UNTIL I FOUND YOU , sturniolo triplets !

stay , matt (P3)

❝ i guess you did nothing wrong, and i swear it wouldn't have mattered so much; none of this would be worth the fuss if i hadn't been in love . . .
orlando, leith ross

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cw: none
! angst
the widely anticipated final part.

[ READ STAY, P1 & P2 FIRST! ]

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"holy shit."

the wide-ruled paper trembles in your hands before falling to the countertop your elbows are resting on.

god fucking damn it.

you reread the letter once. twice. three times. you read it over and over and over, desperately willing the words to change, to shift, to erase themselves. you hate yourself for opening the envelope, for not listening to your gut. you knew that this would hurt. but you didn't fucking listen. and now, it's like everything you felt that day is rushing back over you with the brutality of a tidal wave under a big, white moon. under that same moon, somewhere, matthew sturniolo is sitting, probably completely unbothered and clueless to the aged pain he's put onto you.

the hardest thing to admit to yourself is that nothing matt had written to you justifies anything that he did. he should never have led that girl on. he should have said no. but, he didn't. he cheated, and he ruined his own life, and he ruined yours.

i hope i didn't have the power to ruin yours, as well.

bullshit. he knew. he knew that you would have done anything for him. you would've run to the ends of the earth, taken a million bullets to the head, anything. you loved him.

god, you loved him.

you crumple the note up, and then you flatten it, and then you crumple it again, before finally flattening it and reading it one more time.

matt explained himself. he gave you an explanation. he did not give you justification, and while you know you'll never get that, it still hurts to know that he did this willingly. he wasn't drunk, he wasn't forced. no, he did it on his terms. to spare her feelings?

to hell with her feelings. what about yours?

you rest the paper on the table and cradle your head in your hands.

i don't want you to reach out.

well, too bad.

you grab the note and get up from the barstool you'd been sitting on, knees trembling and heart pounding. you pad up the stairs of your apartment to your bedroom, gripping the note in one hand like matt's hand and gripping the stair railing in the other hand like a lifeline.

you sit on your bed, staring at the phone sitting on your nightstand. despite having deleted his contact a long while ago, you know matt's phone number by heart. to you, it's one of those things that you can never forget, no matter how hard you try. the number will always be in the back of your mind because you will try so hard to forget that you constantly remind yourself about it.

the phone sits there, tempting you, mocking you.

you're sick and tired of being mocked, so you pick it up and dial the number-the number engraved in the back of your mind, dug in so deeply that no amount of tears could fill it, and no amount of numbness could soften the edges. it is sharp and jagged and deep. you feel the sting of the knife that carved it there in the first place even now.

one ring, two rings, three.

i'm so damn stupid, you think, and you hang up.

you begin to walk out of your bedroom, the tears in your eyes drying up. you are through. matt is a dick, and he doesn't deserve your forgiveness or your tears. your pining, your thoughts, nothing. none of it.