I made coffee and considered sending Marie an email right there on the spot.
But then something else overtook my thoughts.
Delilah.
The name that had been lingering in my mind and heart for a while now.
Josh had written that letter. All those beautiful and perfect words he had written for someone named Delilah. The letter I had been carrying around and reading… the letter that sparked my desire to write again…
It was because of Josh.
I snuck back to the bed and got the letter out of my bag.
I had to tell him about it.
I wasn’t sure if the letter meant anything to him or not. But it must have meant something to write it. Those words were real. Raw. And the fact that he must have been carrying it around with him the night of his gallery…
My hands shook as I opened the letter.
I spread the pages across the counter Josh had sat me on to kiss me.
I had most of it memorized.
… nobody can know or understand the truth, Delilah. That’s the loneliest part of it all. Sitting in an empty room. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on the floors. Just a chair. And it’s me in that chair, sitting, thinking, the world around me moving. Anyone who sees me sees the nothing in the room. But inside my thoughts there’s a world. And that world is you. You are the world. The light. The life. The purpose and the reason. I don’t like to think about fairness, Delilah. To think and act upon what’s fair or not hurts myself, but it really isn’t all that fair, is it? Because you’re gone and there’s no taking that back. I can scream my love for you into the night, into my dreams, and you will never hear it. You will never understand it. The chance came and went. Just like you.
If I had just one-
I looked up from the letter and watched Josh as he slept.
I bit at my thumbnail as my heart pounded hard.
I had fallen for Josh a long time ago. But that was just some young love crush. That was me feeling a certain way about a boy. Feelings I wasn’t exactly sure of or why my body felt the way it did.
Now it was different.
I knew the feeling and knew how to identify it.
It was love.
I loved Josh.
Right now. I loved him.
But he obviously loved someone else.
He loved Delilah.
It didn’t matter when he wrote this letter for her either. This was too real to just write and forget about. Not to mention he had been carrying the letter with him. It meant something to him. Delilah meant something to him.
I didn’t like to feel jealous or hurt.
But what did I mean to him?
Josh sat up in bed and looked like a sleepy dream. His messy hair and scruff on his face, matched with him being totally naked was enough to make my knees bend a little as I reached for the counter, so I didn’t look foolish and collapse to the floor.
He ran a hand through his hair and reached for his jeans.
He stepped into them, giving me one last look at everything before he set his sights on me. The first thing he did was smile. That smile made me ache all over again.
“Morning, love,” he said in a sleepy voice.
“I made coffee,” I said.
“I can smell it,” he said. “How long have you been awake?”
“A little bit. Just thinking about some stuff.”
“Like what?”
“You know… stuff.”
Josh shuffled toward the kitchen.
I went to the end of the counter and met him.
He wasted no time in touching my face and kissing me. He kissed like a man should kiss a woman. Deep and passionate, his morning breath mixing with my coffee breath. The way he kissed reminded me of what his mouth was also capable of.
The kiss could have led to much more.
Josh broke the kiss and growled. “You’re dangerous, Amelia.”
“Am I?”
“Really dangerous,” he whispered.
“Then do something about it,” I teased.
“You already used that line on me. Try again.”
I laughed. “So, I have to use lines on you?”
“No,” he said as he stroked my cheek. “Just looking at you ruins me.”
“I’ll take that as a romantic thing.”
“You should.” Josh kissed my cheek. “What’s that?”
I turned my head and saw the letter. “Oh. That. I need to talk to you about-”
“Wait a second,” Josh said.
He moved with speed.
He stood and stared down at the letter as though it were fire. He looked hesitant to touch it.
Then he looked at me. “Where did you find this?”
I swallowed hard. “You wrote that, right?”
I wasn’t sure what the moment should have been like.
But Josh’s lip curled in anger. And with a fiery hatred, he said a different kind of four words than I expected to hear.
“You need to leave.”
Chapter 35
A Drink to Remember
NOW
(Josh)
Amelia had the letter.
The words didn’t seem possible as they registered in my head.
How the hell did this happen?
My letter to Delilah was right there on the counter. Almost in the same spot where I had written it. The night I came home and drank enough whiskey to feel nothing, then stood there and poured my heart out into a letter. A letter that was supposed to make it so I could let it all go.
Only there was no letting it go.
That was the problem with the letter.
The letter gave it proof.
Proof of how I felt.
Proof of all that had been happening in the heart that I had kept hidden and tucked away tight.
The worst thing that could have happened was someone finding the letter and reading it. Worse yet, Amelia had found the letter and read it.
“Josh, please,” she whispered. “I don’t know what that is…”
“You know exactly what it is,” I said. “My letter.”
“I didn’t know it was your letter until last night.”
“Last night?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“What you said to me. Right before we…”
“Fucked each other,” I said.
“Yeah.” She swallowed hard. “You said words
