Chapter Thirty-Three: Pages and Peace (Thomas)

                                        

                                              
I couldn't sleep. As the room grew quieter, my thoughts got louder. Guilt still pricked at me in sharp, familiar places but underneath it, there was something steadier: a need to do better. To show her, not just say it once and expect it to last.
I've never been good at saying the right words out loud, not when it matters most. Feelings pile up inside me until they tangle and catch in my throat. But writing... writing gives me time. It lets me slow down, untie the knots, and let the words come out one by one, honestly. So I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her, and sat by the small desk near the window. Under the lamplight, I opened a fresh page.
There, in my uneven handwriting, I wrote the title across the top:
« Pensées du cœur » Thoughts from the Heart
One thought every week. Short or long. About the week that passed, a childhood memory, a fear, a promise, or just thank you for being here, even now. A small ritual. Not something to impress her, but something to remind both of us that love needs tending. That even when I can't always say it right, it doesn't mean I don't feel it, fiercely, deeply, stubbornly.
Tonight, it is an apology.
I m sorry for every time you had to guess whether I loved you. For every time I looked away instead of reaching for your hand. For every moment I let your shoulders carry the weight of both of us. You should never have had to doubt that you were wanted. Cherished. Safe.
But you don't have to wonder if I'm listening. I am.
You are my home October, and I will spend whatever time I have left becoming the kind of home you never want to leave.
I love you.
— T.
I folded the first letter carefully and placed it in the old wooden box, I will giver her these letters the right time, when she is ready. The box felt almost too small for what I hoped to put inside. When I slipped back under the blanket, October stirred, blinking at me with soft confusion. "Everything alright?" she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.
"Go back to sleep, sweetheart," I whispered, pressing my hand over hers. "Everything's alright."
I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, my chest tight with guilt and memory. The room was quiet, the kind of quiet that doesn't soothe; it accuses. Every creak in the walls, every breath of wind outside the window, echoed against the silence I'd built inside myself.
I keep replaying it all like some endless film loop I can't pause or mute. The choices I made. The excuses I whispered into the dark like prayers. The split-second moments when I could've turned back, could've chosen her, could've chosen us but didn't. Cowardice dressed up as confusion. Fear disguised as logic.
Some nights, the shame feels heavier than my own bones. It lies across my chest, relentless. And worse than the shame is the aftermath I see in her: the hesitation in her laughter, like she has to scan the room for danger before she lets joy in. The heaviness in her hugs, like she's holding something back. The shadows in her gaze that weren't there before, ones I put there.
I know I can't rewrite it. I can't explain it into something smaller or less cruel. There are no poetic metaphors strong enough to make betrayal sound like an accident. I don't want to be forgiven because I asked for it, I want to be forgiven because I earned it and until then, all I can do is show up. Every day. Not just loving her in the quiet safety of my thoughts, but out loud. Not perfectly. Not dramatically. Just stubbornly.
Just then, I heard a soft sound, floorboards creaking under cautious feet, the whisper of someone trying not to wake the house. I got up, padded down the hall, and paused outside Jimmy's door. The faintest strip of light bled out from under it.