“Michael, please,” I said as I walked over to him and reached to place my hand up against his chest.

He backed away from me and I looked at him helplessly.

“Don’t be upset with me,” I said. “I was hoping to figure this out before it turned into anything.”

“I’m not upset with you, Lisette, although I should be. I would have every right to be since you yet again tried to hide something from me so that you could go off and try to solve it on your own.”

“You’re right,” I said. “And I’m sorry. I won’t ever do—”

“That’s not what I’m upset about,” he said. “I just can’t be around you right now.”

Michael turned and walked quickly out the back door as I ran after him.

“Michael, wait!” I called before stepping out the door behind him.

I felt a hand grab my arm and hold me in place.

“Let him go,” Adam said.

I wrenched my hand away from him and glared at his dark eyes.

“Haven’t you caused enough trouble for one day?” I hissed at him. “Why did you tell him? I told you to wait.”

“I told him because he deserved to know,” Adam said. “And to be quite honest, as much as the guy sometimes drives me crazy, I’m getting a bit tired of you putting me in the position where I have to be the one to tell him the truth about things. Michael is right; he should be upset with you, and you’re lucky that he’s not.”

“Well he sure seems pretty upset to me,” I said as my face contorted in worry. “Why else would he back away from me and not talk to me about this.”

“Adam is right,” Rob said from behind him. “Michael isn’t upset at you, I can tell. It’s just too difficult for him to be around you right now.”

“Why?” I shouted in sheer frustration.

“Because he thinks the two of you might be brother and sister.”

“So, what now? He’s just going to ignore me and pretend that I don’t exist until he feels better about things and can talk to me?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Adam said. “Lisette, you need to give him time. He loves you, but not in the way that a brother loves a sister. He wants you. If it ends up that you two are related, then you’ll never be able to be with each other again.”

“Don’t you think that I understand that?” I cried. “I am every bit as upset about this as he is, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to shut Michael out. That just makes things even worse.”

“Just give him some time with this one,” Rob said as he took my hand and pulled me back inside the cabin. “He’ll come around eventually.”

Adam eyed our hands and the way that Rob had threaded his fingers between mine. He looked suspiciously at the both of us and I felt as if he could see right through to what had happened between us in the car before we got here. I knew, of course, that he couldn’t, so I pulled my hand back from Rob and then acted as if it was no big deal.

“So what did you two find out from that man that you went to go and meet?” he asked. He was trying to get a read of our reactions and find out what else happened, besides our dealings with Mr. James.

“Absolutely nothing,” Rob answered. “Turns out the guy had never actually laid eyes on Michael’s dad. All of their interactions had been via phone or email. The trip was completely useless.”

“I disagree,” Adam said.

For a second, I thought that he was going to call us out and accuse us of getting intimate with each other and breaking the agreement that the guys had; the one that Adam had been chastised for not following. It would make Rob seem like a hypocrite, and it would damage the now-fragile trust between me and Michael even more.

“I think it was a very useful trip,” Adam continued. “Because it gave me a chance to talk with Michael alone and now the truth is out in plain sight for all of us to see.”

“Again, I will tell you that we don’t even know what the truth is,” Rob said.

“Yes we do,” Adam argued. “The truth is that both Lisette and Michael have at least a small reason to think that they might be siblings. That is where the truth lies right now.”

There wasn’t any way to argue that because Adam was right. Even if neither one of us admitted it out loud, both Michael and I were worried that we might be brother and sister, and that small dose of worry was enough to fortify the simple truth that we both thought it was a possibility; no matter how small.

That night, Michael didn’t come to bed, so I left the bedroom to go and look for him. Adam and Rob both protested from their comfy spots on the bed and told me that I needed to leave Michael alone. I was sick of hearing them say that and I didn’t care if he wanted to be left alone or not. When I walked out into the living room, I saw Michael laying on the couch in front of a cold and empty hearth. There was no fire, no blanket, only a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the floor beside the couch.

“Aren’t you coming to bed?” I asked him as I timidly went to go sit beside him.

He didn’t scoot his hips over to make space for me to sit with him, so I just remained standing by the couch next to him instead.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Do you really need to ask me that?” he answered.

“Yes,” I said.

“Because you may possibly be my sister,” Michael said, and he looked up with such a pained expression that I felt like my heart was being ripped out.

His eyes filled with tears and he looked every bit as miserable as I felt. “I can’t be around you Lisette, I’m sorry. I know you want to pretend like everything is okay until we figure this out, but it’s not. Every time I see you, I want you. Every time I’m near you, I want to touch you and kiss you. My thoughts are consumed with making love to you, and when I watch you move, I want to be inside your body so badly that I can’t stand it. The thought of never being able to have you again is killing me. Just being around you right now is making me feel like I would rather die than be unable to touch you. And if I were to come and lay down in that bed right now, I don’t know what I would do.”

“Why do you think that you are the only one going through this?” I asked him as I started to cry. “I feel each and every one of those things that you just described too. But I can’t bear the thought of not having you around me. I don’t want you to sleep out here on the couch, in the cold, alone. I want you to come in and lay down with me; whether it is as lovers, or siblings, or whatever we end up being to each other. I feel like this is killing me too, but not having you near me at all is a million times worse than all of it put together. Please come to bed, Michael.”

“You don’t understand,” he said as he sat up on the couch and shook his head. “I am tortured by you. And if I come put my body up against yours in that bed, I may very well not care that you could be my sister. I may not care that the other two guys are in that bed with us. I may not care about anything other than having you in order to drown out the sinking feeling, the aching pit in my stomach that haunts and torments me with the idea that everything I want, I cannot have.”

“Fine,” I said, trying to be as stubborn-headed as he was being.

I understood his angst and anguish because I was feeling it too. But he was making it worse; this was making it worse. “If you won’t come in the bedroom to sleep, then I will sleep out here with you. I won’t let you make this harder for us both.”

I sank down into his lap on the couch, ready to lay with him and fall asleep in the cold and uncomfortable living room. But as soon as my body touched his, Michael grabbed me harshly by my wrists and pulled me up alongside him in a standing position. He held me at arm’s length and squeezed my wrists so hard that they hurt. There was an angry burning in his eyes.

“Don’t—do that again,” he said with a growl that I had never heard him use toward me before.

Adam and Rob showed up at the doorway.

“What’s going on?” Adam said calmly as he saw Michael holding me by the wrists away from him.

“Take her out of here,” Michael said as if it were a command that they would follow.

Much to my surprise and disappointment, both Rob and Adam acted like it was.

Adam walked up and wrapped his arm around my shoulders and as he pulled me toward him, Michael let go of my wrists. My skin stung from where his nails had dug into me. He was actually angry at me; maybe even furious. But this wasn’t my fault. This was something that was affecting both of us and we should be there for each other instead of pretending like the other didn’t exist.