Page 87 of Careless Whisper

I’ve tried to write this a hundred times, and each time I’ve failed. I’d get caught up in what sounded good or what I thought you’d want to hear. But that’s notwhat you deserve. So here it is—the real thing. The hard thing. The bleeding truth.

I didn’t believe in love.

I didn’t believe in it because I didn’t grow up seeing it—not the kind that stays. In my house, love was a transaction. Affection was measured in expectations met, reputation protected, and appearances preserved.

My parents don’t talk—they perform. They don’t hold space—they fill it with silence.

I was raised to believe vulnerability was a weakness. That duty outweighed desire. That legacy mattered more than happiness.

And then I met you. And it wrecked me.

You were everything I didn’t know how to be.

Open.

Brave.

Willing to bet your whole heart on people—on me. And instead of rising to meet you, I chose the familiar. The safe.

I chose to believe someone who spoke in clinical absolutes rather than the woman who looked me in the eye and told me the truth—even when it cost her everything.

I let you fall, Reggie. I didn’t catch you. Not once, but twice.

And that’s on me.

I hurt you because I didn’t know how to not hurt someone I loved. Because I didn’t know what loveactually meant until I lost the only honest version of it that I’d ever felt.

You made me feel like more than the sum of my training, my title, my past, my family name.

You made me want to stay—and I didn’t know how. I broke what we had because I was too afraid to believe it could last.

There’s no world where I can make what I did to you okay.

But I need you to see me—unbuttoned, uncertain, fucking wrecked.

Because the man you once trusted? He’s still here. And he’s learning.

I’m not writing to ask for your forgiveness. I’m writing to say I’ll keep showing up even if all I ever get to do is stand outside the door of your life. Because the thing I didn’t understand then—but do now—is that love isn’t a feeling you fall into. It’s a choice you make.

And I choose you for the rest of my life.

—Elias

When I got home, my mom was in the kitchen at the breakfast nook with a pot of tea and a book on Mayan symbolism.

She closed the book and slid it next to the lit tea lamp. “You read the letter.”

“How do you know?” I asked suspiciously as I sat across from her.

She poured me a cup of tea without asking if I wanted it. “Remember when we went to see Mumwithout Papa…the time we went to seeAnnieon Broadway.”

“Of course, I remember. It was my first musical.”

“I’d left Ignacio.”

I gaped at her. “What?”

She nodded and then made awhat can you doface.

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