Page 47 of Mine to Fear
Take care of Kieran for me. He’s going to blame himself for not saving me, even though there was nothing he could have done. He’s going to think he failed as my friend. Help him understand that the best thing he can do for my memory is to make you happy.
And let him make you happy. Stop fighting it. Stop running from it. Stop convincing yourself you don’t deserve it.
You deserve everything, Willa. Love, happiness, a future that’s bright enough to honor what we’ve lost without being defined by it.
I love you, little sister. I’m proud of the woman you’ve become. Now go be brave enough to become the woman you’re meant to be.
Forever your big brother,
Jude
I read the letter three times before the tears started. Then I cried until I had nothing left, until my chest ached and my eyes burned and I felt emptied in a way that was somehow cleaner than the grief I’ve been carrying.
He knew. Jude knew exactly what I was doing, exactly how I reacted to losing him. And he wrote me a roadmap back to the living.
Stop using me as an excuse to be scared.
The words hit me like a revelation. That was exactly what I was doing, wasn’t it? Using his death as justification for pushing Kieran away, for convincing myself that love was too dangerous to risk.
But Jude didn’t die because I loved him. Jude died doing what he believed in, protecting people who needed protection. And he wanted me to honor that sacrifice by living fully, not by hiding from life.
I thought about Kieran, probably sitting in his office or his bedroom, giving me the space I demanded while watching me destroy myself with isolation. I thought about the patient way he left breakfast for me every morning, even when I didn’t eat it. The quiet “good morning” and “good night” he continued offering, even when I didn’t respond.
He’s been in love with you since you were seventeen years old.
I knew, somewhere deep down. I saw it in the way he looked at me that graduation night, in the careful distance he maintained afterward, in the desperate way he kissed me when we finally stopped fighting what was between us.
But I was so afraid of losing him that I pushed him away preemptively, making sure I lost him on my terms instead of life’s terms.
That’s not living. That’s just surviving.
For the first time since Agent Morrison’s phone call destroyed our happiness, I felt something other than numb despair. I felt angry. Not at Jude for dying, not at Kieran for surviving, but at myself for wasting weeks hiding from the gift my brother died wanting me to have.
I got up from the bed where I had sat for hours and walked to the mirror. The woman staring back at me was a stranger—hollow-eyed, pale, her grief worn like armor. But underneath the damage, I saw something I almost forgot was there.
I saw Jude’s little sister. The girl who’d been brave enough to stand up to bullies twice her size. The woman who’d found the courage to leave an abusive marriage. The survivor who’d faced down her ex-husband with a gun to her head and lived to tell about it.
I saw someone worth loving. Someone worth saving. Someone worth the risk of heartbreak.
Promise me you’ll take the risk.
I folded the letter carefully and placed it back in the box with Jude’s other things. Then I took a shower, put on clothes that weren’t pajamas, and walked out of the guest room with purpose for the first time.
Kieran was in his office, working late as usual, probably because going to bed meant lying awake, wondering if I was going to disappear in the night. He looked up when I appeared in his doorway, his expression carefully neutral.
“Hi,” I said, the word feeling rusty from disuse.
“Hi.” He closed his laptop, giving me his full attention. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been hiding from my life instead of living it.”
Something shifted in his expression—hope, maybe, or relief. “The package from the military?”
“A letter from Jude. Written before he deployed.” I stepped into the office, moving closer to his desk. “He wanted to make sure I knew how stupid I was being.”
“Were you? Being stupid?”
“Monumentally. Catastrophically. In ways that would have made him threaten to ground me if he were still alive.”
