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It was me, there in my bed the night you told me I was your favorite color. It was me you loved more than tattooing or Jeopardy… that I was a need. I was none of it. Need means it is essential to one’s survival. You are surviving fine. I am the one who can’t breathe. I devoted myself to you before our world fell apart, and even then, I was there fighting for you.

I don’t know what made you change, but understand I didn’t. Had the judge served you with a hard eight years, I would have stayed and waited, faithfully. I gave you parts of myself that I can never get back, but only relive. I don’t know where we will be down the road when you are free. All I know is I believe I will always wait for you, but with as angry as I am, I can’t promise it.

I won’t write you again. I open the studio on Monday and have planned out my every minute for the next six months. I will get over you. I will never drinkPatronagain. I will cover my Sully original and erase what I can from my memory. I hate that you would leave me in this place so lost and not leave a light on or a bread crumb. I will, however, remember our best moments because you are unforgettable to me. My love will never change because love choses, not me. My heart chose you, my soul agreed. You are the one for me Sam, but I will force myself to move on even if it is with second best. That is my fate, courtesy of you, and for that, I will never forgive you.

Good luck, Sam Sullivan,

Amyah Dorian

7 months since court

Mya,

You need to promise what was in that letter was true. Move on, build a life, and have babies. I have taken a life and when the anger is gone, and I am left looking at this cell that has become my home? Well… You deserve more than a felon. That is what I am and will always be labeled as.

It is so loud here all the time. It is never quiet or peaceful, and in a rare moment; I can relax, I draw your face, and remember that once, briefly you were mine.

It ends there. It ends there because we both deserve peace. I know you won’t see my reasoning, but it is there in bright neon hidden under your pain. You deserve a man to worship you. One who will kill to see you smile. I am a fucked-up mess, so fucked up I can’t even see tomorrow.

I feel like a strand of Christmas lights that sat in the attic for years, tangled and broken, and you keep trying to fix them, get them in a straight line and see them shine again. They won’t, Pet. They will never work again because some things need to be thrown away.

You won’t throw me away, I know that… so I have to be the one to leave. I have seventeen months left and so much can happen in that time. Let it happen to you, Mya. Live, fall in love, and dream so fucking big that you laugh at the absurdity of it, then make it come true. Make the mistakes we all do in our twenties, they will help you grow in your thirties. Go sit in the spotlight for just once with Lex and Cal. Let the world see you and all your glory. You think you live in their shadow, but Pet, you are the sun, and the shadows will never touch you. Believe me on that.

Be someone’s favorite color, just as you were mine once. Stop wondering what went wrong, because it was my world that affected yours. I left my daughter and in it I lost her. I killed the man that took her from me and his death has left its mark on me. Simply put, some wounds will never heal.

Seventeen months is a lifetime at twenty-two… If we cross paths when I am out know that my smile will be genuine. Understand I will leave you every time. No matter what, I will always walk away from you, because you deserve it.

Know I will always regret leaving my shop that night as much as I regret allowing you to love me. There is something unique that happens when you lose someone you love as much as I did Kace. I stopped letting anything touch me and created this shield that is so effective that I no longer let myself feel anything. I am numb and it is better than the hell I live in without her.

Move on, Pet, for both of us.

All letters will be rejected from here out and the time you have wasted on me is over. I refuse to let you fall deeper in my hole. Live, Mya. Live, butterfly.

Sully