Chapter 14 – Selene's Silence
The letter lay on her desk for three days.
Each time Selene walked past it, she felt the weight of its presence. It was only paper, only ink — and yet it pressed on her chest like a stone she could not move.
The first night, she tried to write. She sat at her desk until dawn, the lamp humming above her, a dozen torn pages scattered across the floor. Apologies. Half-truths. Confessions she couldn't finish. Every word felt wrong. Every sentence felt like a betrayal.
By morning, her wastebasket was full, but her envelope remained empty.
The second day, she tucked his letter into the drawer with her photograph, as though hiding them together might silence the thoughts running wild in her head. She forced herself into her routines — lectures, chores, Maren's laughter bubbling through the apartment like sunlight breaking through clouds. Selene smiled when her sister looked at her, but her chest ached when she was alone.
She thought of Adrian's words constantly. He died in a plane crash. I wasn't there, but a part of me feels like I was. She imagined what it must be like to carry such a wound, to wake every day with its weight. And then she imagined what would happen if she failed him — if she became another silence, another absence in his life.
That thought terrified her more than anything.
The third night, Selene sat at her desk again. She opened her drawer, unfolded his letter, and read it one more time. Her hand trembled as she reached for her pen.
But she didn't write.
Instead, she folded the page back along its creases, slower this time, and slipped it inside the drawer once more. She closed it firmly, her hand lingering on the wooden surface as if sealing something dangerous away.
She whispered into the empty room, "I can't. Not yet."
The words felt both like a confession and a surrender.
That night, she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to Maren's breathing through the wall. Her eyes stung, but no tears came. All she could feel was the hollow weight of not-writing, of choosing silence.
And somewhere, in another place she had never seen, a stranger was waiting for her words.
✨ That's Chapter 14 – Selene's Silence: the first time she doesn't write back. Her fear of breaking under Adrian's illness outweighs her desire to answer, and the chapter closes with her silence heavy in the room.