After 999 Nights, He Said We Were Never Together Chapter 24

After 999 Nights, He Said We Were Never Together Chapter 24

Three days later, Ryan returned to New York alone.

When he reached home, lights glowed again in the villa next door.

The house manager told him the Whitfields had sold all their remaining assets in the United States. New

neighbors had moved in two days earlier.

Only then did Ryan truly feel that the past was gone beyond recovery.

He spent the entire night awake in his room.

The next morning, he watched through the window as the new owners tore down the garden swing, replaced

the pale pink curtains with dark green ones, and cut the shell wind chime from the porch before throwing it

away.

Everything connected to the Whitfields and Sophie was slowly disappearing from his world.

He couldn’t stop it.

He began drinking every day, using alcohol to numb himself.

His battered heart gradually hollowed out until it seemed incapable of feeling anything.

Love and hatred.

Pain and regret.

Joy and hope.

All of it drifted farther away.

His room filled with discarded objects he had personally collected from next door.

Only while searching for those remnants did he seem briefly awake.

The new neighbors’ five-year-old child followed him each day, treating the search like a treasure hunt.

The old tree in the yard was cut down. The soil where roses had grown was dug out. Stones painted with

cartoons were smashed.

Every object pulled another memory from Ryan.

The child kept asking where the things came from.

Ryan stared at them, countless words rising to his lips and dying there.

Then, in a forgotten corner of the garden, they uncovered a large glass wish jar.

Inside were one hundred love letters.

The handwriting on the first envelope was immediately familiar.

Ryan’s eyes turned red.

The child, unaware of what he had found, opened the top letter and began reading aloud.

Dear Ryan,

“If you’re reading these letters, then we’re probably together by now. Otherwise, you never would’ve known they existed. We’ve known each other for nineteen years. All this time, you probably had no idea how long

I’ve loved you.

“You might wonder why I never told you. The answer is simple. I knew I wasn’t the person you loved. Whenever you looked at her, stars seemed to move in your eyes. So I could only hide what I felt.”

The child continued.

“But now she’s gone, and I’m the person who stayed beside you. You haven’t mentioned her name again. I thought that meant you’d finally let her go and that was why you chose to be with me.

“You still don’t want anyone to know about us, but I can wait until you’re ready. Three years, five years, even ten. As long as there’s a place for me in your heart, I can keep waiting.”

The child’s young voice softened over the final lines.

“Do you think I’m foolish? You’ve been beside me for as long as I can remember. If my life began with you, I

want so badly for it to end with you too.

“I don’t know what the future will bring. But I know this. As long as I matter to you, even a little, and as long

as you care for me at all, I’ll wait for you to come back.

“Forever. Always.”

By the time the child finished, tears streamed down Ryan’s face.

With shaking hands, he gathered the box of letters against his chest. Then he stumbled to his feet and headed for the airport.

Clinging to one final thread of hope, he rushed toward another country, desperate to reclaim the person he might already have lost.

Throughout the long flight, Ryan read the letters without stopping.

The love hidden between the lines tasted like honey and poison at once.

One moment he sobbed.

The next he laughed softly.

Then grief returned, followed by sudden hope.

The extremes moved through him again and again, reigniting the heart that despair had numbed.

But was it only the final flare before total darkness?

Or the fire that came before a new dawn?

Ryan didn’t know what ending waited for him.

He could only pray.

Pray that the feelings nineteen-year-old Sophie had written by hand could save him from the ruins he had

made.

Pray she would give him one chance to begin again.

Just one.