Page 148 of Into These Eyes
Jamie smirks, her eyes skipping between me and her sister, apparently pleased with this little ribbing thing we’ve got going on. I don’t know where it comes from, only that it feels … normal.
“He doesn’t need to peacock for me. I already know he’s hot,” Jamie says.
Anika scoffs. “Maybe so, but that doesn’t make him any less of a dick.”
With that, she tries to shove me out of the way so she can get to the safe’s keypad. Rooted to the spot like a statue, I quirk another self-satisfied grin at her. “So, you think I’m hot?”
“I never said that.”
“You just agreed with your sister,” I point out.
“Did you miss the part about being a dick? Now move before I get you in a cuff-hold.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Okay, okay,” Jamie mutters, inserting herself between us. “Let’s remember what we’re doing. Ank, you want to open it?”
Jamie presses her arse against my crotch, forcing me back a step. As Anika punches in the code, I place my hands on Jamie’s shoulders, giving them a squeeze when the door swings open.
Anika peers inside, then pulls out a pink envelope. An envelope that’s already been opened. When she flips it over, we all read the handwriting on the front.
For Jamie on her 18th birthday.
Jamie’s muscles bunch beneath my palms as she takes the letter from Anika.
“Oh my God,” Anika says, reaching back into the safe and pulling out a large stack of envelopes bundled together with a thick rubber band.
My heart thuds hard when I recognise my handwriting, and that every single envelope has been torn open.
Jamie’s shoulders rise beneath my hands as she sucks in a sharp breath. Placing her mother’s letter on the counter, she takes the thick bundle from Anika. After flicking the envelope’s edges beneath the pad of her thumb, she flips the bundle over, revealing the prison’s address. Turning, she meets my eyes, her own shining with emotion.
“Your letters.”
“Yeah,” I barely manage to get out, grateful and furious at her father all at once.
She glances at the bundle in her hand, then back at me. “There must be …”
“Fifty-two,” I tell her. “One a week for the first year I was locked away.”
She bites her lip, the motion sending a single tear down her cheek. I reach out and brush it away, then take the bundle from her hand and turn her toward the pink envelope waiting for her on the counter. “Go read it.”
I shoot a glance at Anika, realising she hasn’t made a snarky comment since opening the safe. She stares at the envelopes clutched in my hand, then raises her eyes to mine with genuine empathy. In that moment I know all her teasing and snarks are her way of showing she accepts me. I guess that’s why I bite back.
Picking up her mother’s envelope, Jamie turns to her sister and grabs her hand. “Ready?”
“You sure? It’s addressed to you,” Anika points out.
Jamie pulls her into her side and puts an arm around her. “You’re her daughter, too. She wrote this when you were little. That’s the only reason your name isn’t on it. Now, let’s go lie on my bed.”
As they walk out of the kitchen, Jamie throws me a sad smile before they disappear into the hallway.
I stare at the fifty-two letters still clutched in my hand. With them all together like this, they seem excessive. Obsessive even. But it hadn’t felt that way when I’d been writing one a week.
A wave of memories hit me, taking me back to that hard, uncomfortable bed where I sat while I wrote to her. The gut-wrenching heartache, the desperation to be heard and believed by the one and only person I felt mattered. The only person who showed up to court every single day. It didn’t matter that she hated me. What mattered was that she cared about her mother. And in my mind, that meant she’d want the right person punished. But the court got it wrong. That’s what I tried to convince her of in these letters. But she never responded.
And now I know why.
I set the bundle down on the counter and stare at all the torn tops. That fucking prick read every letter, then kept them from her. And in doing so, he’d kept Jamie in a perpetual state of hatred. It’s not the fact that she hatedmeall those years that’s infuriating. It’s the fact she spent half her life with such a negative, destructive emotion trapped in her soul. Kept there by the arsehole who caused it all. Of course, once he murdered his wife, all sense of integrity irrevocably changed for him. It’s clear his mission after that fateful night was to keep what remained of his family intact by staying out of prison.
