A Thousand Letters (The Austens #2)

by Staci Hart

Even after seven years, just hearing his name inspired any of those reactions or a dozen more. And there was one every single time.

I had no way of comprehending what was happening to the man who had been like a father to me. My best friend's father. Wade's father. Wade … My heart folded in on itself for a beat. He was coming home. Seven years without a word. Seven years without seeing his face. It was all too much.

"Of course I'll go with you." She looked sorry she'd asked. "Are you sure? It's been so long."

In an hour, my world had been brought to a stop. In five hours, it would begin to turn backward, back to my past, back to the boy I loved. The boy I ruined.

The last time I saw him, I was seventeen, and he stood before me with tears in his eyes as he begged me to say yes. Begged me to go with him. Begged me to be his forever. Begged me to change my mind. But I couldn't. Didn't matter how much I wanted to, because I did. I would have given him the world. But in the end, it hadn't been up to me. He left the next day for the Army. That was seven years ago.

He never answered me. Not once. Not a single word, not from any avenue.

That was the sum total of my knowledge, but I was never able to let him go. Didn't matter that I knew nothing. The boy who I walked away from lived on in the wreckage of my heart, and I never stopped wishing things had been different.

"He has brain cancer, Wade. They've given us a few weeks before he's gone …"

I'd been gone too long. I'd avoided coming home, and because of that, I wasn't here for him, for my family. I'd abandoned him, and now … now … now I'd lose him forever.

I'd loved him since the second I first saw him, and though time had passed, though I thought I'd buried that love, it sprang fresh the second I saw him again. The moments I kept locked away broke their chains and pressed themselves into my mind.

But it wasn't supposed to happen like that. We had a plan, a plan that he redrew without me.

contested. I was to stay in New York and graduate from high school, and then we would get married, start our lives together. Where he would go, I would go.

The night before he left, he came to me with his grandmother's ring and changed the rules. He couldn't leave without me, he'd said. He needed me to promise him, to come with him. And I wanted to.

But I was seventeen, too young, too afraid, and I didn't have my father's blessing. Why couldn't he wait? I asked him the question, begging him as ...

He said if I loved him, I'd go. Time, I begged.

Now, he pleaded. And in the end, it was over, his anger sending the shrapnel of his pain into my heart, shredding it to ribbons.

He took my heart with him when he left. It had been his, always — he'd possessed it since the beginning — and being near that atrophied piece of me after so long had the broken muscle thumping in my chest, erratic, beating again for the first time.

Rick was part of the reason I studied literature at NYU — he'd cultivated my hobby of writing poetry, turning it into an adoration of literature, putting books of poetry in my hand, prompting discussions after school that rolled into dinner with me and his children. They were used to it, consequences of having a father who was a Lit professor at Columbia, but I wasn't — those moments fed my soul.

Although she was older, she was otherwise unchanged. Smaller, maybe. Quieter. But she was still so beautiful, her eyes so dark. Bottomless. Infinite.

I didn't want her here, couldn't deal with her in that moment when I needed all my strength for my father. And with that realization, I found the deep burn of resentment that sometimes accompanied my thoughts of her. But it wasn't resentment for her; I resented myself.

hard. "I just don't want her here, not yet. I need time." Sophie fumed. "She's a part of our family, and she's been here all the years you haven't."

"What's not fair is you denying me the right to have her here. What's not fair is you denying her the right to see Dad." She grabbed my arm, pulling me to a stop. "Wade, I know it hurts, and I'm sorry. But I need her. Please tell me you can find a way to be okay with it, because I don't know if I can get through this without her." Her voice cracked, and tears filled her eyes.

"Fine," I said curtly. "But please don't ask me for anything more than tolerance."

"Marrying her was your choice, a choice you made for what, for money? She's the reason you have all of this." I motioned to the home around us, the food on the table. "But I suppose I should say I'm happy to hear that her dying released you from your prison. Is that what you'd like to hear?"

Everything reminded me of her. There were so many reasons why I'd avoided coming home over the years, and this room was one of them. When I left, I left part of me here, part of me I'd never quite found again. War changes you that way.

I'd poured myself into the Army, volunteering for tour after tour because it was easier than facing the life I'd left behind. I knew my Army life. I knew how to exist there. I didn't know how to be a civilian anymore.

Betrayal was all I felt, slipping over me like a storm. "I can't believe you're actually considering this. After last night, after everything …" She touched my arm, her skin burning mine. "I love you, Wade. I want to marry you, but why can't we wait just for a year like we'd planned?"

"This isn't about them. This is about you and me. They don't care about you. They don't want your happiness, don't you see that?" I took her hands and looked into her eyes. "Don't let them dictate your life. Don't give them that power." "Please," she said, her voice shaking. "Please don't make me choose, Wade."

"I'm asking for you to commit to me. I'm not asking for you to give anything other than yourself to me."

"There are consequences, consequences that will last my entire life. I'm just asking for time, that's all," she begged. "I don't have time to give you." I fumed frantically, watching her, willing her to change her mind.

"They've done nothing for you but tear you down, and you're not willing to walk away from them. You're not willing to come with me. You're choosing them."

"I do trust you, but you're asking too much. Too much," she whispered, eyes shining, heart broken. "You would choose them over me when all they've done is hurt you. When all I've ever done is love you. And if you really loved me, you'd come with me." I watched her, resigned, defeated. "I don't know what else to say."

made. That she'd left me the second she put that ring in my hand. I just didn't realize it was me who had forced her to take it off, not until much later. Not until it was too late.

I'd been wrong, so wrong, and I hated myself for giving her an ultimatum, for pushing her away. I'd lost her because of my fear. I could have had it all, if I'd only been more brave. If I'd only given her what she'd asked for.

It was then, in the heat of the desert, that I made the decision not to speak to her again. At the end of every tour they would ask us who wanted to stay. I volunteered every time.

I'd thought so much about why I couldn't move on, what it was about him that I couldn't forget. I didn't know that I believed in soulmates, but I believed in compatibility and chemistry. I believed in the feeling of being so tied to another person that you didn't want to be without them. I believed in love that doesn't die, mostly because I'd lived in that hell for seven years, regretting all the reasons we were apart, wishing for forgiveness, wishing I'd made different choices, used different words, just … wishing I'd done it all differently.

But I didn't want to love her anymore. I didn't want to hurt anymore.

"So how is it, being back in the States?" I looked around at my childhood home, feeling nostalgic and out of place. "It's weird. It's always weird."

I rolled my eyes. "What do you want me to say, Ben? I don't want to see her, but she's here and she'll be here, and I've just got to deal with it however I can."

"Elliot," I said, and her eyes darted to me at the sound of her name just as my heart stopped at the feel of it on my lips. "This is my cousin, Louisa."

Lou smiled. "I'll just be a second. Wade, did you want to help me out?"

"No problem." I took the plates and turned, not wanting to give her the wrong idea. In part because she was looking at me like she'd wanted me to kiss her. The thought was another in a myriad of events and feelings that I couldn't find a way to process.

"So, tell me what's been up with you? My God, I feel like I haven't seen you in years, but it was just Christmas-before-last, right?"

I shrugged. "All over. Italy, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, France." She lit up. "Paris?" I smiled at her reaction. "It was one of the first places I went." The smile quickly faded. The trip had only reminded me of Elliot. It was one of the first places we'd wanted to go, hoping we could get stationed in Europe. The list of sights in the city she'd wanted to see had been recited night after night, lying in my arms.

Lou sighed dreamily. "I've always wanted to go to Europe. Maybe I'll come visit you." The statement was heavy with intention, and I picked up my beer again.

I'd been walking down the stairs with a box when I glanced into the kitchen to see Wade with his arms around Lou and a stack of dishes between them. She looked up at him like she was waiting for a kiss, and when I saw them, my heart stopped.

And when I heard him laugh, it was all I could take. A week ago, I didn't believe I'd ever hear that sound again.

I heard the deep rumble of Wade's voice on my way out, the word Paris hanging in the air, speeding my feet as I rushed through the foyer and out the door.

eternity. But it didn't change the fact that I didn't want to be privy to his relationships, however innocent they may be. I thought again about how Lou had looked at him. I knew that look — I'd given him a version of it nearly every day for two years.

I twined my hands behind me — they spoke about me like I wasn't there, and they spoke about Rick like he was gossip fodder, not out of sadness or respect. Tears threatened my composure, and I squeezed my fingers tighter as I moved to sit back down with the kids.