“You can stay,” I said with a smile. Rob was proving to be the most level-headed person among us now. “I was just getting ready to go inside anyway.”

I turned and headed back toward the door, and as I left, I could hear Rob talking to Adam.

“You need to back off,” he said.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Adam snarled at him.

“Whatever it is that she’s talking to you about; she’s talking to you as a friend, not a lover. Don’t screw that up by confusing the two.”

“You’re just jealous that she came to talk to me instead of you,” Adam said.

“No, I’m glad that she came to talk to you about it first. It will be easier to show her that I’m not such an asshole in comparison.”

I kind of giggled a little bit about that as I walked away, but as soon as I walked inside the cabin and saw Michael sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace alone, I sobered right back up because I was still no closer to finding a way to reach him than I had been before. That’s when I came up with my own idea. It was a little crazy, but then again, so were most of the ideas that ended up being worth anything. I went to go sit down beside Michael on the couch and I leaned over to kiss him as soon as my thigh was flush against his on the seat cushion.

At first, he resisted me, but then he couldn’t help but give in. He kissed me back, wrapped his hands in the hair behind my head, and slipped his tongue between my lips. When our mouths pulled away, I kept my face close to his and talked to him as if I were disabling a bomb—carefully and precisely.

“I am going to show you that you are worried about something that isn’t worthy of taking up space in your head,” I said softly.

“What are you going to show me?” Michael asked as he looked at me curiously.

“Do you know who your father was?” I asked.

“No, not really,” he said. “I only know what I heard. People talked about him at Lineage all the time. The ones who spoke highly of him were the worst of people, and the ones who hated him were the people with compassion and reason; the people that usually ended up being the targets. That, and I also heard the things that my mother would say about him. She told me what an awful and evil man he was, and that if I thought she was bad, I should have been glad that he died before I could get to know him. I was able to put together a pretty awful picture of my dad through all of that.”

“What if he wasn’t so bad?” I asked. “What if it was your mom who was the truly evil one and your dad wasn’t as bad as you thought him to be. What if he was just a victim caught up in an overly ambitious situation like my mom was?”

“That’s highly unlikely,” Michael said. “Everyone that knew my dad is either dead now or wishes that they were. His horrible reputation followed him everywhere, even after his death.”

“Okay, but all I’m saying is that it’s worth looking into since all that you really know about your father is hearsay,” I said.

“What does this have to do with me now?” he asked.

“If your dad wasn’t the monster that you thought him to be, then it would show you that this whole theory about genetic predisposition to be an awful parent wouldn’t apply. It was just self-doubt that you learned from watching your mother and her vile ways.”

“And what if we dig into this and find out that my father was every bit as evil as I thought him to be?” Michael asked.

“Then we will try something else,” I said.

I realized that it wasn’t the best and most encouraging answer, but it was all I had, and it was an honest one. I wasn’t about to give up until I showed Michael that his fears were baseless.

“I will not abandon my love for you,” I said as I stared into his eyes.

“You might not always feel that way,” he said. “You might decide down the road that you want one of the other guys that can give you everything that you want, even a family if that’s what you want in the future.”

“Now you listen here,” I said as I got angry with his obstinance. “You and I are family, and don’t you ever forget that. If we do, or don’t, have children, we can figure that out down the road. But I will not have the reason for you pulling away be because you think I would be better off with someone else that can father a child. This is absurd and you know it.”

He started to protest again, but I was all done listening to it.

“Tomorrow, we start doing some research on your dad. If that turns up nothing, then you and I are going to have another heart-to-heart about how none of this extraneous stuff matters. The only thing that matters is that you and I love each other and there isn’t anything in the world that we can’t work out and overcome together,” I said as I leaned forward to kiss his lips.

“You’re right,” he said, finally calming down about it. “There’s absolutely nothing that we can’t overcome to be together.”

“Nothing,” I said in agreement.

I believed that more than any truth in the universe. Michael would see, one way or another, that he had nothing to worry about and that if we did ever have a baby, that he would make a great father. And, if that didn’t happen and we ended up never having a child together, then that was okay too. Because the only thing that mattered was that he and I were together and inseparable. Still, I liked my idea of digging into some of the past about his father.

Maybe some research would turn up that would help Michael heal from his past childhood trauma.

If his dad proved to be not as much of a monster as Michael was made to believe, then surely that would make him feel better. And if it turned out that his dad was an evil bastard, then it was something that he and I both had in common and we could help each other bury our past demons together, once and for all.

That night, the four of us laid in bed together, arms and legs intertwined. Michael and I were always the last ones to fall asleep, it was like we were internally synched with each other. But tonight, all four of us had open sets of eyes that stared up at the ceiling.

“What are you guys thinking about?” I asked.

Rob answered first. “I’m thinking about how weird it is that we are all still sleeping together but no one is having sex,” he said.

“That’s not true,” Michael said. “Lisette and I—”

I interrupted him before he finished because I didn’t think that his answer was going to help anything. “Adam, what are you thinking about?” I asked.

“I’m thinking about Paula,” he said.

“You’re thinking about my mom?” I asked. “What about her?”

“I was just thinking about how she was such a big part of so many lives, and how we are all more interconnected than we ever realized.”

That was true. It was strange to think about the different ways that we were all a part of each other’s lives, even before we chose to be.

“How about you, Michael?” I asked.

He waited for a moment before he answered. Then he sighed and shifted his body closer to me.

“I was thinking about what we might find out about my father.”

“Does it worry you?” I asked.

I really felt like we all needed a break from worry for a while.

“No,” he answered. “In fact, I was lying here thinking about it just now and I realized that I don’t even care what we find out about him one way or another. It doesn’t matter what it is, because nothing can change what we have.”

I turned my head around to kiss him and then snuggled up with all of them. Michael was right and that night, I was the first one to fall asleep.

23

The internet was definitely not a miracle cure for finding a goldmine of information about Michael’s father.