Dear Colin,
This will be my last letter to you.
I paused for a moment, wondering how many more there were.
I messed everything up. I came to Nashville to say goodbye to you and heal my heart. Instead, I’ll end up leaving in worse shape than when I got here. I’ll never forget you, Colin. Just because the letters stop doesn’t mean my memories of you will ever diminish. I still smile when I think of that day in Berkey Park.
I wondered what memory she had with him in Berkey Park but shook it off. Who cares?
Colin, loving you was so easy. The kind of ease that comes with first love. Loving Ashton was like pulling teeth! But somehow, it went a bit deeper. He’s got more scars, more depth, more to lose, and that made me love him in a way I couldn’t ever love you.
My hands shook and I had to take a moment to steady my breathing. She … loved me? She saw all of my dark ugliness, with my father, with myself and she still … loved me? I mean, she’d said as much when she’d left my hospital room, but I thought it was a lame attempt to keep me in her life. To keep Colin. I thought she was mentally unhinged … but this letter was not mental. It was a very sad and very real private moment between a grieving wife and her lost love. My throat tightened as I read on.
You and I were perfect, perfect love. Ashton and I are like tempered steel, constantly being put over the flame and pounded into new shapes, yet stronger with each strike.
I thought he was the one … I thought he might be the one to save me.
I hadn’t realized until now. I came to Nashville to say goodbye to you but I stayed to be saved, to save each other. I saw something in him that could fill the gaping hole you left behind.
Oh how wrong I was. That hole just got bigger. Now I need to let both of you go in order to survive.
I love you, Colin. Until we meet again.
Always yours,
Millie
I rested the note in my lap and stared at the white wall in front of me for a good five minutes. My chest heaved, as I fought the urge to lose my shit right here. Tempered steel. That’s exactly what we were. Pounded into submission with each argument, yet more flexible afterward.
Fuck. I had this girl all wrong.
She wasn’t a con artist.
This sounded like a letter from a girl who got her heart broken. I broke it. I broke her heart after she broke mine.
Before I could stew on it more, the door opened and the nurse popped her head in. “Ready to go home, handsome?”
I nodded, folding the note in six pieces, making it really small and shoving it in my front pocket. After signing my life away with discharge paperwork and promising the nurse I’d go straight to the pharmacy down the road to get my prescriptions, I exited the room to look for my cousin. Five steps to the left, my gaze casually glanced into the open door of the room next to mine and my whole body froze.
I’d forgotten for a moment that my father was in the room next to mine. The hospital staff thought we might like to be near each other. They’d asked hourly if I wanted to be wheeled in with him. When I’d finally told them that seeing him would give me another heart attack, they’d stopped asking.
I almost didn’t recognize my old man, his skin was tinged yellow but somehow pale at the same time. They’d cleaned him up, shaved him, but he was hooked up to so many machines he looked like a robot.
His head lolled onto his shoulder and he met my gaze.
Walk away. Just walk away. He’s a lost cause, another person to make you love them and then hurt you, I told myself.
But I couldn’t. Jenna would never have left out Father like this; neither would Millie. Hell, I was the only asshole who seemed okay with leaving this man to drink himself to death. My feet started moving and then I was at his bedside. A radiant smile lit up his face as he reached for me. With an awkward pause I took his fragile hand in mine. It was bandaged from the wrist to the elbow and I’d remembered how he’d fallen through the door to the bar and how concerned Millie had been.
“You look like shit,” I told him, but there was a smile on my lips.
He chuckled. “Yellow not my color?”
Damn his voice was weak. He sounded eighty, like at any moment he’d fall asleep.
We were both silent a moment, still holding hands when he finally spoke.
“You and I are more alike than you want to admit, son.” His breathing was labored, as if it took all his strength just to say that one thing.
I shook my head, rejecting his words immediately. “No, we’re not.” I would never put my family through this, drinking myself into blackness every night, sleeping on the streets, getting so hammered I didn’t even remember causing the accident that killed my own daughter. I pulled my hand from his and turned to leave. His arm snaked out with surprising strength and gripped my shirt.
When I met his eyes, I saw a fierceness there. “Since the day I lost your mother, I’ve just been waiting to die.”
His words cut right through me with their honesty.
“And the day you lost Jenna, you’ve done the same.”
The room spun a little at his truth bomb, I actually felt a dizzy rush of adrenaline go through me. Was I like him? Putting poor Gran and everyone through hell because I was drinking and smoking and forgetting my pills? Was I waiting to die?
Yes.
I could lie to everyone else but I couldn’t lie to myself.
“You had Jenna
