjoy all of our interactions, book related or not.
Blogs. Um, hello, none of us could do this without you. I definitely couldn’t do this without you. You all work so hard, and so many of you have supported me in ways that I can never thank you enough for. But I’ll try. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’d list you, but then I’ll forget someone and be devastated. Bad mojo.
You. The readers. Sweet baby Jesus, you guys are awesome. Every message, every comment—they mean everything to me. I spend hundreds of hours working on these books, and just one message from one of you—someone who saw something in my book, was touched in some special way—makes it worth it.
And, of course, I have to thank my family. My husband and son sacrifice the most, going without food and attention in order to let me push through to my deadline. Thank you for your support and for believing that this book is going to be something big.
Author’s Note
The subject matter in this book is heavy at times. Depression is a serious disease that I do not, in any way, claim to be an authority on. If you’re suffering, please, get help. If you know someone who is, find a way to help them. Resources on suicide prevention and immediate help can be found here: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
The characters of this book will stay with me forever. I hope you love them like I do, and I hope they stay with you.
Thank you so much for reading.
My love,
Laurel
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