The Last Letter

by Rebecca Yarros

Ella deserved the truth.

  Maisie deserved to live.

  My love for the kids wasn’t fraud.

  Decision made.

  “If you’ll wait here a moment,” I said above the fray, excusing myself from the table. I took the stairs two at a time and retrieved the box I kept buried under a stack of underwear in my nightstand.

  Evidence in hand, I came down the stairs slowly. Ella and Ms. Wilson were still arguing, but Donahue turned toward me. He took in the box and my expression.

  “Are you sure?” he asked quietly.

  “It’s the only way.”

  He nodded as I walked by him to stand next to Ella. The conversation stopped, and all eyes were on me.

  “I love you. I’ve always loved you,” I told Ella.

  “I love you, too, Beckett,” she responded, her eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “What are you doing?”

  Kissing her was the first thought in my mind—taking that last second with her so I could memorize everything. But I’d taken enough from her already.

  “I should have told you, and I know this is about to cost me…you, but I can’t let another kid pay for my mistakes, especially not Maisie.”

  The box made a soft scratching sound as I slid it down the table. Ms. Wilson took it and lifted the square lid. “What exactly am I looking at?”

  She pulled the evidence of my sin onto the table, and Ella gasped.

  “Why do you have my letters? His letters?” she whispered.

  I kept my eyes on Ms. Wilson, unable to man up enough to watch the love die in Ella’s eyes when she caught on.

  “You said you needed evidence that I knew the kids before the diagnosis, that I had a relationship with them. You’ll find letters in there dating before the diagnosis, as well as pictures drawn by the kids and little notes. I knew the kids, loved them, and loved Ella before Maisie was diagnosed. You have no reason to investigate. If this was just about Maisie’s treatments, I wouldn’t have adopted Colt, too. The truth is that I wanted to be their dad.”

  Ms. Wilson sighed, thumbing through the letters. “I’m going to need to step outside and make a call.” She snapped a couple pictures of Ella’s letters and the kids’ pictures, gathered her notebooks, and walked out the front door.

  “Ella—” I started.

  “Don’t. Not one single word. Not yet.” Her knuckles were white and so were the tips of her fingernails where they dug into her biceps.

  Donahue sent me a look full of so much sympathy that I nearly crumbled right there.

  Minutes passed. The only sounds amid the tension in the room were the ticking of the clock and the rending of my heart roaring in my ears, consuming every thought. Would it be enough? Had I just given up everything…for nothing?

  The front door opened, and Ms. Wilson walked back in, a faint stain of blush on her cheeks. “It appears I have been mistaken. I’m…sorry”—she choked that word out—“to have inconvenienced you. While the situation still remains a very…gray area, you didn’t do anything that would justify canceling the policy, and my supervisor has decided that the investigation is now complete.”

  I almost sagged in relief at our win, no matter what it had cost.

  “Don’t sound so disappointed. You get to help the good guys today.” Donahue pushed back from the table. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Ms. Wilson stood, then gave me a forced smile. “My brother-in-law said you were one of the good ones, if that counts for anything. He said you and the dog were perfectly matched, like nothing he’d ever seen. Even your names meant the same damn thing. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Gentry. Ms. MacKenzie.” She turned to where Havoc sat at my side. “Havoc, right?”

  “This way, Ms. Wilson,” Donahue called out. He locked eyes with me as she walked toward him. He knew I was about to have my hands full. “That offer stands. You can always come back.”

  I nodded, and they left, the door shutting with an ominous, echoing sound behind them.

  “How could you have hidden those from me? Why do you have his letters?” Ella asked, rising from her chair and backing away from me toward the box.

  “Ella.”

  She put her hands on either side of her head and shook it. “No. No. No. Oh God. The tree house, the same lettering on Maisie’s diploma. Havoc. It’s not a coincidence, is it?”

  “No.” All of my life I’d been able to compartmentalize, to turn off my emotions. It was how I survived all those years in foster care, how I existed in special ops. But Ella had changed something in me. She’d opened my heart, and now I couldn’t shut the damn thing down. This pain was excruciating, and it was just the beginning.

  “Say it. I’m not going to believe it unless you say it. Who are you?”

  My eyes squeezed shut, and my throat closed. It was all I could do to draw a breath. But she deserved the truth, and now Maisie was protected. I’d done all I could to honor Ryan’s request, and the consequences to my heart didn’t matter. I straightened my spine and opened my eyes, taking in the pleading, terrified look in hers.

  “I’m Beckett Gentry. Call sign Chaos.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ella

  This wasn’t happening. I simply refused to believe that any of this was real. But those were my letters on the table, along with the pictures and notes the kids had sent to Chaos.

  Beckett.

  I looked again, just to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind. Nope. Just my heart.

  “How? Why? You told me he was dead!” The words flew out without any pause for him to explain. Maybe it was because I honestly didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want my tiny little glass bubble of contentment to shatter.

  “I never said that. I told you that knowing what happened to Ryan—to me—was only going to make you hurt worse than you already did.” His hands gripped the back of the chair. Lucky for him, having something to hold on to when I was in free fall.

  “How? When you’re alive!” I shouted. “How could you let me think you were dead? Why would you do that to me? Is this all some kind of joke? God, the things you knew about me when you showed up…why, Beckett?”

  Sensing the tension, Havoc got up, but it wasn’t Beckett she sat next to, it was me.

  “It isn’t a joke—never was. I didn’t tell you because I knew once you figured out who I was, what had happened, you would throw me out. Deservedly so. And when you inevitably did, I wouldn’t be able to help you. I wouldn’t be able to do the one thing Ryan asked of me, which was to take care of you.”

  “My brother. All of this was for my brother? Did you sleep with me for him, too? Just to keep me close? Make me fall for you?” How much of us was a lie?

  “No. I fell in love with you way before Ryan died.”

  “Don’t.” I backed up, needing distance and air. Why was there no air? My chest hurt so badly that the simple act of breathing took concentration.

  “It’s true.”

  “It’s not. Because if you’d loved me then, you never would have let me believe you were dead. You wouldn’t have left me alone at the worst time in my life, and then shown up a few months later as someone else. You lied to me!”

  “By omission, yes, I did. I’m so sorry, Ella. I never wanted to hurt you.” He looked convincingly sincere, but how could he be when he’d been lying to me for eleven months?

  “I mourned you. I cried, Beckett. Those letters were special to me, you were special to me. Why would you do that?”

  He stood there silent and stoic, and my disbelief and shock transformed into something darker and more painful than I’d ever imagined.

  “Tell me why!”

  “Because I’m the one who got Ryan killed!” His roar was guttural and raw, as if the admission had been ripped from him unwillingly. The silence that followed was louder than either of our voices had been.

  Havo
c abandoned me, taking her place at his side. Havoc and Chaos. How very perfect they were for each other.

  “I don’t understand,” I finally managed to say.

  Beckett bent slightly, rubbing Havoc’s head in a way I’d seen him do hundreds of times. It wasn’t for her, but to soothe him. She was his working dog and his therapy dog all in one.

  “Do you remember when I told you that I killed a child?”

  “Yes.” I wasn’t likely to forget something like that.

  “It was on the twenty-seventh of December. That intel didn’t pan out, and I lost it. You tell yourself that you’re the good guy. You’re there to stop the terrorists, to give the civilians back the country they deserve, that we’re keeping our country safe. But seeing that little girl die at my hand…it broke something in me. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, about what I’d done, or what I could have done differently.” He rubbed his hands over his face but pulled it together.

  My stupid heart swayed toward him, despite everything he’d done. I’d seen firsthand what those nightmares did to him. The rest of him might be a lie, but I knew this was true.

  “The next night, new intel came in, and we had orders. Half of the squad was tasked to go, me included, but the thought of putting my hand on my weapon literally made me vomit. I knew I was a danger not only to myself and the mission but to my brothers. I went to Donahue and pulled myself off the line. I know that sounds simple, but it’s not. It’s admitting to your brothers that you don’t belong with them—that you’re broken. Donahue agreed and said I needed a few days of downtime to get my head straight.”

  “That’s understandable,” I said softly.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t pity me. Because when I pulled myself off the line, there was an empty slot, and Ryan took it.”

  I breathed through the pain like I’d learned to when Mom and Dad died. All I’d wanted since those men showed up at the door was my brother back, but I would have settled for knowing what happened to him. Now that door was cracked open to the truth, and I was torn between longing to know and the clawing need to slam it shut and continue on in ignorance.

  “He took your place.” Just saying the words sent a torrent of emotion coursing through me. Pride that Ryan had stepped up. Anger that he’d put himself in harm’s way one time too many. Gratitude that Beckett had lived. But the sadness overwhelmed it all. I missed my brother.

  “He took my place.” Beckett’s jaw flexed as he drew a shaky breath. “During the mission, he was separated from the rest of the squad. They acquired the target, but Ryan was gone. Chatter indicated capture.”

  My eyes burned with the familiar sting of tears. Keeping them closed, I brought a memory of Ryan to mind, laughing with the kids by the lake, skipping rocks. Giving up on teaching them finesse and just going for the splash contest. Alive. Healthy. Whole. I gripped that mental picture so tight I could almost feel the water on my skin. Then I opened my eyes. “Tell me the rest.”

  He shook his head as his fists clenched. “You don’t want to know the rest.”

  “You lost the right to tell me what you think I need. Now finish it.” This was like Maisie’s mega-chemo, right? Blast out everything in one powerful, excruciating procedure, and then rebuild.

  “God, Ella.” He looked up at the ceiling and then down at my letters before dragging his gaze back to mine. “He was tortured. It took us three days to find him. When they told me he was missing, I pulled myself together, and Havoc and I went hunting. Radio chatter, sources…they all came up blank after that first night. I even searched the internet, thinking if they’d killed him, they would have posted it online.” He hissed. “Sorry, that didn’t need to be said.”

  “It all needs to be said.”

  He nodded. “Okay. We finally got some intel off a group of kids, goat herders a little ways outside the town. We rode out, but by the time we got there, the compound was empty. Havoc…she found Ryan about fifty yards away.”

  “He was dead,” I guessed.

  “Yes.” His face contorted, his eyes darting from side to side, and I knew he was lost to the memory. “Yes, he was dead.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No, it won’t help you sleep, Ella. Trust me, it’s the stuff of nightmares. The stuff of my nightmares.”

  Did I really want to know? Would it help in any way? Would I regret passing up this one chance I had? “Give me the basics.” After this, I might never see Beckett again, and no one else in that unit was going to tell me anything.

  “Basics? There was nothing basic about it.” His expression shifted every few seconds in the set of his mouth, the puckering of his forehead, the tension in his jaw. “We found him stripped of his uniform—down to his boxers and tee. They’d…worked him over something awful.”

  The first tear escaped, streaking my cheek with fresh, ugly grief.

  “Ella…” The anguished whisper was nothing like I’d ever heard from Beckett.

  “Go on.” I blinked, sending another stream of wetness down my face without bothering to wipe it away. If Ryan had endured all of that, then I could cry for him without the social niceties of clean cheeks. “They wouldn’t let me see him. They said the remains weren’t suitable for viewing.”

  “He’d been shot in the back of the head, and that kind of wound—”

  “Executed.”

  “Yes. That’s our best guess. They did it in a hurry when they heard us coming, and…left him as they escaped into the hills.”

  I nodded, the motion sending wetness onto my shirt. “What next?”

  He pulled out the chair and collapsed into it, deflated, with his hands over his face.

  I should have felt guilty for putting him through this—making him tell me. But even after what he’d put me through with his lies, all I felt was an unexplainable connection to the man I loved, who had been there and recovered my brother. In a strange, horrible way, that pain connected us in a bond I was both terrified and desperate to sever.

  “Please, Beckett.”

  His hands fell listlessly to his lap as he slouched back in the chair. When he looked at me, misery was etched in every line of his face and deadened eyes.

  “He was gone, but warm, and I flipped him over, thinking I could start CPR, but I couldn’t. There wasn’t…” He shook his head. “I can’t. I just can’t.” His eyes shifted like he was pushing fast forward in his mind. “The helo came, and we evac’ed him. I took his dog tag—I’d known he’d wanted you to have it—and sat with him all night before the plane came, and then Jensen brought him home to you. I was deemed too valuable to the mission to be given leave—especially now that our objective had changed to Ryan’s killers.”

  “Did you find them? I don’t know why that seems important; it’s not like there’s really any justice in war.”

  “Yes. We did. And do. Not. Ask.” His eyes turned hard and dangerous, and I saw him again—the man who was capable of compartmentalizing everything. I saw the storm in his eyes, the way his fists balled. This was Chaos.

  And at one time, I’d had true, deep feelings for him.

  “Did you get the other letters? The ones I sent after?” I needed to know. They’d never been returned. Those letters had been testaments to my pain. Had he read them and simply turned away?

  “Yes. But I couldn’t bring myself to read them. Couldn’t make myself lift a pen and tell you what happened, not that I was even allowed to. I’d fallen for you, this incredible woman I’d never even met. I’d never felt love before, not in that way, and all I wanted to do was protect you.”

  “By ghosting me? By making me think you’d died alongside my brother?”

  “By not doing anything that would bring an ounce more of pain into your life. I break everything and everyone, Ella. That’s why they call me Chaos. It was given to me long before the military, and once I came to your brother’s defense in a bar
fight and the nickname came to light, it stuck there, too. Rightfully so. I bring destruction everywhere I go. I hadn’t even met you yet, and I’d already cost you Ryan. The last surviving member of your immediate family died because I couldn’t get my shit together long enough to do my mission. I am the reason he’s dead. Did you want to keep writing to the man who got your brother killed? Should I have lied to you then, instead? You don’t give second chances when it comes to your family, remember? Even if I told you the truth, and you somehow forgave me, then keeping up with our letters, knowing I had caused his death, and that I might be the next notification you got? I couldn’t do it. You deserved to cauterize that wound and move on.”

  “Move on?” I paced back and forth along the end of the table, my energy suddenly too much to contain standing. “My daughter had just been diagnosed with cancer, my brother was dead, and I had no one. Ryan left me because he had to. You chose to.”

  “It was far better for you to think I died than to know the man you’d been so kind to befriend was responsible for Ryan’s death.”

  “Go to hell.” I turned and headed toward the door, only to stop before I made it out of the great room. “When did you decide to come here? To carry on the lie?”

  “Donahue gave me Ryan’s letter right before I was due to get out. He keeps all of our last letters. I had already chosen to stay in—there was nothing else for me. But I read the letter, and I knew I had to come. Even if it shredded my soul to be this close to you and never tell you who I was, or that I loved you, I had to come. I was the reason he was dead. I couldn’t very well deny my best friend the only thing he ever asked of me.”

  “So you decided to lie.” He’d invaded my life, my heart, every molecule of my existence under false pretense. “Knowing what my father had done, what Jeff did, you still chose to lie to me.”

  “I did.”

  I leaned against the wall, my heart demanding I walk out the door and save whatever was left of it, while my brain fought to get every answer I could before the heartbreak consumed me. Even Jeff walking out hadn’t hurt this bad, because I hadn’t loved him like this.