Chapter 15 – Love Letters We Don’t Send
Three months passed.
Florence turned from summer gold to autumn rust, and Maya's world settled into a rhythm.
Her mornings began with espresso and cobblestone walks to the gallery. Afternoons were filled with critiques, and evenings belonged to art and friends. She learned how to be alone without being lonely. How to dream without guilt. How to grow without apology.
But Liam lingered.
In the backs of museums. In the silence between songs. In the way she still checked her phone before bed and every morning when she woke.
She wrote him letters she didn't send.
Some were pages long, full of the little things—how the pigeons fought over croissants outside her apartment, or how she'd finally found a wine she didn't hate. Others were a single sentence:
I thought of you today.
She kept them in a notebook titled Things I Hope You Still Know.
Because no matter how far she drifted into this new version of herself, the thread between them never snapped.
It just stretched.
Back in their hometown, Liam had stopped counting the days.
Not because he didn't care.
But because hope, like a seed, grows in silence.
He picked up extra shifts. Helped his dad rebuild the fence after a storm. Applied for night classes in business—quietly, without telling anyone.
He didn't fill the hole Maya left. He learned how to carry it.
Zoey called him once every couple weeks.
"She still asks about you," she said.
"I still think about her."
"You think you'll wait forever?"
He paused.
"Not forever. But long enough."
December rolled in.
Maya stood in front of a portrait she'd painted—herself, barefoot, standing in the middle of an empty road lined with trees that faded into mist. She called it In Between.
It was chosen for the winter showcase.
Her professor shook her hand. "You've found your voice."
That night, she opened her journal and wrote something she hadn't expected:
I think I'm ready to come home.
Maya didn't call Liam right away.
She flew in on Christmas Eve, snow dusting the airport parking lot like powdered sugar. Her parents cried, clutched her tighter than she expected. Home felt smaller. Familiar.
Safe.
On Christmas morning, she knocked on a door she hadn't touched in six months.
Liam opened it in pajama pants and sleepy eyes.
"Maya."
"Hi."
He didn't speak.
Just looked at her like maybe he was afraid she wasn't real.
She held up a wrapped package. "I brought you something."
He stepped aside.
She walked in.
It was quiet for a moment. Then she said:
"I didn't call because I didn't know what to say."
"You didn't have to say anything."
He unwrapped the box slowly. Inside was her sketchbook. The one she'd filled in Florence.
Page after page of things he'd never seen—her mornings, her loneliness, the faces of friends he didn't know. But he flipped to the final drawing.
It was him.
Standing at their old spot behind the gym, arms crossed, head tilted, with the softest look on his face.
Below it, she'd written:
The boy I never stopped loving.
His eyes burned.
"I don't know what happens next," Maya said. "But I want to figure it out with you."
He stepped toward her.
"I waited long enough."
And he kissed her.
This time, it didn't feel like an ending.
It felt like the beginning of something new.