Chapter 18 – Ink and Echoes
The page shook beneath Adrian's hand as he wrote.
There was no polish, no careful pauses this time. The words spilled fast, urgent, almost desperate, as if silence might close in again and steal them if he hesitated.
Adrian's Letter
(the handwriting uneven, ink smudged in places — written in a rush, with moments where his hand clearly trembled)
Selene,
I don't know how to explain what your letter did to me. I need to be honest, because anything else feels like a lie. When your silence stretched on, I thought it was the end. I thought you had left, like everyone else has. I nearly broke. I mean that in the rawest way possible. There were nights I sat staring at pills on my desk, asking myself if there was any reason left to stay. The only thing that stopped me was the memory of your handwriting, the way your words used to sound in my head. I kept telling myself: maybe tomorrow. Maybe she'll write.
And then you did. You wrote.
Your words pulled me back from something I don't even want to name. They made the monster inside me stumble, even if it hasn't gone quiet. And for the first time in weeks, I feel like maybe I'm not completely lost.
I don't want to scare you away with the weight I carry. But I also don't want to hide anymore. So here it is: my friend's name was Elias. He died in the crash two years ago. I never got to say goodbye. And part of me thinks I should've been there with him — not because I wanted to die, but because he shouldn't have been alone in that sky. Since then, everything has felt like borrowed time.
But then you came. Just words on paper, and somehow it feels like the first real thing in a long time. I don't know what to call this, or what it means, but I know this: I'm glad you didn't stay silent. I'm glad you exist.
Please don't stop writing.
— Adrian
Selene read the letter three times before she could even breathe properly.
The first time, the words hit her like a storm — blunt, terrifying in their honesty. Pills. The edge. The monster he named but didn't name. It made her stomach twist with fear, with the fragile terror of almost losing someone she hadn't even met.
The second time, her eyes lingered on the name. Elias. The way Adrian wrote it so carefully, as if holding the memory tenderly even in grief. It reminded her of the photograph hidden in her drawer: her and Maren, before the shouting, before the fracture with their parents. She hadn't said the truth aloud to anyone, not even in her letters to Adrian — how much of her life was shaped by the fear of loss, the fear of watching everything good slip away.
By the third reading, her tears blurred the page, and the words softened into something else entirely. I'm glad you exist.
The sentence echoed in her chest long after she folded the letter.
That night, Selene lay awake, her hand pressed against the drawer where the photograph lay hidden. She thought of Adrian staring at his pills, and of herself staring at the silence between her and her parents. Both of them living with ghosts. Both of them finding each other in the margins of paper.
And for the first time, she wondered if writing back to him wasn't only about saving him. Maybe it was about saving herself, too.