Page 355 of Face Off

I am also learning I can survive if you don’t.

That might sound less romantic than promising I will wait forever. I think it is the most honest way I know to love you. I want you without requiring you to become the thing that keeps me alive.

The woman who comes to Milwaukee will be standing on her own feet.

She will still expect you to return her book.

Charm

His next letter takes almost two weeks.

The envelope is thicker, but there is only one page inside. Ryan’s writing begins controlled and becomes less precise as it reaches the bottom.

Charm,

I read your last letter seven times.

The first time, “I can survive if you don’t” felt like you were preparing to leave me. The second time, I understood you were releasing me from being responsible for whether you survived.

By the seventh, I believed the difference.

This is the closest I have come to trusting anything about us since the study.

I need you to know that because you have spent weeks writing into uncertainty without asking me to reward every step. I see the work. I see you accepting my pain without arguing that yours should erase it. I see you respecting what belongs to Briggs, what belongs to me, and what belongs only to you.

I see you, Charm.

I miss your laugh. I miss the voice you use when you think you’ve won an argument and the quieter one that appears when a book hurts you. I miss hearing you say my name when you aren’t asking me to stay.

I love these letters. I look for them every time I enter the building, and I carry the newest one in my bag until the next arrives.

Paper is becoming another distance between us.

Will I ever hear your voice again?

Ryan

I sit at my desk with his letter beneath both hands.

Before I began writing to him, hearing Ryan’s voice would have sent me running toward any promise capable of keeping him on the line. Tonight, the thought still frightens me. My heart races, my palms become damp, and every version of what could happen begins fighting for control.

He might sound guarded. He might sound happy. He might say my name and destroy every careful defense I have built around missing him.

I let myself feel all of it.

Then I reach for my pen because Ryan didn’t ask for another perfectly constructed page. He asked whether he would ever hear my voice again, and I need to answer before fear decides silence feels safer.

29

Ryan

The letter is gone before I can decide whether asking for her voice was brave or fucking stupid.

I stand inside the post office with one hand braced against the metal counter and watch the clerk toss the envelope into a bin already crowded with everyone else’s bills, apologies, condolences, and promises. Charm’s name disappears beneath a padded package, but the question I sealed inside remains lodged beneath my ribs.

Will I ever hear your voice again?

Paper has made us honest in ways proximity never did. A letter can’t interrupt, panic, or misinterpret the expression crossing someone’s face. Charm can tell me something ugly and trust me to sit with it. I can become angry, carry her words around for a week, and answer after the first instinct to hurt her has passed.