Elena barely slept. The box of letters sat on the table like a living thing, its presence filling every corner of her grandmother's house. Each time she closed her eyes, words from Marcus's hand echoed in her head.
I love you. I don't know how to stop.
I wonder if I'll ever stop talking to you.
Know that your grandmother loved you until her last breath. And so did I.
By dawn, her pillow was damp with tears she hadn't meant to shed. She had spent years building herself into someone immune to longing, someone too busy, too sharp, too focused to be haunted. But the letters stripped her bare. They were proof of the love she had thrown away and the pain she had left behind.
At eight, she made a decision. She couldn't carry those words like a secret. Marcus deserved to know she had read them. He deserved the chance to say the things he had buried in ink.
The Morrison place glowed in the morning sun, dew clinging to the grass. Marcus's truck was parked in the same spot, but the house felt different in daylight less like a dream preserved and more like something alive, waiting.
She knocked, clutching the box in her arms.
When Marcus opened the door, his hair was damp, his shirt fresh. He looked surprised, then wary.
"Elena?"
"Can I come in?" Her voice was tight.
He stepped aside without a word. She moved to the kitchen, set the box on the table with a hollow thud.
His eyes narrowed. "Where did you get that?"
"In my grandmother's papers." She met his gaze. "You wrote them. All of them."
For a long beat, silence hung heavy between them. He pulled out a chair but didn't sit. His hands curled into fists against the table.
"I never meant for you to see those," he said finally. "They weren't… they weren't letters to send. They were letters to survive."
Her throat tightened. "But you addressed them to me. You wrote my name on every envelope."
"Because you were the only one I was talking to," Marcus snapped, the restraint cracking. "Even if you never read them, even if you were a thousand miles away. Writing to you was the only way I knew how to keep breathing."
Elena flinched. She hadn't expected anger not this sharp, not this alive.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry for the pain I caused."
"Sorry?" His laugh was harsh. "Elena, you don't get it. You didn't just leave. You vanished. One night we were planning our wedding, the next I woke up to an empty apartment. No note, no call, nothing. Do you know what it's like to wonder every day if the woman you love is alive or dead? If she's coming back? If she ever loved you at all?"
Tears stung her eyes. "I loved you. God, Marcus, I loved you so much it terrified me."
"Then why didn't you trust me with that terror?" His voice broke, softer now but still sharp. "Why didn't you give me the chance to prove we could face it together?"
Elena pressed her palms to her face. "Because I was twenty-five and stupid and afraid of becoming my mother. Because I thought leaving was the only way to save us both."
"And did it?" His question cut through the air.
She dropped her hands, meeting his gaze. "No. It destroyed us."
The truth landed between them like shattered glass, sharp and undeniable.
They sat in silence for a long while, the weight of five years pressing down. Marcus finally reached into the box, pulling out one of the older letters. He unfolded it, scanned the page, then shook his head with a bitter smile.
"I used to imagine you finding these someday," he admitted. "I thought maybe you'd understand how much I still how much I couldn't stop loving you. But seeing them in your hands? It just feels pathetic."
Elena leaned forward, desperate. "No. Marcus, it's not pathetic. It's proof. Proof that what we had was real, that it mattered enough for you to hold onto, even when I didn't deserve it."
His jaw tightened. "And what am I supposed to do with that proof now? Frame it? Put it in a drawer with the rest of the things I couldn't let go of?"
Her heart pounded. "Or you could let it be the start of something new."
The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Marcus froze. His eyes locked on hers, searching, weighing, refusing to be fooled by wishful thinking. "And what about your life in Manhattan? Your career, your cases, your corner office? You'll walk away from all that now, just like you walked away from me before?"
Elena opened her mouth then closed it. Because she didn't know. She didn't know if she could sacrifice the identity she had built, the power she had clawed her way to. She didn't know if she could be the woman who stayed.
The silence stretched, thick with the truth neither wanted to say.
Her phone rang in her purse, jarring and insistent. Elena ignored it at first, but when it rang again seconds later, Marcus arched an eyebrow.
"Work?"
She sighed, pulling it out. Her assistant's number. Reluctantly, she answered.
"Elena, thank God," the woman said breathlessly. "The Reynolds board is in chaos. They're threatening to walk away unless you're on tomorrow's call. Monday might be too late."
Elena closed her eyes. The double life pressed in two futures colliding.
"I'll call you back," she said, and hung up before she could be guilted further.
When she looked up, Marcus was watching her with a guarded expression.
"That's the problem, isn't it?" he said quietly. "It's always going to be work or us. You'll never be able to choose both."
Her chest ached. "I don't know. Maybe I could"
"Elena." His tone stopped her cold. "Don't make promises you can't keep."
They stood, suspended in the space between past and future, love and fear. Elena wanted to reach for him, but her hand stayed frozen at her side.
Finally, Marcus turned away, running a hand over the back of his neck. "I have a delivery this afternoon. I should get going."
It was dismissal, and she knew it.
Gathering the box of letters, she left without another word.
Back at her grandmother's, the town's gossip machine had already begun to churn. Kate stopped by with groceries, eyes bright with curiosity. Sarah Martinez's car slowed as it passed the house, her gaze lingering too long. And when Elena checked her phone again, there were already two messages from an old high school acquaintance:
Heard you're back in town. And seen with Marcus. Small towns don't keep secrets, you know.
Elena sank onto the couch, clutching the last letter to her chest. Marcus was right. She couldn't make promises she wasn't sure she could keep.
But for the first time in years, she wanted to try.