Letters To My Future Husband

The Words That Weren't Mine Anymore

The first thing I noticed wasn’t the sunlight stabbing through the blinds.

It was the sound.

A rapid-fire buzz, over and over, like a swarm of bees rattling on wood.

My bleary eyes cracked open, head pounding from too much wine and not enough sleep. Sienna’s phone, lying face-up on my coffee table, lit up again, vibrating against the wood until it clattered dangerously close to the edge.

Another buzz. Another glow.

I squinted, vision swimming, trying to make out the screen. But before I could focus, Sienna’s arm shot out like a snake, snatching it up.

“Work emails,” she muttered, too quick, too smooth. Her eyes didn’t even flick toward me, glued to the glass, thumbs flying, mouth set in a hard line. “Apparently the world doesn’t care that I’m off-duty.”

She typed something furiously, then set the phone down again, this time face-down, as though hiding it from me.

I pushed myself upright on the couch, massaging my temples. “Since when do work emails make you look guilty?”

Her head whipped toward me, eyeliner smudged into smoky shadows beneath her eyes. She looked half-wrecked, half-dangerous, curls frizzing in wild defiance. “Since always,” she snapped. “My boss has the personality of a caffeinated raccoon. Don’t start.”

The defensive bite in her tone pricked at me, but before I could press, my own phone alarm shrieked from the floor where I’d tossed it last night. A cruel reminder that I had exactly forty minutes to pull myself together before Alaric Davenport found another excuse to tear me apart.

“Shit.” I scrambled upright, tripping over pizza boxes and Styrofoam containers like my living room was a war zone.

Sienna raised her glass of the half-warm, half-flat wine she’d abandoned the night before, and sipped lazily as if she weren’t hungover, as if the world wasn’t buzzing around her phone. “Relax,” she drawled. “Davenport’s probably still polishing his cufflinks and practicing new ways to glare people into submission.”

I shot her a flat look while yanking my blouse over my head. “You clearly don’t understand the man. He doesn’t practice glaring. He was born glaring.”

Her grin tilted wicked. “Maybe he just needs a hug.”

“Maybe he just needs an exorcism.”

She snorted, but her fingers still drifted to her phone like a magnet, flipping it up, flicking through it, setting it down again, face-down.

By the time we spilled into the Davenport Enterprises lobby together, I was already sweating from nerves, every inch of me on edge. Sienna, on the other hand, looked like she was heading to Sunday brunch, calm, collected, sipping iced coffee as if Alaric Davenport weren’t the devil incarnate waiting upstairs.

But the moment we stepped onto the office floor, the air shifted.

The buzz wasn’t just in my head anymore.

Phones were out. Screens glowed. People leaned in close, whispering in corners. Some were in barely-concealed tears. Others were smiling like they’d just been handed a secret.

I frowned, setting my bag down, the hairs at the back of my neck rising. “What’s going on?”

“Probably another scandal,” Sienna said breezily, sliding into her chair without missing a beat. “Celebrities cheat, billionaires lie, the usual.”

Her tone was too light. Too casual.

And when she angled her screen away from me, I knew it wasn’t the usual.

It was something else.

Something she didn’t want me to see.

The morning dragged on like a slow-motion nightmare. I tried to focus on my tasks, but the air felt different. Almost… electric.

Every time someone’s phone buzzed, the floor seemed to shiver with it. A ripple of excitement, gasps disguised as coughs, laughter half-swallowed but impossible to hide.

At one point, I caught two interns leaning shoulder-to-shoulder over a glowing screen, tears streaking down one girl’s cheeks.

“I don’t know who wrote this,” she whispered, voice reverent, “but it feels like she stole the words out of my chest.”

Her friend nodded hard, biting her lip like she might cry too.

My chest tightened.

What were they talking about?

I opened my mouth to ask, but then the temperature dropped ten degrees.

The storm rolled in.

Alaric Davenport.

He cut through the rows of desks in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than my rent for six months, every line of his body sharp and merciless. His presence wasn’t just seen, it was felt, a blade slicing the chatter clean out of the air.

Conversations died mid-sentence. Screens flipped down with frantic clicks. People froze like prey caught in a predator’s sights.

I ducked my head, heart clawing up into my throat. Please, not today. Please, God, not again.

But for once, he didn’t stop at my desk. He didn’t stop anywhere.

His storm-grey eyes swept the room, narrowing at the faint hum of whispers, but he said nothing. Just a single disdainful flick of his gaze before disappearing into his glass office like a king retreating to his throne.

I exhaled shakily. Relief poured through me, relief sharp enough to sting.

Of course he hadn’t looked at me. Why would he?

The hours crawled, heavy and endless, until finally I stumbled back into my apartment that night. My shoes were kicked off the second the door closed, my hair yanked loose from its bun, my blouse abandoned in a heap on the floor. I collapsed onto the couch with a groan, body begging for sleep.

I just needed something brainless. A scroll through social media. A few stupid memes to blur out the day.

But then...

There it was.

A post filling my feed, burning against the glow of my phone. Shared and reshared, flooding my timeline like a wave I couldn’t outrun.

The title hit me like fire:

Letters to My Future Husband.

And below it… my words.

The ones I’d written last night with ink-stained fingers and a heart cracked clean down the middle.

My chest caved in, air punching out of me. My letter. My private, broken plea, staring back at me, already liked by thousands. Thousands.

I scrolled down in horror, but the comments hit harder than the likes:

“This broke me in the best way.”

“Whoever wrote this, I hope you find the love you deserve.”

“Raw. Honest. Needed this today.”

The world wasn’t just reading me.

It was devouring me.

Every letter, every c***k in my heart, ripped from the privacy of my journal and laid bare under the glow of a million strangers’ screens. My pain had gone viral.

My stomach twisted, a cold, nauseating cocktail of horror and disbelief. My pulse was a drumbeat in my ears.

There was only one person reckless enough. Only one person who’d look at my bleeding words and decide the world deserved them.

My shaking hands dialed before my brain could catch up, fury moving faster than logic. Each ring stretched tighter and tighter around my chest until I thought I’d choke on it.

She picked up on the second ring.

I didn’t bother with hello. Didn’t bother breathing. “You posted it.”

The silence that followed was heavy. Guilt lived in it. A crackle down the line, thick enough to make me want to scream.

“Sienna.” My voice splintered, sharp and wild. “Tell me you didn’t...”

Her sigh spilled through the receiver, soft enough to almost sound like regret. But her words...her words were anything but.

“People needed it, Isla.” Her tone was steady, maddeningly sure. “And now they have it.”

My mouth went dry. My knuckles whitened around the phone.

“Needed it?” I hissed, my voice shaking. “Those words weren’t for people, Sienna. They were mine. They were private. Do you understand what you’ve done?”

On the other end, she was too quiet. Too calm. And that only stoked the fire tearing through me.

“They’re not yours anymore,” she said finally, almost whispering but with a steel edge I’d never heard from her before. “They belong to everyone who reads them and realizes they’re not alone.”

Her conviction hit like a slap.

But all I felt was betrayal.