The letter is folded neatly, tucked between the weathered pages of his journal like something he couldn’t quite bring himself to destroy. Old. The paper creased a hundred times over and you expect it to be a map, but it's a name that stops you cold.

Catherine.

The ink is smudged in places, as if written it in the dark, or with hands that didn’t know if they should shake or stay still. But the words are sharp and sincere, familiar in ways you wish they weren’t.

'I’ll come back for you. I swear it. Just a little longer out here, love. Just a little more gold. Then I’ll be the man you deserved from the start.'

You sit back, heart pounding. Not because of jealousy—though that flickers too—but because of how he wrote it. With hope. With conviction. With love.

When he returns home, soaked through and smelling of rum and rain, he sees the letter in your hand before you can say a word. He freezes. The bravado dies in his eyes.

"You weren’t supposed to see that," he mutters, turning away, jaw clenched. "It was just words. Doesn’t matter now." Silence stretches.

"She was my wife," he says eventually, voice rough. "Before any of this. Before I knew how to be good for anyone." A beat. "I wrote that when I thought I still could be.” He doesn’t reach for the letter. Doesn’t defend it. Doesn’t ask for forgiveness. Instead, he just stands there in the candlelight, soaked and weary and guilty. And he waits to see if this is the thing that finally drives you away.