Letters I Will Never Send

Chapter 1

I always thought the people we love are the ones who stay.

I was wrong.

The rain rattled against my window, dragging me back into memories I had spent months trying to bury. The house was too quiet, except for the soft hum of the storm and the occasional creak of old wood settling in the walls. Everyone else was gone for the weekend my parents visiting my aunt, my brother off with his friends. I was alone, the kind of alone that wraps around your ribs and squeezes until you can barely breathe.

Maybe that’s why I did it.

Maybe that’s why I finally reached for the shoebox hidden under my bed the one filled with letters I wrote but never dared to send. Letters full of the words I couldn’t say out loud.

All of them were for him.

Liam.

He had been my best friend before he was my everything. Before one night one mistake turned us into strangers who flinched at each other's names.

I hadn't seen him in two years, not since the fight that ended with slammed doors, bitter words, and everything we built falling apart. Not since he left town with nothing but a duffel bag and a heart full of things he refused to say.

And me?

I stayed. I stayed and watched our favorite places turn into empty maps. I stayed while our friends picked sides, while whispers filled the spaces where laughter used to live.

I unfolded an old letter, one written during the first week after he left.

The ink was smudged, the paper wrinkled from being held too tight.

I couldn’t read it without feeling the cracks in my chest deepen.

Pushing it aside, I grabbed a fresh piece of paper and picked up my pen.

Maybe it was the dream I had of him last night the one where we were laughing by the river with Emma, Noah, and Taylor, like nothing had ever broken us.

Maybe it was the storm tonight, stirring up everything I tried to keep buried.

I pressed the pen to the page.

"Dear Liam,"

The words trembled as I wrote.

"Do you remember that night by the river? The promises we made when we thought the world was small enough to fit in our hands?"

I paused, blinking back tears.

The river had been our place. The old wooden dock where we sat for hours, talking about dreams bigger than this town.

The night everything changed still haunted me the party, the secret that slipped out, the betrayal that split us open.

"I wonder if you ever think about it. I wonder if you ever regret it."

The storm roared louder outside, matching the ache inside me.

I folded the letter carefully and placed it on top of the others. Letters of anger, of heartbreak, of forgiveness I never got to offer.

Some stories don’t end with a goodbye.