LETTERS SHE WROTE.
❝I hope that someday when I am gone,
someone, somewhere, picks my soul up
off of these pages and thinks:
I would have loved her. ❞
OUTER BANKS.
BOOK ONE of the LETTERS TRILOGY.
[ SEASONS 1 - 2 ]
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[ xxxvi. the longest goodbye ]
➸➸➸
AN ENTIRE DAY HAD passed since the cataclysmic rupture between Willa Deveraux and JJ Maybank, and in the wake of their shattered friendship—could it even truly be call that?—the entirety of Kildare Island seemed to hold its breath.
In the span of those twenty-four hours, nothing that followed had been easy. The hours bled into each other. It was ugly. It was devastating. But amidst the anarchy, there was silence, and in that silence, Willa vanished. Though not in the way she had planned.
She had not retreated to the lavish, bright lights of the Figure Eight, that supposed safety net she had been born for. But rather, she had disappeared in a way that made no sense at all. She had left the Cut, yes, but she had not gone home. Instead, she had found herself drawn back to the one place she never anticipated.
She returned to the Boneyard Beach.
Now, Willa sat on the cold and empty shore, her scabbed knees drawn to her chest, fingers wound so tightly into the fabric of her jersey shorts that her knuckles had gone white. The wind was harsh and stung her teary eyes, but the pain of it was nothing compared to the feeling that had settled thickly in her chest. There was a deep, deep ache inside of her that no swift ocean breeze could soothe.
All the while, before her very eyes, the dark waves crashed endlessly against the sand of the Boneyard, their sounds constant, as if the sea itself was mocking Willa's misery, uncaring for her suffering.
Because of that noise, she was unsure if she loved this place anymore or if she hated it. Maybe it was both.
She had wandered here almost unconsciously, as though her feet knew the way even when her mind could no longer bear to think. This stretch of beach had once been a kind of sanctuary, the place where her life had tilted and changed course—in more ways than one.
It was here that she had first truly met JJ. They had instantly clashed, two people who were too stubborn, too bruised, caught in their own private storms. That night had been a whirlwind of yelling and accusations, yes, but somehow, that brutal explosion of souls had cracked something open in her, too. JJ and his blatant, rude, hot-headedness had pulled her into a new world, one with the Pogues, one that had felt like a home she did not know she had been searching for.
She had finally found her place. Her home. Her people.
Or so she had thought.
Because now, sitting alone on that very same sand, Willa could hardly breathe. Certainly, she was more than the "sad, lonely little Kook" JJ had so callously thrown back in her face. Right? She had bled for this, had risked her life—from that first violent chase on the marsh to outsmarting Barry with a gun in their faces only yesterday. She had fought for her place, for her spot with the Pogues, and she had genuinely thought she had finally earned it.
