144. Rosie

ONE HUNDRED FORTY-FOUR

ROSIE

Nathan pulls into an empty parking lot for an empty park.

"All that just for you to dump me in a park," I joke.

Nathan puts his SUV in park and gives me a flat look. "Har, har, funny girl. Now get out."

I'm grinning when I open my door.

I honestly have no idea what we're doing here, but Nathan could be taking me to a snake petting zoo, and I'd go with him.

I love him. And I trust him. And I feel…

I take a deep breath of the fresh air.

I feel like a whole new person.

The trauma is still there. The pain. The hurt.

But it feels like it's been put inside a box. And that box has been sealed, so the stuff inside can't crawl out anymore. It can't consume me anymore.

Nathan opens and closes the rear door of his vehicle, then comes around to my side, carrying a large backpack.

This new peace I have, it's all because of him.

He found me.

Saw me.

And falling in love with him is healing me .

Nathan holds his elbow out for me, and I take it.

We walk across the grass, the deep orange of the sunset lighting our way but telling us we don't have too much time before it gets dark.

I half expect Nathan to stop in the middle of the open field and lay out a picnic. Even though we had food delivered to the hotel room.

But he turns us toward one of the pavilions, stopping at one of the freestanding grills.

Grill is a generous term, since it's little more than half an iron box topped with a grill grate on top of a pole in the ground.

"You have me intrigued," I tell him when he sets his bag on the picnic table nearby.

He smirks at me over his shoulder and pulls out items to start a fire.

Nathan works quietly and quickly, setting the fire starter brick in the bottom of the little grill, topping it with small pieces of wood. He uses a lighter to get the brick going, and while the fire slowly crawls across the wood, he turns back to the bag.

"If you pull a bag of hot dogs out of there, I'm going to be impressed."

Nathan laughs and turns around with his arms full of not hot dogs.

My smile falters as another wave of affection for this man crashes over me.

In his hands is a box of graham crackers, two chocolate bars, and a bag of plain white marshmallows.

"Nathan…"

"Rosie Edwards, will you make s'mores with me?"

I nod, and together we skewer the marshmallows onto the end of roasting sticks that Nathan also pulled out of his bag.

I control the roasting.

Nathan holds the crackers.

And we lean against each other as we eat them while the sun disappears behind the horizon.

"Thank you." I look up at Nathan's handsome features. "For everything. For this."

His smile is soft. "We're not done here. "

He takes the rest of the wood pieces piled on the table and puts them on the fire.

The flames grow, the glow getting brighter around us.

Nathan moves back to the bag, and the next thing he pulls out is a hoodie.

"Here, it's getting cool."

I take the sweatshirt from him, because he's right; with the sun down, the temperature has dropped.

I pull it on, then look down at the front.

It has the HOP University logo on it. The school where he played college football.

"I love it." I run my hands down the front.

The expression on Nathan's face is so serious as he looks at me.

"This is how it should've been." His words are thick. "We should've been together then. You should've worn this in the stands while I played." He shakes his head. "I have so much to make up for."

"No. You don't." I step forward and place my hand on his chest. "You don't."

"I do. And I want to start over. From the beginning." Nathan reaches into the backpack and pulls out the last item.

A shoe box.

He opens the lid, revealing the row of letters. "I think we should burn them. Together."

The ones I wrote to him but never sent.

The ones I pretended he read.

The ones he found.

My vision blurs as I look up at him. "I think that's a good idea."

He pulls out the last letter first, the one I wrote him the night my dad died.

The night I killed him.

He hands it to me.

My fingers tremble as I take it.

Then I reach into my pocket and pull out the other letter I wrote that night.

I folded it a few times to fit it in my pocket.

I meant to destroy it. Wanted to be rid of it. But I wasn't sure how .

I hold it out to Nathan. "I think you should do this one."

His throat works as he takes it, and he clenches his jaw.

I can see it on his face. See the way that letter hurt him.

I step into him, hugging him to me.

"When I wrote that," I whisper, "I thought there was no one left to care. No one to notice if I was suddenly gone." His body hitches against mine as he hugs me back just as tightly. "Thank you for caring, Nathan."

"Always," he whispers back. "Always, my Little Rose."

Nathan kisses the top of my head, then releases me.

He unfolds the letter and holds the corner of the page to the flame.

It catches, and I watch as the words of my confession turn to ash.

My guilt crumbling into nothing.

Decades of fear floating into the night sky.

When only a piece is left, Nathan drops it into the fire, and we watch it disappear.

And then, one by one, we burn them all.

The small bursts of light as each one catches cleanse the past.

Until only the envelope is left.

The envelope that contains the letter Nathan left me in the woods.

The envelope with the wrong address on the front and the letter I tried to send him.

The pair of letters that started it all.

Nathan picks it up, then sets the box on the table.

He holds it out. "I don't think we should burn this one."

I take it from him, nostalgia shimmering around us.

"I—" I turn the envelope over in my hand and…

And it's different.

The address is different.

There's no UNDELIVERABLE across the front.

I open it.

The two letters are there.

But there's also another smaller envelope.

I pull it out.

It's addressed to me. At my address on that street.

My fingers trace over the return address, handwritten in the corner .

Nathan's corrected Ohio address.

My eyes meet his.

Nathan dips his head to the envelope in my hand. "It's twenty-five years late. But it's yours."

With shaking hands, I tear open the envelope. And I pull out the letter.

It's the reply to the first letter I ever wrote him.

As though it was delivered.

As though he got it.

Dear Rosie,

I'm so glad you wrote to me.

I miss you too. And if you'd asked, I would have hugged you.

I would do anything for you.

You're my best friend. My soul mate. And I hope we can write each other love letters for the rest of our lives.

And when we're all grown up, I hope you'll marry me.

Yours forever,

The boy from the woods

Tears roll down my cheeks.

For younger me. For current me. For all the versions in between.

Nathan lowers before me, one knee against the grass. "I'll never stop loving you." He holds up a ring. A giant square diamond on a gold band. "And I'll never stop needing you. Say you'll be mine."

I close the distance between us, reaching past the ring to hold his face, making sure he understands. "I've always been yours, Nathan Waller. And I always will be."