I Dumped My Groom and Married My Childhood Crush in 30 Minutes novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Letters

Conway's POV

I came out of the shower with a towel around my neck and found her standing at the dresser in my shirt.

She had the drawer open.

She was holding three envelopes in her bandaged hand.

I stopped on the step.

"Those are mine," she said.

"Yes."

"You kept them."

"Yes."

"They're not open."

"No."

She turned around.

Her eyes were wet, but her voice was level, and that was worse.

"Nine years, Conway."

"I know."

"Why didn't you read them?"

I did not have a good answer, so I gave her the true one.

"My mother put them in my hand the day I got back from the hospital," I said. "The first one was thick. I knew your writing. I stood there holding it, and I thought, if I read a single word, I'll get in the truck."

"You could have."

"I had signed my name to a deal that was keeping my mother alive. If I broke it, Eleanor would stop paying the second surgeon."

"She was paying for two?"

"Three. It went on for years." I rubbed my neck. "So I put them in a drawer. I told myself I'd read them when it was over. Then it was nine years and I was afraid of what they said."

"What did you think they said?"

"That you'd stopped waiting."

She held them out.

"Read them," she said. "Right now. I'm going to stand here."

"Annalise, wait."

"I told you no speeches. Read."

I took them.

My hands were not steady.

I sat down on the edge of the bed with the envelopes on my knee and opened the first with my thumb.

It smelled faintly of paper that had never been in sunlight.

Her handwriting was rounder than it was now.

She had written about the fence, and the dog next door, and the soup she had taken to my mother.

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