“You sure about this?”Michael asked as his voice quietly cut through the small space between our faces while the other guys slept.

I missed this—the late night talks that Michael and I would have, since neither of us could ever seem to calm our minds down enough to fall asleep.

“No,” I said with a whisper. “But I’ve never really been sure about anything, to be honest.”

He nodded. “That’s fair.”

“But is it really fair for me to drag all three of you along with me into this mess again?” I asked while I played through my thoughts out loud.

I knew that I didn’t want to be separated from them again, but I also knew that what I was asking of them was a lot.

But Michael hit me back with that harsh, yet wonderful, wisdom of his. “Things aren’t ever fair in life. You and I know that better than almost anyone. The best any of us can do, is to just do our best.”

I laughed a little under my breath. “That’s pretty deep,” I teased.

“Yeah well, every once in a while I say something meaningful,” he said as he stifled his chuckle. “The most meaningful thing that I ever said, was that I love you.”

I leaned my head toward him and felt his lips meet with mine. There was a deep feeling of comfort knowing that no matter what kind of trouble I found myself in, or what bad decisions I might make, Michael was always going to be there to back me up and save my ass if needed. And I would always do the same for him. I mean, I loved Adam and Rob too, but not like this.

Not with the intensity that I could feel Michael inside of my bones.

When our mouths pulled slowly apart, I tilted my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes. I knew that I still wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I wanted to quiet my mind and think. I thought about Julian for a moment, and the days that the four of us had had when Julian was still alive. Then I thought about the time that Julian and I had before any of this had happened; before I had met Michael and Rob, before my mother had been killed, and before I knew that any part of this violent world existed.

I wondered for a few minutes what Julian would do.

I wondered if he would tell me to take the money and get the hell out of here while we still had the chance to, or if he would tell me to go back into the lion’s den and try one last time to honor the life of the woman who mothered us both, even if it might prove to be a completely awful idea. Deep down, I knew what Julian would say.

He would tell me to follow my heart.

The problem that I always had with that advice, was that sometimes my heart led me in more than one direction. Sometimes my heart felt more like a whole network of veins that branched out into a million different directions, each wanting its own thing and heading on its own path. That made it difficult to follow my heart without being torn apart in the process.

I pressed my eyes closed tighter as I heard Michael’s breathing change and knew that exhaustion had finally gotten the better of him. I needed rest, too, but my brain wouldn’t let me.

If only there was some sort of way to know that I was doing the right thing.

Pick a path.

The thought popped in my head randomly.

Just pick a path and do it.

His voice was so clear-cut in my head that I couldn’t have denied it if I wanted to.

“Thanks Julian,” I whispered.

Then, I slipped off into a fitful slumber, hoping to wake up to a better day that, for once, didn’t spell ‘disaster’ for all of us.

In my dream, everyone was there—everyone.

We were all sitting around a giant round table: me, Michael, Adam, Rob, and even Julian. My mother was there, and so was my father and David. Even my Uncle Mark and Aunt Naomi were there. Everyone was sitting around a large, circular, wooden table that was so wide that it seemed to stretch for miles between us.

And no one was talking.

It looked like everyone was just waiting for something to say. But then I thought of something to say and opened my mouth to speak. As soon as I did, it was as if someone had flipped a switch or pulled a lever, because suddenly everyone started talking at once. All ten people at the table, including myself, began a rambling discourse right over the top of each other. I couldn’t hear what anyone was actually saying, not even myself. All I could hear was noise; the sound of urgent and aggravated voices that didn’t even seem to be taking breaths between words.

I tried to shout over the top of all of them, to tell them to be quiet and take turns so that I could hear what they were saying. But no one listened.

If the voices had been visible, they would have looked like a mass of tangled knots being hurled back and forth across the table. The louder that I became, the more that all the others raised their voices as well. Until finally, I just gave up and went silent.

And as soon as I fell silent, so did all of the others.

I looked at each one of them in turn, aware that I was inside of a dream and trying to figure out what the message was that was being relayed. Was I supposed to be listening to everyone? Was I supposed to stay quiet? Whatever this dream was supposed to be telling me, it was only confusing me more. I turned to Michael who was sitting right next to me at the table. When I opened my mouth to get ready to ask him something, everyone at the table opened their mouths as well. I looked around without speaking at everyone’s hanging jaws, and the moment that the first sound started to come from my throat, it started in theirs too. So, I closed my mouth to be silent again.

I didn’t want to get wrapped back up in that verbal knot anymore.

I heard a tapping sound and looked back over at Michael whose finger was hitting against the top of the table, right next to a few words that looked as if they had been scratched into the wood. Words that had already been echoed to me by my best friend, my confidante, and a man I missed more than my own mother some days.

“Listen only to yourself.”

And when I looked back up into Michael’s eyes, I smiled.

With all of them smiling at me in return.

5

In the middle of the night, my few moments of restless sleep were interrupted by a crashing sound that shattered the silence in the bedroom and left a reverberating echo inside my skull. All four of us sat straight up in the bed and my heart was pounding furiously from waking up so quickly from a deep sleep.

“What is it?” I asked in a whisper as the noise continued and the sound became a clearer indication of a scuffle or commotion.

Adam was the first to the door, with Michael right behind him, with Rob standing near me as we followed them outside of the bedroom carefully and quietly.

“I told you to stay out of this,” Naomi’s voice screamed from inside of my uncle’s bedroom.

As soon as I heard her voice, I froze. Rob grabbed me by the hand to make sure that I stayed still and stayed quiet as Adam and Michael crept closer down the hall toward Mark’s bedroom.

Then, we all heard Mark’s voice. “That money doesn’t belong to you, Naomi. It was Paula’s and she wanted her daughter to have it. You and Paula were so close; why would you want to go against your sister’s dying wish? What do you even need all that money for? I’ll take care of you, if you want. I’ll make sure that you have everything that you need and that you never need to worry about money. You don’t need to keep trying to steal from Lisette.”

“I don’t want your money,” she snarled at him. “I don’t want any money touched by a man’s hands.”

He snickered. “I’m not just a man, Naomi. I’m your brother. Whatever disillusioned notions you have about men don’t apply to me. We’re family.”

“Now see,” Naomi’s voice said as it turned several shades darker and more manic. “That’s just like a man to assume that the woman is the disillusioned one. Maybe you’re the one who is disillusioned. Maybe you should have realized that you needed to stand down and stay out of my way. Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t understand what’s really going on, Mark.”

She bit through his name almost as if she wanted to bite his head off with her own teeth.