“How did the accident happen?” I asked.

I didn’t remember anything about it at all. I barely even remembered driving, which was probably the problem. I knew that I was too tired and too emotional to be driving, but I drove anyway. I was running toward something that needed to be dealt with, and also running away from something that I couldn’t bear to leave behind.

“You ran your car off the road when you fell asleep at the wheel,” Michael answered.

His expression looked full of pain. I knew that he was angry at me for leaving. He was probably exceptionally angry at me for leaving the way that I did; disappearing after a wonderfully intimate night of lovemaking, and leaving nothing but a little note behind.

He looked more hurt than angry right now though, and I didn’t know what to say to make things okay again. I don’t think Michael knew what to say or how to make it okay either, because instead of asking me what he really wanted to ask me, he regurgitated the information the nurses had told him.

“They said that you’re lucky to be alive,” he said as he tried not to let his voice crack. “A kind couple stopped when they saw your car and they called the ambulance and stayed there with you until the emergency workers arrived. The nurses said that you have a few broken bones, some bruised organs, and you lost a lot of blood so you’ll feel weak for a while, even with the transfusions that they gave you.”

“When can I leave here?” I asked.

Michael looked at me harshly. We were both just dancing around the conversation that we really needed to have. But I couldn’t forget why I had left to begin with. I needed to make it to Maine, and I needed to make it there before my Aunt Naomi did. Michael was hesitant to answer my question. How could I expect him to tell me when I could leave again, when the only thing he wanted to know was why I left in the first place; why I left him. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I couldn’t stand feeling this awful heaviness between us that was pulling us apart like an undertow.

“Ask it,” I said as I stared straight into his eyes. “Ask me the question that you want to ask.”

Michael’s eyebrows wrinkled and the corners of his mouth dropped into a frown that he could no longer keep from quivering.

“Why did you leave?” he asked.

His voice sounded desperate, laced with anger and sprinkled with the pain of abandonment and betrayal.

“Why did you leave me?” he asked, a bit more softly this time.

The tone of his voice broke my heart, but it didn’t stop my answer from pouring forth.

“You almost died,” I said as I pleaded with him to understand how I could have broken our promise to stay together and left him with more questions than answers. “Naomi nearly killed you. Don’t you understand what that did to me? I can’t lose you, Michael. I couldn’t just sit by and do nothing while I was constantly worried that Naomi would come back for you again and again, until she finally succeeded in killing you. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. I’d rather die.”

He leaned in close, his gaze filled with both love and fury. “Now you know how I feel then,” he said.

Michael stood up as if he were about to leave and lifted his hand from mine before turning to walk toward the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “Are you leaving?”

He stopped walking and stood completely still with his back to me. Then, Michael turned around and I saw the tears streaming down his face in an uncontrollable swell of emotion.

Then, he snapped.

“Why don’t you get it!?” he shouted at me, his hand white-knuckling the edge of the door. “What can I do to make you understand that I can’t leave you, Lisette. You can try to run away a thousand times, and I will come looking for you each and every one of those times. You can tell me that your reasons are to keep me safe, or to chase some noble cause, or whatever the hell reason you convince yourself into believing. But I will always come after you no matter what you say, because I simply have no choice. I can’t live without you, and you know that. So, stop fucking acting like you don’t know, because I’m tired of it.”

I was frozen in a shocked and shaken silence as I saw Michael standing there in front of me, broken, and raw, and painfully honest. He was right, and I had been wrong again. I had tried to protect him and the others, but look what ended up happening instead. I broke Rob’s car, I broke my own body, and I broke the heart of the one person in the world that I knew I couldn’t ever truly be without. I should have known not to leave. I should have just told them everything and we could have worked out a plan together. Leaving never works out well for me, and I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“Please don’t go,” I whispered through my tears.

“I’m not leaving, Lisette,” Michael said with a sigh. “I was just going to get some coffee from the machine.”

“Don’t even leave to go there,” I said as I sniffled between my tears and tried to hold back the sobs that were right at the top of my throat. “I’m sorry. You’re right and I made the wrong call about this whole thing. I shouldn’t have left, especially not the way that I did. Please forgive me, and please don’t go.”

Michael walked back over to the bed and he gently slid me over on the thin, stiff mattress. He sat down in the bed next to me and pulled me up onto his shoulder. Then he turned his head to look at me and lowered his face to kiss my lips. And the second they connected, everything else in the room melted away: the lights, the beeping machines, the tubes and wires. All of it disappeared with each caress of his tongue. The only thing that I felt was the soft press of Michael’s mouth against mine. The feeling of his warm body seated against my own. And when he pulled his lips away, I rested my head onto his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms tighter around me.

“I won’t leave, then,” he whispered.

I must have fallen asleep like that, because the next thing I knew, it was nighttime. I opened my eyes and saw that the bright lights had been turned off and the room was quiet, except for Michael’s slow and steady breathing, indicative of a deep and exhausted slumber. I was guessing that neither of us had slept much while we were apart. He felt me lift my head up from his shoulders and he woke up too.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said groggily. “I just lost track of time and got disoriented. We need to leave here, Michael. We need to get to Maine.”

“Maine? Is that where you were headed? Why Maine?” he asked.

In the darkness of the hospital room, I laid in Michael’s arms and told him everything that I had found out about Naomi and my mother’s inheritance. I told him about my estranged uncle, Mark, who I hadn’t even known I had. Apparently, Mark was my mother and Naomi’s older brother, although I had never once seen him (or at least remembered seeing him) throughout my entire life. I told him about the inheritance that my mother had left to me and the condition that was put on it. And I told him that I had not only found out that Mark lived in Maine, but that I had also told Naomi that’s where I was heading.

“Why would you tell her that you were going there?” he asked. “That will lead her straight to you.”

“I was trying to lead her straight to me. That was the point; to get her away from you guys and have her chase me all the way up to my inheritance money,” I said.

“Forgive me if this sounds rude,” Michael said bluntly. “But that is a really stupid plan. What were you intending to do once she got there?”

He was right. I actually hadn’t even thought about a plan for what to do when Naomi chased me to Maine and found me at her brother’s house. I had only thought through enough of the plan to lead her away from the guys so that I knew they would be safe.

“You didn’t have a plan?” he asked when he saw the look on my face.

He sat up and eased me back down against the pillow before hovering over me.

“Oh Jesus,” Michael sighed. Even in the dimly lit room, I could see him roll his eyes. “Well, now we’re going to Maine together, and we need a plan.”

“Agreed,” I said as I rolled over onto my hips a little.

Everything still hurt, but I was aching to get out of the hospital. I didn’t see the need for the IV and all the shit that was taped to and protruding from out of my body. I hated hospitals and I would much rather be recovering in pain somewhere, than stuck to machines and given pain killers.

“I want to leave here,” I said.

Michael could see how uncomfortable I was, and I think he understood. It hadn’t been that long ago that the tables were turned, and it was him in the hospital instead of me. I think he remembered how awful it was.

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know. I’ll work on the nurses as soon as the morning shift comes in and see if I can find out when they’re planning on releasing you. There are still a few hours before anyone will be around though.”

“I guess we should use this time to talk about a plan then,” I said.

I was tired still, but I knew that I couldn’t get back to sleep. I was uncomfortable and anxious, and I really just wanted to stay awake and hear the sound of Michael’s voice.

“Actually,” he said. “There’s something else that I’d like to talk to you about first.”

“What is it?”

“I read the note that you left me.”

His voice sounded wounded even just mentioning that note, and I felt sick with guilt and regret. I could have only imagined what kind of anguish I had put him through when he found and read that note. I was getting ready to say something along the lines of an apology again, but he kept talking.