I know life in the military isn’t what you ever hoped for me or even expected, but it’s a better option than the life planned out for me since I was a child. It’s a world I could never risk bringing you into. It’s dark and filled with secrets that would haunt your pure mind. The things I’ve had to do in that life I could never bring down on you.
You’re so fucking beautiful, Tully. You’re like the fucking sunshine that comes after a storm. You keep me breathing day in and day out.
I know that you’re still only getting bits and pieces of the information you need to make sense of all this and know that I get how frustrating it must be, but if I could tell you about me, about where I come from, I would.
I’ve pictured sitting down with you time and time again and telling you every last thing there is to know about me. You wouldn’t believe how desperately I want you to know the real me, but I can’t, and I know that it only makes it that much harder to understand and be ok with it.
My training went really well and I aced everything which means that I have everyone’s attention, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I was to be deployed quickly. I don’t know if I will tell you if that happens. I’m still trying to work it out. I don’t want you worrying about me. Just know that I’m going to be fine and no matter where I am in the world, I’ll be thinking of you.
As much as it pains me to say, I don’t know when I’m going to see you again and because of that, I don’t want you holding onto hope that I’m going to be coming home because I just don’t know if I am.
I have a lot of shit to sort through, but that doesn’t change the fact that all I’ll ever want for you is to be happy and if that means falling in love with someone else and living the life I always wanted to live with you, then so be it.
I don’t want you to wait for me. I don’t want you holding onto hope that I’m going to come back and everything is going to fall right into place because I can’t guarantee that it will.
I love you, Tully Cage.
This isn’t goodbye.
Rivers.
I stare down at the letter, hardly able to see the words before me through the thick tears pooling in my eyes. “He’s not coming back,” I whisper.
Noah’s arm wraps around me and me pulls me into his chest where the tears silently fall down my face. “There’s still hope,” he murmurs. “This is Rivers we’re talking about. He’ll come back when he’s ready.”
“I don’t think he will,” I tell him. “What he wrote. Those words. That was goodbye. He was trying to let her down gently as to not break her heart.”
“Well,” comes Tully’s familiar voice from the doorway, taking us in with the letter in my hand, the tears in my eyes, and the mess of her room; though she doesn’t seem to care as the tears are just as heavy in her eyes. “It didn’t work. He broke me well and good this time.”
Noah holds out his other arm and Tully can’t resist crashing down into him before the tears really start to fall.
The tears run their course and twenty minutes later, Tully and I are laying on her unmade bed, each with a spoon and a tub of ice cream between us while Noah sits silently at her desk chair, staring at the letter before him but not actually seeing it.
Tully nudges me with her foot, making me look up at her while she stares up at the roof, not wanting to meet my eyes. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Will you write him back? I don’t think I can bring myself to do it, but I think he needs to know everything that’s been going on with Gina and his dad before he decides to never come back. He needs to know that we’ve got his back and that it’s all over. We’re safe here now and Anton can’t hurt him anymore.”
I nod into the pillow. “Ok,” I tell her, dropping the spoon into the ice cream and grabbing hold of her wrist. I give it a slight squeeze and try my best encouraging smile, but I don’t think I quite succeed. “Anything else you want me to tell him?”
I wait for her to tell me to say that she loves him and I see the words right there on the tip of her tongue, but she lets out a sigh instead. “No,” she says, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Don’t mention me at all, just tell him what he needs to know.”