“Because I promised your mother that I wouldn’t.”

What?

“My mother?” I asked in shock. “What does my mother have to do with this?”

Michael shook his head. He was visibly torn between allegiances, but his main allegiance should have been to me.

So, I took his face in my hands. “Michael, I don’t care what happened, or what my mother told you to do. You have to tell me. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to be open with me about this. I thought that we were past all of this. I thought that we weren’t hiding things from each other anymore.”

“I’m not trying to hide anything from you, Lisette,” he said, looking like it was physically paining him to speak to me about whatever this was. “But if your mother hadn’t helped me; you and I would not be together right now. The only thing that she asked for in return, was that I never tell you what happened.”

I was feeling doubly betrayed now. Not only was Michael hiding a secret from me, but apparently my mother had been as well. If he didn’t start spilling whatever this was about, I was going to completely lose my shit.

“You hated my mother,” I reminded him.

“No, I didn’t. I helped her in the end, remember?” he asked.

Okay, true. But up until her death he still didn’t like her much. Our family and his were on opposing sides of the field.

“What do you mean that we wouldn’t be together right now?” I asked. “What did my mother do to help you when you were younger?”

“She saved my life,” he said as he raised his head to look straight into my eyes. “And that is why I ended hers with peace and dignity, and eased her suffering. I owed your mother my life.”

My head was spinning.

“How did she save your life?”

“When I was small, shortly after my father had died; my mother had high ambitions that she wanted to achieve for herself. She didn’t want anyone or anything to stand in her way.”

Yep, that completely sounded like his mom. She was a horrible woman, and an even worse mother.

“That included me,” he said. “My mother tried to kill me, and it was your mother that came in and saw her attempt it.”

“What?”

Michael tilted his head up toward the ceiling and pointed at a thin scar that ran along the circumference of his neck. I can’t believe I’d never noticed it before now. It was so faint, and so thin, and so high up under his chin, that I probably would have never noticed it unless he pointed it out.

“This,” he said as he traced over the scar with his index finger, before lowering his head again, “is from when my mother tried to kill me. She was strangling me with an electrical cord when your mother happened to walk into the room. Paula stopped my mother and she took me back to your house.”

“I don’t remember seeing you at my house,” I said in shock.

“That’s because your mother made sure that you wouldn’t see me there. She put me in the spare room and tended to the wounds on my neck. A couple of the spots were so deep that they had cut through the skin and needed a stitch or two.”

“Why wouldn’t she want me to see you?” I asked.

“We were supposed to be rivals. Our families were supposed to hate each other and so were you and me. Any deviation from that narrative put us both at risk,” he said.

“If my mother saved your life, then why did you always act like you hated her so much?”

“Again,” he said. “It was the narrative. I never hated your mother. And the only reason that I ever hated you was because of how much I wanted you and couldn’t have you.”

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with us now,” I said.

“Don’t you see?” Michael said as he squeezed my hand and looked into my eyes as if he were a suffering animal that needed to be put out of its misery. “That wasn’t the only time my mother tried to kill me, and it wasn’t the only time that your mother stepped in to spare my life. My father was an evil bastard, that much I was raised to know, even though I didn’t know much about him before his death. And my mother was even worse. It runs in my genes. If I ever have a child, what’s to say that I wouldn’t do the same thing?”

“You think you would kill our child if we had a baby together?” I asked in horror.

“I don’t know. I mean, I certainly don’t want to, but what if it just happens. What if I can’t control who I am, any more than I could control wanting you?”

Okay, this was ridiculous. “Michael, you’re worrying irrationally. The mere fact that you’re even worried about it, shows that it’s not something you would ever want to do. I think that you’re just overthinking things and that you’re freaking yourself out. You just need to relax and show yourself some grace. First of all, I’m not pregnant and I’m not going to get pregnant. So none of that is going to happen unless and until we want it to. Secondly, you are not your parents. If anyone should have been a good example of that, it should have been me. I spent all that time chasing down my own mother’s dream until it quite nearly destroyed me and all of you. It cost Julian his life. You can’t go making the same mistakes that I have, not when you’ve been here to see my own mistakes play out. You are your own person, and there is no way that I believe you would harm your own child. In fact, I think that all of the shit you’ve been through will probably make you a better father than most men are.”

“That’s nice of you to say, Lisette, but I just don’t know if I believe that.”

We concluded the conversation with very little progress having been made. Michael seemed to be at least talked down from the ledge a little bit, and he didn’t have that crazy, far-away look in his eyes anymore. But he still didn’t seem to be buying in to what I said.

The next few days made me worried because it seemed like Michael was pulling away from me and that was not what was supposed to be happening now. This was the part where we were supposed to be having our happily ever after moment. Instead, Michael seemed distant as though he was trying to protect me from himself. It was driving me crazy and I wanted to get through to him so badly that I was just about willing to do anything and seek help from anyone in order to get Michael to stop pulling away from me.

“I have to say that I’m surprised you would come to me for advice about this,” Adam said as we took a walk outside together.

I needed to be out of earshot of the others so that I could talk to him. I didn’t want to upset or worry Michael, and I knew that Rob would most definitely not approve of me going to Adam for advice. But Adam knew Michael better than Rob did. They had been friends and roommates, and I needed someone else to talk to about what was going on with Michael and how to get him to come back to me.

“You’re his friend,” I said. “And you know him well. I need to get through to him and I need him to stop beating himself up about things that he was born into and has no control over.”

“Honestly, Lisette, if Michael is flat-out telling you that he doesn’t want to have children, then you should probably accept that as his true feelings on the matter. I mean, why else would someone even say that?”

“He didn’t say that he didn’t want to have a baby,” I said. “He said that he couldn’t because he was afraid that he would do something to hurt the child.”

Adam stopped walking and turned to look at me with a look of disgust on his face.

“Remind me why you’re even still considering this as a viable relationship?” he said.

“Adam, that’s not at all helpful,” I frowned.

“No Lisette, I’m serious. I don’t even care if you want kids or not. But can you honestly look me in the eyes and tell me that you’re okay with the idea that if you did somehow become pregnant with Michael’s child, that he would want to inflict harm? That’s messed up.”

“He doesn’t mean it like that,” I said as I tried to get him to see that Michael was just so worried about what he thought might be a predisposition to bad parenting, that it had him thinking illogically.

“I don’t care how he meant it,” Adam said. “You deserve better.”

“See, now I feel like you’re just trying to use this as a way to put a wedge between Michael and me again,” I said. “I came to you for your help.”

“I know you did,” he said. “And that’s what you’re getting. Any rational person would say the same. You just can’t think clearly about it because you’re letting your feelings for him cloud your judgement.”

“Any rational person would say what?” Rob asked as he walked over to where we were.

“Private conversation,” Adam said.

“I don’t think so,” Rob replied. “Not unless Lisette wants me to leave, that is.”