If I Could Rewrite Love, Would It Still Hurt This Way? | A Jhocey AU

Dear Jules,

I don’t know the exact moment I knew. Maybe I never did. Maybe it wasn’t a single moment but a slow, quiet unraveling—one I didn’t notice until it had already come undone.

But looking back, I think you knew before I did.

You noticed when my laughter softened, when my touch hesitated. You noticed the way I answered just a little too late, the way my excitement for our future started to feel like something rehearsed.

You asked me once, “Are you happy?” I smiled and said yes, and you kissed me like that was enough.

I wonder now if you believed me. Or if you were just hoping I’d believe myself.

—Sam

The hardest part wasn’t leaving. It was realizing I had already started.

Dear Jules,

I kept smiling. Kept showing up. Kept kissing you like nothing was changing, even though I could feel everything slipping between my fingers.

I don’t know if you ever noticed how carefully I crafted the illusion. How I made sure to laugh at the right moments, to hold you close even when my mind was far away.

Maybe you did notice. Maybe you just didn’t want to believe it any more than I did.

I told myself that as long as I stayed, as long as I kept choosing you, everything would be okay. That love was enough to drown out the doubt. But doubt is quiet, insidious. It doesn’t demand to be heard. It just lingers, waiting for the moment you can no longer pretend it’s not there.

I didn’t want to lie to you. I was just trying to lie to myself.

—Sam

Sometimes, love is just an echo of what it used to be.

Dear Jules,

I hated myself for hurting you. For breaking something you had so much faith in.

You once told me love wasn’t just about the big moments. It was in the small things like showing up, choosing each other, even when it was hard. And I held onto that for as long as I could.

But love is also honesty. And I was failing you in that.

I think you felt it—the way I started making excuses, the way I filled my time with anything but us. I think you felt it long before I ever said the words.

You deserved someone who was certain. Someone who wasn’t afraid of forever. Someone who didn’t love you with an undercurrent of fear.

I hated that it wasn’t me.

—Sam

You think I left because I stopped loving you. But I left because I loved you too much to keep pretending.

Dear Jules,

I wanted to stay.

I need you to know that.

I wanted to be the person who could wake up every morning certain that I was exactly where I was meant to be. But the more I tried to hold on, the more I felt like I was suffocating.

The night I told you, I thought I was ready. I had rehearsed it a thousand times in my head, planned the words so carefully. But the second I saw the way your face fell, the way you tried to make sense of something I barely understood myself, I knew there was no way to make this hurt less.

I think I broke both of us that night.

And the worst part? I still don’t know if I did the right thing.

—Sam

You didn’t fight for me. And I don’t know if I needed you to or if that would have made it worse.

Dear Jules,

I still wonder.

I wonder if I should have fought harder, if there was something I could have done differently. I wonder if we were always meant to fall apart, or if I was the one who doomed us from the start.

I think about the versions of us that never existed—the ones where I wasn’t scared, where I was brave enough to stay. The ones where I didn’t flinch at the thought of forever, where I could look at you and see a future instead of a question mark.

I wonder if we could have been one of those versions.

But wondering doesn’t change anything, does it?

—Sam

I replayed it a hundred times, trying to rewrite the ending. It always ends the same.

Dear Jules,

I kept waiting for relief.

I thought that once enough time passed, the ache in my chest would fade, that I’d finally breathe without feeling like something was missing. But the truth is, I don’t think you ever stop missing someone you loved the way I loved you.

Maybe I was never meant to.

Maybe some people stay with you, even when they’re gone.

I don’t know if you still think about me the way I think about you. If certain songs still remind you of me, if you ever catch yourself wondering what we could have been.

But if you do—just know that I do too.

And maybe that’s enough.

—Sam

Some love stories don’t end. They just stop being written.