As I write this, Valko is standing over my shoulder.
He insists he isn't reading it, yet every now and then I catch him stealing a glance before pretending to look away. Don't be upset with him, my love. He's not a bad man, just an awfully curious one. You probably know that already. He's still the same silly nerd with chocolate on his hands and more curiosity than shame. Sometimes I think your sister would've adored him. She would've laughed at how easy it is to fluster him.
He promised me one of his colleagues would deliver this letter to you. He said he owed me this much.
Caleb... I never imagined I would write you a goodbye letter. Not because I stopped loving you. Never because of that. If anything, it is because I love you too much. I have to leave. There are things that have become tangled beyond either of us, and Valko being Valko, managed to throw himself into the middle of it all. My love, I cannot let him face it alone. So I am going with him, not because I was asked to, but because I chose to.
Please don't think this means I chose him over you. Because I didn't, I never will. If life had been kinder, if it had given me a choice that didn't ask me to leave someone behind, I would have chosen you every single time. I'm going because he needs me. Not because I love you any less. Not because someone else has taken the place that has always belonged to you. There has never been anyone else, Caleb. There has only ever been you.
I don't know when I'll return. I don't know if I'll return at all. I wanted to tell you I have no regrets, because it sounds brave. But I have never been very good at lying to you. I have one, just one. It's that I never got to marry you. I never got to stand beside you and promise forever beneath an open sky. I never got to build a home with you. I never got to grow old with you, to watch the years leave little lines on our faces while we argued over little things and laughed about them a minute later.
We were only given seasons, far too few of them. The days we spent together now feel like fleeting summers, warm, golden, impossibly beautiful and cruelly short compared to the winter that awaits us apart. How unfair it is that a lifetime of loving you can be remembered in fragments. Your laugh. The way your hand always found mine without thinking. The kisses that made the world quieter. The way you looked at the sky, as if it had been waiting for you long before you learned how to fly. Every time you took off, I found myself looking up too, wondering which patch of blue was holding the person I loved most.
The warmth you carried so effortlessly, as though your surname had become your soul. Xia. Summer. Because wherever you were, life felt warmer. Like sunlight after days of rain. Like coming home.
If the years ahead are spent without me, promise me something. Don't stop looking at the sky. Keep flying. Keep chasing every sunrise from above the clouds. Keep finding peace where the sky meets the horizon. Don't let my absence make the world feel smaller. If anything, I hope you'll love the sky enough for the both of us. And when summer comes... Please don't hate it because it reminds you of me. Stand in the sunlight. Feel the warmth on your face. Smile when the wind finds you. I'd like to think that's my way of finding you again.
And if by some miracle, I find my way back to you... I hope you'll still call my name the same way you always did. And if I don't... Then let this letter be the last proof that there was once someone in this world who loved you with every piece of herself.
And one last thing Caleb I need you to remember this, even if one day my voice fades from your memory. You will never be unloved by me. Not while the sky is still blue. Not while summer still returns. Not in this life. Not in whatever comes after. For as long the skies still carry your wings, my heart will always find its way back to you.