I sat down in a chair between Adam and Rob and stared at my feet while we waited for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the doctor came out and told us that we could go in to see Michael. I tried so hard not to run to the door that I had to hold both of the guys’ hands on either side of me to keep me from launching to my feet. As soon as the nurses left and we were alone in the room, I fell onto the side of his bed and laid my head against Michael’s arm.
I cried and whispered to him that I loved him and that I was so sorry that this had happened.
Then I lifted my head and looked at him. He had wires and tubes poking out from everywhere. His eyelids were taped closed and something looked like it was stuck down his throat. The gown over his chest was closed but I could see the stains of blood coming through it. I held his hand carefully because there were even tubes and things sticking out of veins in his wrist.
“The doctor said he should wake up in a day or so and that after a couple of weeks in the hospital he should be well enough to go home. They said he was lucky, and that aside from some scars on his chest he shouldn’t have any lasting effects from this,” Adam said.
I knew that was all supposed to be good news and that I should be happy about the fact that Michael would be “lucky” enough to survive, but I wasn’t. I was full of guilt and despair that this had happened to him and I wasn’t going to let it happen again. No one I cared about was going to be hurt again.
The next few days were agonizing. I sat beside Michael’s bed and watched as he woke up and began the painful process of healing. I always thought that the mental and emotional healing was the worst pain someone could go through and that the repairing of having to put your mind and feelings back together after they had been ripped apart, was about as painful as it could get.
But after seeing Michael’s body suffer through the pain of rebuilding itself internally around the places where five gunshots entered his body, I was beginning to rethink my leveling system for pain.
When he was finally well enough to return home, the four of us went back to Lineage only long enough to pack our things and get back in the car to go to the cottage in Asheville. Naomi was still at Goldshire and she would still be coming after us I was sure. That was why it would be so hard to do what I had to do. But for now, I would pretend none of that was coming and I would simply enjoy the time with the men I cared about and relish in the moments that I had with them.
The drive to Asheville was even longer now that I knew time was short. I gave it a couple of months, maybe three at the most. I sat in the backseat with Michael and I couldn’t bring myself to let go of his hand for even a second on that ride.
He thought that I was just happy he was home. Which I was, but there was more to it than that.
“Oh god, I have missed this place!” Michael beamed as soon as we walked in the door to the cottage.
He was so happy that he tried to pick me up and swing me around, but he ended up stopping short when the pain in his torso doubled him over.
“You have to be careful,” I reminded him gently. “You can’t push yourself like that until your body is ready.”
He coughed and flinched a little and then grinned at me. “But my body is ready.”
“You know what I mean,” I laughed.
It’s hard to be happy and to lie to them. It’s hard to act like my heat wasn’t being ripped out of my chest every moment that I forced myself to smile.
“Well, I didn’t hear the doctor say anything about not indulging in a glass of barrel-aged bourbon,” Adam joked as he pulled the bottle down and set the glasses out.
I rolled my eyes. “What is it, like, noon?”
“You don’t have to have any,” Rob teased.
“Oh please,” I said as I snatched up one of the glasses that Adam had poured.
We sat around that whole day and talked about the things we would do and watched the snow fall outside and listened to the crackling in the hearth. I wondered why it seemed like the seasons passed by so quickly when certain moments seemed to take forever to get through.
We had left Lineage under the care of a temporary proxy until the advisory council voted in a new headmistress. I didn’t want the job anymore. All four of us were very happy to walk away from it and to come here. It wasn’t exactly how we had planned for it to work out, and we hadn’t lived out the year that we were going to give it at Lineage, but that was fine.
“Hey,” Adam said as we were all snuggled up on the couch. “What happened to that promise you made?”
“Which one?” I asked. I knew which one he meant.
“The one about which of us you would choose. Seems like we all ended back up here together, but you were only supposed to pick one of us.”
“You want me to send a couple of you packing?” I teased.
Everyone laughed including me, even though it hurt to do so.
“Maybe you can all stay here together,” I said seriously now. “You’re all good friends now, right?”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “We are. But I still don’t think that we can all share you forever.”
“Forever is a long time to think about, isn’t it?” I asked as I snuggled my head against his shoulder. “Let’s just think about right now for now.”
This was how I liked to be, with my head on Michael’s shoulder and my hand in Adam’s lap, and Rob’s arm reached over to my thigh.
The snow that winter was so fluffy. It just begged for us to play in it, which of course, we did.
“Ouch!” Adam said as a snowball hit him smack in the jaw.
I squealed with laughter. “That was not me! I swear, that was Rob!”
“Lies!” Rob called over his shoulder as he ran away from the incoming onslaught of snowballs being launched from Adam’s packed hands.
We ran around on the snow-covered ground like kids, hurling snowballs at each other until Michael caught me by the waist and the two of us fell down onto the pile of cold, wet snow and waved our arms and legs against the ground to make snow angels. Michael was pretty much fully recovered now. He could train with the other guys and pick me up and spin me around again. He seemed like he was right back to himself aside from a few scars on his torso that I just told him made him look like a badass. We laid in the snow and when he saw me start to shiver, he crawled up over on top of me and covered me with the heavy blanket of his body heat.
“I want to make love on the mountaintop again,” I whispered to him as the other two guys were still occupied running around and hurling icy snowballs at each other.
Their faces were starting to turn red from all of the smacking impacts that they were turning into a snowy death-match.
“Well I’m not sure that winter is the best time to do that,” he grinned at me. “We would probably freeze most of our tender body parts off if we tried. Unless we had a LOT of blankets, like the actual Viking-style fur blankets. Then it might work.” He laughed and his body jostled against mine and made me tremble with excitement even through the big, bulky winter clothes. “Otherwise,” he said. “We’re going to have to wait until the spring arrives.”
“But what if I can’t wait until the springtime?” I asked.
