(Author's POV)
She thanked him for his steadiness when she had none. For the respect he had shown her when she had no reason to expect it. For making her believe, again, that love was something real and not something that simply ran out. She wrote that he had never once asked her to be grateful, and that was exactly why she was.
*You have been an umbrella I never thought to ask for - held over me without a word, through every storm I thought I'd have to weather alone.*
And at the very end, in her clean, unhurried handwriting:
*You are the only person I want to grow old with - the only hand I want to be reaching for when the world has long forgotten everything we've been through.*
A tear hit the paper before he knew it was coming. He pressed the back of his hand to his face, but there
