Chapter One:
There's a photograph on my mantelpiece, slightly faded, with a crease running diagonally through the middle. It's of me and Liam, age eleven, both missing front teeth, both holding melting rocket lollies, and both covered in mud from our latest adventure through the woods behind my mum's house.
I look at it now and wonder—how does one pinpoint the precise moment love stopped being innocent?
Because love, at first, is all muddy knees and borrowed pencils. It's defending each other in playground squabbles and swapping sandwiches at lunch. It's sharing a bed during sleepovers and whispering secrets in the dark.
But then something shifts.
And suddenly, love becomes dangerous.
It starts to cost you things.
---
Liam James moved to Wiltshire Crescent when I was five, and the world hasn't made sense since. He wore glasses too big for his face and had the most annoying habit of humming when he was concentrating, but he made me laugh—real, unfiltered laughter. The kind that starts in your stomach and shakes your bones.
We were inseparable, like one of those cliché pairings people scoff at in films. Where you can't say one name without the other. Our teachers called us 'The Twins.' My mum said we were a "right little unit." His dad once joked we were engaged already.
Liam and I climbed trees and built forts, scraped our knees and stole biscuits from our parents' cupboards. And as we grew older, so did the complexity of our friendship. Puberty brought awkward silences, longer stares, and feelings I didn't know how to name.
He'd lean in close to show me something on his phone, and I'd forget how to breathe.
He'd sling his arm around my shoulders when we were walking home from school, and I'd memorise the weight of it.
I convinced myself I was imagining things. That I was reading too much into gestures born of long-standing comfort. But sometimes, when our hands brushed, or he laughed just a little too softly at my jokes, I'd wonder.
Could he feel it too?
---
We stayed close through sixth form, university, and those messy years just after—when everyone else seemed to have a plan, and we were still figuring things out. I went into teaching literature, of course. Liam drifted into advertising, with the kind of charm that could sell ice to penguins.
He dated casually—never seriously—and I pretended not to care. I gave polite smiles to the girls he brought around. I told myself, if he ever saw me—really saw me—it would be when he was ready.
I waited.
Like a fool.
---
The night I planned to tell him, it was raining. Not the gentle kind, but the relentless, sideways sort that makes your bones ache.
He arrived at my flat soaked to the skin, holding a six-pack of cider and a bag of crisps. "Movie night?" he asked, shaking his wet hair like a Labrador.
I forced a smile. "Always."
We curled up on the sofa, a familiar dance. He brought horror films; I feigned annoyance. He teased my tea obsession; I mocked his choice of snacks. It was comfortable—easy. And yet my stomach churned.
Halfway through the film, I turned to him. The words pressed against the back of my throat like a dam about to burst.
"Liam…" I began.
He looked at me, his expression unreadable, and for a moment, everything felt suspended. My heart thrummed like it was trying to run from my chest.
But before I could continue, there was a knock at the door.
I frowned. "Are you expecting someone?"
"No," he said, already on his feet.
I watched him cross the room, open the door, and time stopped.
There she stood—Maisie. My baby sister.
Beautiful. Confident. Effortlessly charming. The kind of person who walks into a room and commands it without trying.
She wasn't supposed to be here.
"I didn't mean to interrupt," she said, stepping inside like she owned the place.
I sat up straighter. "What are you—?"
She held up her hand, and then I saw it.
The ring.
Simple, gold, delicate. It glinted under my ceiling light like it knew it was ending something.
"I wanted to tell you," she said, eyes flicking to Liam.
He looked sheepish.
"We wanted to tell you."
There was a silence then. Not an ordinary silence. A monumental, soul-crushing one. The kind that rings in your ears.
My voice felt like gravel. "Tell me what?"
Maisie reached for Liam's hand and laced their fingers together.
The sight physically hurt.
"We're engaged," she said.
---
I don't remember much after that. Some nodding. A forced congratulations. I think I might've offered them tea.
Liam didn't meet my eyes.
Maisie looked relieved, like she'd expected screaming.
But I didn't scream.
I didn't cry, either.
I just… floated.
Inside, I was crumbling.
I'd suspected for months, of course. The subtle glances. The sudden closeness. The last-minute cancellations. The time she accidentally let slip his nickname for me—one I'd never told her.
I'd seen the signs.
But I'd refused to believe them.
Because believing meant accepting that they'd both known. That they'd chosen each other—and chosen not to tell me.
Because I was fragile. Because I was in love. Because it was easier that way.
Easier for them.
---
That night, I lay awake until dawn, staring at the cracks on my ceiling.
How could I face work? Our mother? Christmas?
The humiliation curled around my throat like ivy. My sister. My best friend. The only two people who truly knew me—and they'd kept this secret together.
Because they knew. They knew how I felt. I'd never said it out loud, not to either of them, but they knew.
It was in every lingering gaze, every tightened breath, every pause before I said his name.
They knew.
And they did it anyway.
---
By the end of the week, I'd deleted all our photos. I'd turned off my phone. I'd stopped responding to Maisie's messages.
I couldn't face Liam.
But pain, when it festers, needs somewhere to go.
So I wrote.
Not a tweet. Not a status update. Not even a note on my phone.
A letter.
With pen and paper.
Something real.
Tangible.
British.
Proper.
Something that carried weight—like our friendship used to.
I wrote about the day we met. About the jam tart and the muddy knees. About the snow day when we built an igloo and he kissed my nose to warm it.
I wrote about the things he said in passing that meant everything to me and nothing to him.
I wrote about the summer I turned sixteen and realised I'd fallen in love with someone who saw me as part of the furniture.
I poured it all out.
Every repressed thought, every ache, every betrayal.
I wrote until the ink ran out.
Then I folded the letter, placed it in an envelope, and addressed it not to a person—but to an idea.
To a stranger.
> "To someone who has lost what never belonged to them."
I didn't sign it. No name. No return address. Just the department—Creative Writing & Literary Studies—at Halston University, California.
Dr. A.M. Lark's department.
He was a name I'd followed for years. A ghost in the academic world. Mysterious. Brilliant. Elusive.
He wrote essays that made me cry and published papers that dissected human pain like it was poetry.
And I figured—if anyone could understand this kind of heartbreak, it would be him.
Not that I thought he'd ever read it.
It was just… a way to let it go.
A way to breathe again.
---
I posted the letter on a rainy Tuesday morning.
No ceremony. No second thoughts.
I dropped it into the red postbox on the corner of Albion Street, pulled my coat tighter, and walked away.
I didn't look back.
Because it wasn't meant to be answered.
It wasn't even meant to be found.
It was just me, casting my heartbreak into the wind.
And hoping, maybe, it would land somewhere that didn't feel so cruel.