Once Michael’s hand was free from the wall, I slid my body between his and the wall and stood beneath his raised arm with my face close to his. I put my palm on his face and watched as the tears started to flow from his eyes. His shoulders tensed, and every muscle in his body looked like it was shaking.
“I am so angry,” he said as his jaw trembled, and he tried to bite down on his teeth together to keep from losing control.
“I know,” I said sadly as my own tears started to well up in my eyes for him. “And you are also so sad.”
Michael’s eyes darted between mine, and as he started to cry, I leaned forward to kiss him. I could taste the salt of his tears against my lips.
Michael, a man who had withstood everything, even the cruel mother that he now mourned, was breaking.
And I would hold him together.
Michael sat on the edge of the bed as I bandaged his hand. It was the same hand I had bandaged and stitched up for him before; he was going to have some next-level scars. He had only cried for a moment, and then he had calmed himself down enough for the other guys to let me take him into his room to get cleaned up.
“I don’t even know why I’m so upset,” he said to me quietly. “She was a horrible mother. Hell, I didn’t even like her as a person.”
“I know,” I said as I continued to clean out his cuts and wrap the gauze between his fingers. “But she was your mother.”
“Jack is your father,” he said. “Do you think you’ll mourn him when he dies?”
I didn’t hesitate. “No.”
I would never mourn him. I wish a painful death onto him with my every waking breath.
“Isn’t it the same thing?” Michael asked. “He’s a horrible parent too. He’s a horrific excuse for a human being, but he’s still your father.”
“It’s not the same at all,” I answered.
“Why?”
I hadn’t ever put it into words before, the way that I hated my father so much that it literally made me hurt.
“Because my father destroyed and took away the most precious thing in the world to me. He took my mother from me. He took away the one thing that brought me happiness and peace, and that showed me who I wanted to be.”
“I’m the one who did that,” Michael said with pain in his voice.
“No, you’re not,” I said as I looked his straight in the eye.
“We have all been strong; my mother, me, you…all of us. My father is a coward. He has made other people carry out his cruel intentions, and he has laughed at the suffering of those around him. All that he does is destroy. It isn’t even my hatred for him that will keep me from mourning his death when that glorious time comes. It is my purpose. I can’t bring my mother back, and no amount of hatred for him can. But when the time comes for his death, I will not feel anything at all except for the glorious fulfillment that he is forever extinguished. That is why I cannot mourn him.”
Michael stared at me in awe. I even surprised myself at how strong I sounded just then.
“Your mother was not like my father. She may not have been good to you, but she didn’t take away someone who was. There is no other pain like that.”
Michael bent down over the side of the bed and pushed all of the gauze and bandages that I had resting on my knee to the ground. He kissed me and winced slightly as he lifted me up onto his lap with both hands.
They say there is a fine line between strong emotions; that fear and anger, hatred and passion, sorrow and bliss, are all shades of the same brilliant color. That makes sense when you think about how easy it is for them to bleed into each other.
I sat with my hips spread open against his lap, and as he kissed me, I rocked myself against him until he was too swollen and hard to stand it. Michael flipped me over and in a frenzy of strewn clothes and aching bodies; he thrust himself into me until I was filled completely by his throbbing heat. All the colors of our emotions encircled around us then, as frenetically as our tongues encircled within each other’s mouths. And if I were to imagine what it would be like for the stars to collide in love-making, it would have been this.
The exhaustion that comes when both your body and mind have exerted beyond the limit is swift and complete. Michael and I lay together when our bodies had finally begged for rest, my shoulder laid against his chest as he held his hands wrapped over my breasts, and we both looked up at the ceiling above us.
“I need to ask you something,” he said.
“What is it?” I tilted my head to the side to lean my cheek against his chest, and he kissed my forehead softly.
“Have you told any of us that you are in love with one of us?”
The question caught me by surprise. “No.”
“Is it because you don’t love any of us?”
“No.” I felt his chest exhale beneath me.
Then, he asked the million-dollar question. “Lisette, do you think you will ever choose just one of us?”
It was a question that needed to be asked, but not one that I knew the answer too, at least not yet. I hadn’t told any of the men that I loved them, even though the words had been said to me more than once. But it wasn’t because I didn’t feel the same way; it was because I loved them all.
When I didn’t answer for a long moment, he spoke again.
“If you do choose one of us to be with,” he said. “I want it to be me. I’m pretty sure that I can’t be without you.”
“And what if I can’t choose?” I asked.
“Then I still want it to be me.”
And the power of his words etched themselves right onto my heart next to Julian’s.
