“Don’t look for the box,” Ava muttered as she dropped to her knees, already tearing through the underside of her bed. “It’s there. It has to be there.”
But it wasn’t. The unsent letters to Jace were gone. When she was still in highschool every time Jace would bully her she would write a new letter to him. A letter for her.
Her hand hit the bare floor. No cardboard. No letters. Just dust, shoes, and panic.
“No, no, no—where is it?” she breathed, already crawling forward, yanking out old notebooks and tangled chargers. “It was right here!”
She pushed her closet door open so hard it bounced off the wall. Empty. Nothing behind the coats. Nothing beneath the stacked boxes of clothes she hadn’t worn since freshman year.
“Come on!” she snapped, throwing her dresser drawers open one by one, tearing through shirts and jeans like the box might be hiding between layers of cotton.
It wasn’t. Not in the trash. Not in her backpack. Not on her bookshelf.
Gone.
A scream built in her throat, but it never came out. Her chest tightened as realization struck harder than the panic ever could.
Someone took it. Someone read it. And that someone knew exactly what they were looking for. Then she saw it.
One single folded paper. Sitting neatly on the edge of her desk. Her blood went cold. She moved slowly—like the paper might catch fire if she touched it wrong—and unfolded it with trembling fingers.
Six words. Six stupid, sharp, skin-slicing words written in his jagged handwriting: ‘I read them. All of them.’
Ava sank into her chair like her legs had given out.
Every letter. Every line. Every confession she’d written by flashlight under her covers, shaking with heartbreak and hope. The ones she swore no one would ever see.
He saw them all.
Her breath came out shallow. Her hands curled around the edge of the desk until her knuckles went white.
He had no right. Not after everything.
Did he laugh? Did he mock her the way he used to in hallways and classrooms and crowded lunch tables?
Or did he finally see her?
She didn’t know which answer hurt more. She shoved the note into the drawer, slammed it shut, and didn’t cry.
Not this time. She was done crying. This wasn’t sadness. This was fire. And he had just lit the match.
That night, she didn’t expect him to come. She told herself he wouldn’t. That he was too much of a coward.
But a small part of her—a bruised, traitorous part—watched the window anyway.
So when the knock came, soft and steady, like guilt wrapped in hesitation, she didn’t flinch. She marched across the room and yanked the curtain open.
There he was. Jace.
Standing in the moonlight, hoodie down, hair messy, hands in his pockets. He wasn’t smirking. His eyes didn’t dare hold that look they used to—the one that made her feel small.
He just looked… wrecked. She opened the window slowly.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said. No sarcasm. No games. Just the truth.
He didn’t move and she didn’t invite him in. But he stepped through the window like a muscle memory, like this wasn’t the first time he’d climbed into her life uninvited.
Her chest rose and fell too fast, her arms folding across her middle.
“Why would you take them?” Her voice cracked on the last word. “Why now?”
He stared at her, expression unreadable.
“Because the second I started reading, I realized…” He paused, swallowing hard. “I realized I’d never really known you.”
She scoffed. “That’s because you never tried.”
“I thought I had you figured out,” he admitted. “Cold. Smart. Quiet. Bitter.”
“I was quiet because you and your friends never let me speak,” she snapped.
He nodded, slowly. “And you were bitter because we gave you reasons to be.”
Silence filled the room. Then he reached into his jacket—slow, like she might vanish if he moved too fast—and pulled out a folded letter. Her eyes locked on it instantly.
She knew that one.
The night after he shoved her books into the hallway. The night she sat in her bed and wrote that she wished she could be invisible—not to escape, but so no one could hurt her again.
He held it like it might fall apart in his hands.
“This one…” His voice cracked. “This one wrecked me.”