“I’m not going to push you. You’ve been through enough.”
“Tucker,” she said, a single tear rolling down her cheek.
“There isn’t anything left for me here, so I’m going home.” I wasn’t about to drag this out any more than I had too. That wasn’t my style.
I took one last look at her, then turned and walked away.
She let me go.
30
Charlotte
I let him go.
I saw the veiled hurt in his eyes, and still I let him leave.
As soon as the front door shut, I burst into tears. Big, fat, ugly sobs ripped from somewhere deep inside my chest. I felt hollow, utterly empty.
The last two weeks had been a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Tucker had stayed. He let me take care of him, and having him here was like coming home to a surprise party. I just never knew what was going to happen.
One night I found him making pizza in the kitchen. Flour was everywhere, the cupboards were splattered with sauce, and cheese was all over the floor. The oven was smoking, and I’m not sure how it happened, but the pizza was still raw.
We ordered in that night.
Dominoes tasted better than Tucker’s pizza.
A few days after that, when I came home he was in the shower… singing. His voice touched a part of my soul I never knew existed. Every word, every melody that came out of his mouth moved me in some small way.
At night, I would lie in bed alone, longing to get up and go to him, wanting so badly for him to quench my thirst for his body. Sometimes he would snore so loudly that I would lie there and giggle because he sounded like a lawnmower.
And now he was gone.
There would be no more messes in the kitchen. No more singing that reached my soul. No more giggles.
My body would still want him. My body would crave him until I died. It was a bold statement, but I knew it was true because he was the first man who ever taught me about passion, about the kind of pleasure a man could evoke from a woman.
But even still, I couldn’t bring myself to betray Max like that.
How could I move on, living a life that made me insanely happy, when I realized that my life with Max had been anything but?
And to make it worse, the man who seemed to be able to give me the happiness that Max never could was his own brother, his other half.
Wiping the flowing tears off my cheeks, I jumped down off the counter, my knees threatening to buckle beneath me. With another sob racking my body, I flung myself across the couch, feeling as if the pain was going to rip me in two.
I wished Max was here. I needed my best friend.
I remembered the letter. The folded single piece of paper that was in the envelope with the flash drive he mailed me. I shoved off the couch and hurried into the bedroom, where I put it in a drawer when I was getting clothes to take to the hospital when Tucker was there.
I couldn’t believe I forgot about it until now.
My hand closed around the paper and I sat down on the edge of the bed, wiping away another tear. I unfolded the wrinkled paper and looked down.
It was a letter. Written by hand, by Max.
Tears welled anew, just looking down at the last thing he would ever tell me. Looking at the last words I would ever know from him.
With a sniffle, I focused. And I began to read: