Penny's fingers trembled as she picked up the next letter.
She told herself it was just the cold draft creeping in through her apartment's cracked window. Not fear. Not anticipation.
But deep down, she knew better.
She wasn't just holding old paper and dried ink. She was holding a question that shouldn't exist.
Who was Theo?
And how did he know her?
Taking a steadying breath, she unfolded the next letter.
The words, penned in flowing, poetic strokes, seemed to breathe off the page, as if the writer had poured everything into them—heart, soul, and something more… longing.
"Penny, I miss you. And I know how strange that sounds—how impossible. But I do. I miss you like a memory that hasn't happened yet."
"You always tell me I speak in riddles. But I don't know how else to say it: I love you, and I have always loved you—even before you knew me."
"I dream of you, even though we haven't met yet in your time. I see you laughing at something I haven't said yet. I watch you turn to me with that half-smile, the one where you're trying to hide how much you care. And I swear, I don't know how time works, but I know this—I know us."
"No matter what happens, Penny… I will find you."
The words shook her.
The weight of them pressed against her chest, tangled in her ribs.
She had expected old-fashioned romance. Maybe a tragic tale of lost love. But this? This felt… alive. Urgent. A message not from the past, but from somewhere else entirely.
Penny swallowed hard, gripping the edges of the letter.
Her logical brain screamed for an explanation. Maybe the desk's previous owner was named Penny Carter. Maybe this was some elaborate prank.
But something in her gut whispered: No. This is different.
Her name wasn't common. And the details in the letters—they were too specific, too her.
She ran her fingers over the ink, feeling the ghost of the person who had written it.
Theo.
A stranger. A mystery. A voice reaching out through time, whispering words that shouldn't exist yet.
She sat there, cross-legged on the floor, staring at the letters, feeling watched. Not in a sinister way, but in a way that made her heart race—like someone was waiting for her reaction.
She should have stopped reading.
She should have put the letters away, sealed them up, and pretended she had never found them.
But Penny had never been the kind of person to walk away from a mystery.
Especially not one that had already found her first.
So, with a deep breath, she reached for the next letter.
And as she read, time itself began to unravel.