Page 145 of One Last Encore

Her pulse pounded in her ears as she reached for another envelope. This one was older, from February, five years ago. Justtwo months after she had left. Her fingers trembled as she slid the letter out.

I went back home. It had been years since I left and never looked back. The trailer was foreclosed, abandoned now. Somehow, it felt fitting. That the place where the anger began, where the wounds were carved deep, would be left to rot.

I stood outside, staring at the rusted edges, the sagging steps, the walls that had held too many fights and too much silence. I just stood there and breathed, letting the past press in from all sides.

There’s still so much bitterness in me. So much hurt. So much abandonment. But I took her ashes to the lake behind the trailer. It was the only place she ever seemed at peace. I let her go there and watched the water carry her away. I think that’s what she would’ve wanted. She always loved that lake.

Before she was gone, I told her I loved her. Because I do. Even after everything. She was my mother. But forgiveness… that’s a different wound. One I’m still figuring out how to close.

The whole time, I kept thinking about you. Wishing you were there. Wishing I didn’t have to do it alone. But I did. I had to.

The words blurred. She blinked hard, but the pressure behind her eyes only built. Beck’s mom had died. And she hadn’t known until days ago, hadn’t known it happened so soon after their breakup. So close to the moment everything between them had shattered. And she hadn’t been there.

Her throat tightened around the ache rising fast in her chest. She had left, thinking she needed space, thinking she was saving herself from the inevitable wreck. And while she was gone, while she was busy surviving, he had lost everything.

He hadn’t called. Maybe because she had made it clear she wanted distance. Maybe because he didn’t want to drag her back into the fire. Or maybe he thought she wouldn’t come.

Guilt curled around her spine, slow and merciless. She didn’t know what she should have done, only that she hadn’t done it.

Her vision blurred as she reached for another letter, dated January, five years ago. The month everything fell apart.

Her stomach twisted. She tore it open with shaking hands, breath catching in short, broken gasps.

Watching you walk away was the hardest moment of my life. But even as I stood there, drowning in the loss of you, I knew I had to let you go.

I’m not the man you deserve. Not yet. But every day, I wake up trying. Trying to undo the damage, quiet the ghosts, and shape myself into someone worthy of you.

When I told you that you were it for me, I wasn’t speaking in fleeting moments. I meant lifetimes.

I’d never ask you to wait, and I don’t expect you to. But I still hope. Hope that no matter how far we stray, no matter how many roads we take, fate will find a way to bring me back to you.

Because no matter where life takes us, no matter how much time passes... for me, it’s always been you.

A broken sob tore from her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the memories came anyway. Beck, standing in that subway station, his eyes haunted as she turned and left. The way she’d told herself he didn’t care. That if he had, he would’ve stopped her. But he had cared.

He had fought, not with grand gestures or last-minute declarations, but with silence, with restraint, with all the words he never sent. He had fought for her in every letter, every line scrawled in hope and heartbreak. He had never stopped loving her. And she... she’d been too blinded by pain to see it.

Her trembling fingers reached for another envelope. Then another. Tearing them open one by one, her lap filling with fragments of his life.

A concert in Berlin, where he almost dialed her number.

A night where he nearly relapsed, but didn’t.

A therapy breakthrough.

A Polaroid of the band backstage before a show.

Ticket stubs from her performances. Proof that he’d been there, in the dark, cheering for her from the shadows.

She sank to the floor, knees folding beneath her, surrounded by his words. By his love. By his grief. Years of it. Piled in paper. For the first time since she walked away, she let herself feel the full weight of it.

All this time, they’d been orbiting each other like satellites–circling the same pain, just in different constellations. Trapped in different versions of the same heartbreak.

The front door swung open, and Beck’s voice cut through the silence. "Did the rat kidnap you?" His footsteps echoed through the apartment, casual, unaware of the storm he was walking into. She heard the door click shut behind him.

"The maintenance guy said he’d handle it," he added, amusement in his voice. "Apparently there’s a smoking-hot blonde in the unit he’s trying to impress."

But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

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