Kaelan sat at the desk staring at the blank sheet of paper before her. She had read somewhere that sometimes it was best to write your thoughts down. That when you couldn’t find the words to speak to people writing them a letter was always best. She didn’t know if it was wise to send people the letters, but she didn’t really care. The people involved needed to see her words. Maybe they would understand. She couldn’t go on like this. Not with all these thoughts in her head. If she kept them bottled up inside? They would come out at one of the worst times and possibly do harm, that she never intended or wanted to happen.
Kaelan was happy with where she was in her life. She had a successful career, a loving husband, and two of the coolest dogs any person could ask for. She was living a pretty good life, but there were times the negative aspects of things came over her like a dark rain cloud and she couldn’t shake the feelings they made her feel. It was hard for her to come to terms with all the emotions she had been feeling, for months now.
Ever since she had ran away from Ireland and the truth of what had really happened that had changed her family forever. She had been confused for months about her feelings. About her brother Oliver, and her first love Dylan O’Brien. It had all been hard to process, and truthfully she had thrown herself so hard into her work, and into her new relationship she hadn’t taken the time to deal with any of it. She had just pushed them back and ignored them. In the end it had translated to her making phone calls she shouldn’t have. Text messages she shouldn’t have sent.
Nothing bad really. Not in her eyes anyways. She had gone through a rough patch with Bryan but it wasn’t his fault. It was hers for pushing emotions down and letting them escape in the wrong way. She had been so worried that if she let him know how she felt he would judge her harshly for it and in the end leave her. She didn’t want to be alone. Not in America. More importantly she didn’t want to be without him, but in the end her bottling up her emotions and not telling him about them had almost cost her everything to begin with.
She had tried to channel those things more to Dylan because she had known him her whole entire life. It wasn’t really because they had dated. Just more so Dylan was good for those things, and being able to keep his mouth shut because in his line of work being a rat was something he was conditioned not to do. Yet, any chance he could when it came to those conversations he sang like a canary very publicly and Bryan hadn’t been an idiot. Luckily for her, they had handled that in private and Kaelan had promised that all her fears and all her concerns wouldn’t be sent to him anymore. She would send them to the man who mattered in her life most now, Bryan.
As if he knew that she was thinking about him Bryan entered the room. She didn’t see him but she knew he was there. She could feel his eyes on her. She turned around in the chair and managed a smile for him. He leaned against the doorway and managed to give her a smile back. She internally swooned, like she often did when it came to him being around. They both were still adjusting to them being husband and wife. A new concept to both of them, well maybe not Bryan fully, but in regards to the way their marriage was? Yes. It was new for him.
He walked into the room and placed a kiss on the top of her head. That was something new for him as well. Bryan hadn’t been good with showing his affections when they first started dating. Maybe he had been just as afraid of something as she had been and it had just translated wrong, but he had been doing better for her. Kaelan had been spoiled and showered with affection her whole entire life. She craved it and needed it as reassurance. Something that had came to her relationship with Bryan over time, and something she had expected from him overnight rather unfairly. He looked at the pen in her hand and the paper in front of her, before sitting down and scouting a chair over to sit closer to her.
“What are you doing?”
It was going to be hard for her to tell him, but she was his wife now. There was no leaving her and that was a promise he had made to her.
“I just… I have a lot of thoughts and I want to write them down. Letters. To specific people.”
She still had anxiety in telling him things. Her eyes darted a bit between the desk and him. Not wanting to make too much eye contact. He frowned a bit and looked at her face carefully.
“Like who? What’s wrong?”
She sighed. She didn’t have a choice but to tell him. That was the promise she had made to him.
“Oli...and Dylan.”
He leaned back in his chair and took a moment to do what she could only guess was process what she had said to him, before he spoke to her.
“What’s going on Kaelan? Is there something you need to tell me?”
“I’m not hiding anything from you. I promise. You know how I feel about everything. You understand. They don’t, or they don’t want to. When I left Ireland? I was a mess, and it was all their fault. You were the light at the end of the tunnel for me. You tried to get me out before then, but I was so determined to stay loyal, because family was all I knew. It was all I was conditioned to know.”
She put the pen down and sighed before putting her hands in her lap and started fidgeting as she looked up at Bryan.
“I didn’t want to believe my relationship with Dylan was not working. I didn’t know really what a relationship was. I guess I’m still learning that. It’s embarrassing to be honest. To be twenty-six years old and not understand something so basic as how relationships work, or how they are supposed to anyways. Then Oliver sat me down, and broke my heart, no that’s not the best way to describe it. He shattered it, because I felt so wrong and I felt so dirty for being with Dylan in the end, and then…. I felt conflicted because he did this horrible thing of killing my father and yet I still cared about him. I still loved him and I couldn’t just make it go away with the blink of the eyes. It was so confusing.”
Bryan didn’t say anything to her, because he knew she wasn’t done talking. Her hands didn’t stop fidgeting in her lap.
“So I left because I thought that the distance would save me the trouble of caring. That if I just got away from them it would make healing better. I couldn’t help but feel like I had disappointed my father. Like if he knew what I had done, and who I had been with.. It outweighed disappointing Oliver. So I came here, because truthfully I was scared of being alone. I didn’t want to face it, and I’ll admit when I started this with you I had no idea what I was doing. Like I just thought it would make me feel better, and I already told you I’m sorry for that, but I don’t regret it because it...you became so much more to me.”
Bryan sighed but he smiled at her and as she looked up from her fidgeting hand she managed a smile back at him.
“I knew what you were doing then, and I didn’t care because it’s what you needed and I know it’s more than that now which is what matters. If you think I was happy about the things that happened afterwards than you’d be wrong. Truthfully I was waiting for the moment when you walked back out the door and ran back home.”
“I know. I gave you that perception myself, and truthfully there were times I thought it was the right thing to do, because it was home, because disappointing my family was always something that I never wanted to do. I was very conflicted and the events around our match, and even after our match had me insecure and I wasn’t thinking right. I realized though that I had ran from Ireland instead of facing my problems and it did nothing for them. They were still there, and they still haunt me now.”
That was the most honest thing Kaelan had ever said. Ireland still haunted her. Her father’s death hung over her in a wave of confusing emotions. She had thought she had dealt with his death and moved past it. Then she found out it was a lie, and even worse she had found out she was the last person to know. She had felt even more humiliated and stupid for it. Even betrayed by the people she loved the most.
She played victim as her brother said but truthfully she had felt like she was severely wounded and nobody was there to help her and then Bryan had rushed in and scooped her up, and protected her. Even worked to heal her, hell he still was. She didn’t know how he had the patience, and she wished people saw that side of him more, and they would judge her more harshly for her own actions instead of always him.
“I couldn’t do that with you. I wanted to face it all no matter what the consequences of my actions might have been and I’m glad I did, because every insecurity I had you washed away when you married me. So I have to give you the same courtesy and talk to you as honestly as I can. Even if I think you won’t like it.”
“So you think I’m not going to like you writing letters to your brother, and your ex? I’ll admit I don’t really care what you’re writing to your brother but I am curious as to what you possibly have to say to Dylan that you haven’t already said. Especially when you made a point to make sure it was all public so I would see it.”
Kaelan could understand his reservations. Truthfully if he told her he was writing a letter to Sadie her Irish temper would flare up and she would probably curse him in every irish curse she knew. This was where his patience was better than hers. She knew he was upset. She could read it in his body language. She had gotten to know him so well in their time together she could just look at him and tell what his emotions were. His broad shoulders seemed tense, even his position in the chair in front of her seemed different than the relaxed demeanor he had once had when walking in the room. Kaelan licked her lips and nodded her head.
“I know but right now? I can’t really say much of anything to him publicly because of his current state. A state that for some reason I have the power of making the decisions for him, which I never would have wanted in the first place. Even if we were together still. If it makes you feel better? You can read every word of it because I will not hide anything about how I feel from you.”
“And how is it exactly you feel, Kaelan?”
He was trying his best not to be angry or frustrated with her, but she knew he was. She couldn’t deny he had every right to be. She didn’t like making him feel like this. She was disappointing him. That wasn’t an emotion she liked to make anyone feel when it came to her.
“I…”
She took a deep breath before letting it out in a long exhale. This was going to be hard but she was coming to terms with how she felt. She was able to start rationalizing how she felt because she was reading into it. She wasn’t talking to people about her emotions she was going online and during her research into grief, and the loss of something significant like a first love. She knew what was going on and why she felt she needed to write it all down.
“I want you to understand something. Dylan was my first…. Everything and yeah that’s again, embarrassing but it’s a lot deeper than that. I knew Dylan my entire life. He was like… always there and I guess at some point I always cared about him as if he were some distant family member, which now I feel is making shit weird. It’s hard for me to fathom the things he did, and he claimed to have done in the name of protecting someone who I loved, or me or anyone else in my family. I’m coming to terms with the fact that some part of me is always going to care about him whether I like it or not. Do I want to be with him? No. Not at all. You don’t fail to mention things like killing my father, no matter what the circumstances are for over a year of our relationship and expect things to be repaired ever, or possibly knocking up my best friend.”
She reached out and grabbed his hand. She needed him to understand. She needed him to know that she loved him more than anything and he was her life now, but she had come to terms with the fact that when you love someone no matter what when they are gone you leave a piece of yourself there too. She was beginning to accept that there was probably people in Bryan’s past who had a piece of him as well, and that neither one of them were to blame for having those feelings in the past that would stay with them forever. They could just learn from those mistakes and move forward.
“You’re my life now, and always. I wouldn’t have married you if I hadn’t come to terms and rationalized my feelings about Dylan. He’ll never be an issue. You’ll never need to worry. You’ve been more than anything I could have ever hoped for you to be. You’ve taught me so much about myself.”
It was true. Bryan had helped Kaelan grow up more than anyone else had in her entire life. Everyone back home had sheltered her and here Bryan was making sure to give her everything for what it was. No rose colored glasses, and he included her in every aspect of his, and well not their life they were building together. She smiled. That’s all she had ever wanted. Was just to be included. She didn’t have to always like it.
“You’ve accepted me for who I am always, and you’ve had never ending patience with me through all my naive and childish moments. You were the one who picked me up when I was broken and pieced me back together when I would have rather just stayed broken and left to suffer. For that? I can only repay you with all my love and lifelong loyalty. I just hope it’s enough.”
“It is. Kaelan you know you don’t have to be like that. I’m not your brother. I’m not gonna sit here and demand that you serve me and do what I want you to do or I don’t have use for you. You’re free to make your own decisions and be your own person. You’re enough Kaelan. You always have been. From the moment you walked into this house and I said this was your home for as long as you wanted it to be.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes you do. You deserve whatever you want, Kae. I’d rather you come to terms with that then how you feel about someone from your past.”
She nodded her head he was right and she couldn’t help but lunge out of her chair and into his arms. It startled him at first, as it would most people a body lunging at you, but she felt the tenseness he once had start to fade as he wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair. There was a quiet that settled between them before he broke the silence by beginning to push himself out of the chair, leading Kaelan to let go of him and let him stand up as she slid back into her chair.
“Do whatever you feel you need to do Kae. I don’t need to read it. I trust you.”
He started walking towards the door and then he stopped in the doorway, looking back at her as she quietly scooted her chair closer to the desk and picked her pen back up.
“I’m going to the gym. I’ll be back in a little while.”
She looked over at him and smiled.
“Okay. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
She watched him disappear through the doorway, but she could still hear him walking down the hallway. She couldn’t help but feel like even though he was okay with what she was doing she was letting him down. Which was frustrating but, she had to get these thoughts out and it wasn’t just for her. It was for them. So she shook all the thoughts from her head and decided quickly on what letter she would write first. It didn’t take long for it to hit her.
Oliver,
I’m writing this letter because I read somewhere writing my thoughts down was healthy. That it would make me feel better. I don’t know you’ll probably think this is stupid, or you probably won’t even read this. You’ll simply see this letter and throw it in the trash because you have more important things to worry about. Like running the entire country of Ireland in secret and more importantly taking care of your family.
If you’re reading this know that I appreciate that more than anything I could have hoped for, and I want to let you know that I am truly sorry. I know that doesn’t mean much to you. I know I’ve hurt you deeply and it’s what hurts me the most. You were my best friend. You were my hero, and protector, and I admired everything about you. I still do if I’m being honest.
I guess the best way to write this to you is to start at the beginning. When Pa died I didn’t want to put it together the way everyone else had. I think I was okay in believing the lie because it was better than the alternative. I should have known when you came home battered and bloody and Pa came home in a body bag that something was wrong. I didn’t want to read into it because truthfully I never wanted to see you in that light.
It took me a long time to heal from the loss of Pa, but I worked at it while throwing myself into helping Ma take care of our siblings. I worked through it by developing an attachment to Teagan that made me feel more like her Ma than her sister. I used my sister to heal, and it wasn’t fair to her especially now that I’ve left. It was easy, and truthfully I never really saw Dylan as much of anything. I appreciated him for what he did for our family even though he was a mess of a human being.
So then it came to the point where you started training to be a wrestler. I knew eventually one day you were going to leave, and I couldn’t face it. I didn’t want to. I felt betrayed that you would even think of going anywhere without me. So I went to Cat. I begged her to train me. She didn’t want to but honestly in the end I knew she would do anything for me, and she did. She trained me in secret. When the gym closed and everyone thought Cat was just doing paperwork and I was keeping her company? I was training. I was so exhausted. I never wanted to be a wrestler. I wasn’t interested in it at all. I just wanted to stay close to you.
Then the day came and you left, and you barely even said goodbye. I couldn’t accept it. So I came along. That was the first time I broke our mother’s heart and I’ll never forgive myself for that.
Kaelan’s hand was beginning to get sore. She hadn’t wrote this much in so long. She stopped and started rotating her wrist and gave herself a moment to rest before putting the pen back to the paper. This was important. She had to get it all out.
I was never supposed to be good at Wrestling, and neither were you. We both know that. Yet Wrestling turned into trouble for us, because we can’t go anywhere without trouble and that’s when I started seeing the ugly sides of you that you never wanted me to see. That I never wanted to see or believe about you. People all over Ireland talked about you and I shut them all out because nobody could touch my hero, and my best friend. My big brother. You. The trouble started and you brought Dylan into it.
I never was supposed to fall in love with him. You knew that. You did everything to protect me from it and I ran straight into it like a moth to a flame just because you told me no. I wish you would have just told me the truth, but you and him both felt I wasn’t ready for it. It turned for me the moment you beat him down in front of me because I had snuck off and met with Queenie. I took it the wrong way. It was loyalty to me, and for someone who didn’t know anything about how to feel when it came to stuff like that it made the most logical sense that it meant he cared and I should be with him.
Cat was there. She came all the way from Ireland to be with you. To finally tell you what I knew, as her best friend all along. I’m happy for you both. No matter what you two have been through. It’s really not my business and really I’m sorry for what I’ve done to her as well. I’m just glad you two are finally together and where you belong. Anyways. Honor fell apart. So we all went back home. It’s not like Wrestling was really working out for us. I missed it though. While we were away. I found that in my short time as a Wrestler hearing people cheer for me and being good at something felt really nice. So I stayed training. We can skip all the other stuff and just get right into where this all went wrong.
The night you sat me down and told me the truth. About you. About Dylan. It hurt. You knew it hurt me. It wasn’t just my tears. It was the fact I picked that gun up from your desk and I walked out the door without so much as a goodbye to you. I went home and I stared Dylan in the eye and I’ll could think about was how disgusted I was with myself. About how disgusted Pa must be of me wherever he may be. To know what I had done.
Maybe I wasn’t really mad at you or Dylan at all. Maybe I was just mad at myself. Well. Okay. I was definitely mad at you both and then the gun had accidently gone off and I had shot Dylan. In that moment I had realized there was no going back. I realized nothing would ever be the same again, and I shattered into a thousand pieces, and it wasn’t because of Pa. It was because I knew I was going to lose you forever. I had made up my mind that I was leaving, and at the time I never wanted to come back.
She had filled up a sheet of paper quickly and she flipped it over on the desk and grabbed another sheet and went back to writing.
I knew I was going to let you down. That I already had. I failed you. I’m sorry. One of the worst things about this whole situation is that I constantly just keep letting you down, when all I’ve ever wanted was for you to just be proud of me. To understand how much things hurt me. That I just needed time. That after it all what hurt the most was the fact it came out everyone else knew, and nobody wanted to tell me. That I wasn’t worthy of knowing what really happened. I felt betrayed by everyone. I held a grudge and a chip on my shoulder, and I’m sorry.
I still carry it because I can’t talk to you anymore. I was so happy that Bryan gave me a safe place to go because I was terrified when I left Ireland. I thought maybe you wouldn’t resent him because he gave me this safe place to go but I get it more now. He took your sister away from you, and you won’t forgive him, but I really wish you would. I can understand how that’s difficult for you after the deathmatch we had. You don’t know how to be anything else but protective of me, and I know deep down you still love me. I see it when the cameras catch Callum talking to you on Sentinel. I watch the show just for those things a lot of the times more than anything.
Truthfully your roster is a mess, but Cal is handling things well and I’m proud of him for that. This isn’t about that. I know I’m responsible for Claire’s death. I know you view me as dead like her, and that pains me so much. I want my best friend back. I want my brother back, and I know I’ve changed and you don’t like it. I’m happy with who I am. With where I am, and all I’ve wanted is for you to be proud of me for being successful.
Marrying Bryan wasn’t part of my New Year’s Plans but it happened. I handled it poorly. Especially after attacking you for keeping things from me. I was a hypocrite. I’m sorry I let you down again. I wish you would get to know Bryan. He’s really great. I was concerned about us but really I just needed to give him time. He loves me, even through all my mistakes. Even now. Knowing what I’m writing and to who. He still loves me. Isn’t that the kind of thing you want for your sister? Or would you rather me be with Dylan and constantly moving in and out of your home because I don’t understand how relationships work and I’m not mature enough to handle something so simple as a fight over a pun that I made that Dylan didn’t get.
I want you to believe in me again. I want you to be in my life again. I want to be back in Cat’s life. I know you have never kept her from me. I know you won’t believe these words even as I write them but I backed off of my friendship with Cat because I didn’t want her to feel caught in the middle of our problems. She didn’t deserve that. She still doesn’t. All I wanted was for her to worry about her pregnancy. Not the stress of having to listen to both of us bitch about the other one. I realize that might have been the wrong thing. I read the tweets you know. I know how much I hurt her. How much I’ve hurt you, and Ma. Teagan. The rest of my family.
I don’t know how to fix it Oliver. I want to fix it. I want to stop letting you down. Letting Cat down. Cal. Carrick. Teagan. I can’t keep dwelling on the past. I can’t live with the cloud of Pa’s death over my head. I know I should be angry with you and I was, but I’m tired Oliver. I’m so tired, and all I want is just to feel whole again. To have my best friend, and my family back. I want to come home but, I want to come home with my husband. I want my family to get to know him for the wonderful person I see him as. Not the monster people see on TV. He’s got that inside of him and it comes out, but I love him and I want so bad for all the pieces to fit together.
Please forgive me. I know I’ve failed you. I know I’ve let you down time and time again, but please. I miss you. I know you miss me too. We’ve been close our entire lives. I’ll understand if you don’t want to make peace, or if I’m still dead to you. I just don’t know what else to say, or how else to fix the things I’ve done to you but, I want to try.
I love you, and I’m sorry I didn’t turn out to be everything you thought, or wanted me to be. Please forgive me. Please don’t shut me out anymore.
Your sister again if you want me to be,
Kaelan
She signed her name and looked over the sheets of paper with a sigh as she sat the pen down. She folded the sheets carefully together in the order in which she hoped her brother would read them. She reached in the drawer next to her and pulled out a couple of envelopes. She carefully placed the folded up sheets inside one of them before licking the back of the envelope and sealing it closed, making a bitter face at the awful taste the adhesive from the envelope had left in her mouth. She shook her head and wrote out the addresses, and even got the appropriate stamps to mark for postage. Being in America she had figured out quickly the postage system for sending mail back home.
She breathed a sigh of relief as she put the letter down on the corner of the table. She did feel oddly better about things. She didn’t know if her brother would actually read it, but at least she had gotten it off her chest. Now was the hard part. The letter to Dylan. She sat for a long time just staring at the sheet of paper in front of her, and then she put the pen to the paper.
Dylan,
If you’re reading this then it means you’ve finally woken up and I just hope that I made the right decision. The decision you really wanted. I know what Oliver had wanted to do and in the end I made my decision based off of feeling you wanted the opposite because you felt I would give you a different outcome than Oli. Also I had to consider the possibility that you might be a father and really I know how much I’ve resented you for taking my father away from me. How helpless it made me feel because you never gave me a choice. Nobody gave me a choice.
I’ve been so resentful towards you for so long, and it’s been so exhausting. I’m so tired from it all. This was never supposed to happen. You and I both know that. Honor was a freak accident or something. I never looked at you that way before. The way I started to back then. You were my brother’s train wreck friend who kept him safe. I appreciated you, because you were always there for my family. For me, and Teagan. It wasn’t a romantic feeling.
Then somewhere along the line I started seeing you. Really seeing you, and I fell for you. I loved you. I didn’t know how to deal with those emotions. I might as well have been a child when it came to love. Oli never allowed me to experience feelings for anyone because whenever a boy so much as looked at me affectionately he was beating them down and then they never thought of looking at me like that again. So I made a lot of mistakes, and did things to you that I shouldn’t have.
I understand now. I do, and I’m sorry. I accepted the affections of another person and blew your feelings off about it because I knew nothing else but to enjoy the fact I was getting attention and that was wrong of me, and you recognized I was doing it back to that person and I resented you even more for not allowing me to get away with it. You made me learn from my mistakes and I know you don’t want to hear that in regards to me being with another man. With Bryan more specifically.
I’m getting ahead of myself here. Rewind. The thing that made it so easy for me to fall in love with you was the promise you made to me. To never keep anything from me, and you lived by that promise much to the displeasure of my brother Oliver. That meant a lot to me. So when he sat me down and told me what you had done it hurt more than you’ll ever understand. You broke your promise, and more importantly I felt like I had betrayed my Pa, and you let me believe the lie for over a year because you were selfish and wanted me to be ignorant to the truth like everyone else.
Then I shot you. It was an accident and it horrified me that I had done it, because even in that moment I still loved you. You knew I couldn’t shoot you. You knew I didn’t have it in me. You knew me for over a year and knew that I was a coward who never would pull the trigger. I realize now that you were right. I wasn’t mad at you, or Oliver but you wrong. I wasn’t mad at Pa either. I was mad at myself. For letting myself believe the lie when I should have seen what was in front of me all along.
I was disgusted with myself for letting you in. For sharing any part of me at all with you, and at the same time I was still trying to figure out how I could still love you and not entirely betray the father who I had loved. I realized I couldn’t. That my only option was to get away from you. So I left. I lost more than just you. I lost my family too and the only person who was left to pick up the small fractured pieces that were left of me was Bryan.
Kaelan stopped and had to take a moment to sit back and relax. She had wrote so much. Her hand was killing her, and her thoughts were becoming jumbled because she didn’t want to forget any detail. She flipped the sheet over and went back to writing.
After I left and threw myself into everything Bryan was trying to do to fix me? You decided to throw yourself to the wolves. You just wanted to die. To forget me, and what I had done to you. So you threw yourself to my brother’s enemies without blinking an eye. Without even thinking about what it would do to me. Do you know what it was like knowing that I was the reason you would do something like that? That’s not easy for anyone to live with. Especially not me. To know I had ruined someone to the point they would rather be tortured mercilessly and killed.
You put that burden on me and I never asked for it, and I didn’t want it. It wasn’t fair. It just made the pain of loving you and trying to get over it that much more confusing. I didn’t understand how to feel about it. So I rationalized it as during my rough patch with Bryan when he didn’t want any of the same things as I wanted that maybe I still really wanted you.
I went to you because I still loved you and didn’t want to admit it to anyone, not even myself. I asked you things because even though you had broken all my trust you had always just been there. My entire life. Even before we were ever more than just friends. I hated you for telling everyone about it but you did the right thing. I realize now how wrong of me it was to do to you. So here is me saying sorry for it. Nobody deserves what I did. Even if you feel you’re the worst human being on the planet.
And here’s the other truth that I’ve come to terms with and I think you need to as well. I will always feel something for you, because even if I thought I took all the pieces of me when I left Ireland. I left one behind with you. I’ve came to terms with the fact it’s just going to be normal to feel like this. To always have an attachment to you. You were my first everything and well… that never goes away. Not the memory anyways. I know that I have a piece of you as well and I know you feel like I took the biggest piece of you that there was but I didn’t. You need to realize that because when you wake up?
She paused. He needed to know this more importantly. If he ever woke up that is. She had to face the facts that this letter might never reach Dylan’s eyes. That he would never read the words on the pieces of paper in front of her. She shook her head. She was almost done though, and an overwhelming calm was beginning to wash over her. She put the pen back to the paper.
I wasn’t in the hospital with you. Sure. I’ve visited a few times. More so because I felt like it was my fault. That I had to live with the consequences of destroying another human being and feeling like I was untouchable or had a right to do it in the first place. I had to let it burn. I had to let it sink in. So I learn to never make another person feel that way again. But you need to know that I wasn’t doing these things because of love and adoration for you. Because I wanted you back or felt like we are meant to be forever. I did them because I felt I had to. Not because I wanted to.
You need to know what really happened while you were in this coma. Keeley stayed by your side. She never gave up on you. She never wanted to leave your side. She believed in you when nobody, including me did. You need to see her for what you saw me as. She deserves that from you. More than I ever did because she stayed by your side and I don’t think I would have done that. I think I would have like I am now, kept moving forward with my career. I wouldn’t have stopped. She’d give everything for you and I’d give nothing. Remember that when you wake up and see her beside you and I’m not there.
One last thing though before I wrap this up because I’m going to drag this out and ramble stupidly like I do. I know who Tadgh is and it’s just another lie you never told me. It’s just another thing to add to reasons why you never really trusted me or cared to let me in as much as I let you in. If you thought for a second I wouldn’t notice you in him. That I wouldn’t see he was your brother than you really are the idiot everyone claimed you were. It’s fine though. It doesn’t matter anymore because…
I forgive you Dylan. For all of it. I’m not going to carry the weight of it on my shoulders anymore. I’m not going to blame you for a decision made in a split second years ago that none of us ever thought would bring us to the point it has. I don’t resent you anymore. I can’t do it. I’m too tired to do it. I’m going to move forward and I’m going to hope that you do the same. Maybe one day there will be some kind of understanding and normalcy between us, but I’m not holding my breath for that. Please. Just find some peace, and move forward. Again. I apologize if you feel like I should have just let you go. You never told me what you wanted, or how to handle something like this. I did the best I could.
I’m sorry for all the things I’ve done, and I forgive you for all the things you’ve done.
-Kaelan
She signed her name and didn’t want to think about it any further. She put the pieces together and went through the routine she had with her brother’s letter. Except she didn’t put stamps on it. She wasn’t going to pay for postage or anything like that. No. She just wrote his name across the envelope. She would deliver this to his room personally the next time she visited the hospital and make sure it was somewhere that he would find it if he ever woke up. If he didn’t? Well it would just be another thing that they would end up burning once he was gone forever. Forgotten to everyone, but her.
She sat the envelope on the desk and leaned back in the chair as she tossed the pen on the desk. She felt at peace with getting the thoughts out of her head. It felt good to not feel so conflicted about her emotions. She would mail the letter to her brother, and place the other one for Dylan. All she could do was wait for what was to come from it. She would deal with it as the chips fell in front of her, but maybe for now she needed to focus on what was in front of.
She needed to focus on the person that mattered right now, making Bryan feel at peace and she got the idea. It made her jump up from her chair and rush out of the room. She hit the light switch as she walked out the door. For now the letters could be forgotten, back in the darkness. She would focus on the light.
