I need you to remember what it was like when it was just you and Michael, and how you guys were such close friends (even when you hated each other) and how you always had each other’s backs. I need you to be that way again. Michael will fight you about it I’m sure. And he will probably try to go back down the dark hole that he was in when we first met. Promise me that you won’t let him. Be there for each other.

Please don’t come looking for me. It killed me once to have to leave you and it will kill me more if it is in vain.

I hope that someday this will all be over, and we can all be together again. Until that day I will think of you until my thoughts are the only thing that keep me together.

Be safe and stay together and know that I love you.

Lisette

Adam held the letter to his chest and howled with a painful cry that made the mountain wolves pick up the sound and carry it on the wind. His letter was one of the hardest of all, but not the hardest. The only thing that might keep him going was the promise that she asked him to keep, and for her he would do anything. Even if it killed him.

So, he stood up and threw the letter into the dying bonfire and watched as it burned.

Hoping, and praying, he’d one day have her back in his arms for good.

Dear Rob,

I wish we had spent more time making love and less time trying to figure each other out. I want you to know that I do trust you and I’m sorry that I wasted our time as I tried to protect my heart from being hurt again. You were there when I needed you, every single time. You held me when Julian died, you made love to me even before I said the words that you needed to hear. You protected me and waited for me and you made sure that when Julian was gone, you kept his space warm against me.

I know that sometimes the other two guys can be a bit much to handle. And I know that you will probably want to pull away or move on or something when you finish reading this letter. And if you move on and find happiness then I will be happy for you. But don’t pull away if you don’t want to. Stay with Adam and Michael, they’re good guys, you’ll see. If I ever get back to you, which I hope that someday I will, then I hope you’ll still be there too. I may not have said the words, but I think that you know that I love you too.

You are the most level-headed of them. I know Michael tries to be, but he’s more emotional that all the angsty waves in the sea, he just won’t admit to it. Please make sure they don’t try to follow me, and don’t you try to search for me either. I know you probably have the tools and resources to do so, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. I’m doing this to save you all.

Stay in the cottage, drink the whiskey, and maybe one day that giant mountainside garden will be there when I get back.

We’ll need to make love in that garden, because one time was not enough.

Lisette

Michael,

Yours was the letter that I couldn’t write. And it will probably be the letter that you cannot read. But I need you to read it. The WHOLE thing. Please.

When you were shot and nearly died, I felt like I would die too. I wasn’t being dramatic; I was being torn apart. When my mother died, a piece of me died with her. When Julian died, a piece of me died with him. And when David died, another piece of me died with him as well. But you—you I could not lose.

I know that we started out as enemies, but you know what? I don’t think we actually did. I think, that the universe knew from the very beginning that we were pieces of each other. I think that, like how galaxies are made, that we had to slam together in the most violent and painful of ways so that we knew and remembered what it felt like before we were whole together. I think that I loved you even before I knew that I did.

Don’t get mad at me now when I say this—I know you will. You are the reason that I left. But it’s not what you think. I NEED you to be safe and to stay alive. And that was never going to happen unless I left. There is much more craziness and violence and sheer and utter evil that lies within my family than I ever knew about until very recently. It will not stop until it destroys everything that is dear to me and you are the thing that is the most precious to me in this entire world. I left because if anything happens to you, I cannot and will not live anymore. I know that’s a lot of pressure to put on you and I know that you’ll be mad at me for blaming you for my making this decision, but don’t you see? This is the answer you’ve been waiting for. Granted it is being given in the worst and most heartbreaking of ways and for that I am sorry.

I am sorry for last night too. It was selfish of me to want to have one last perfect night with you before I felt like I had to tear my own heart out. I wanted to take one last piece of you with me and give you a piece of myself to carry in your heart.

Michael, promise me that you won’t do anything foolish. Promise me that you will stay calm and listen to Adam and don’t try to find me. If you can do these things then I will make you a promise too, I promise that as soon as I can find a way to get back to you without bringing death and danger, then I will. Because I can’t stand to be apart from you for one moment longer than I have to. If only you knew how much it killed me to write this and to leave you, then you would understand.

I will love you forever, and I will think of you each and every minute of my hours both asleep and awake. Know that I love you and know that I will come back to you. But until then, please don’t hate me.

Eternally yours,

Lisette

Oh, and in answer to your question…no, I would not have chosen Julian. And I think you know why.

Michael dropped down to his knees on the floor. He wasn’t going to read the letter; he knew he shouldn’t have even picked it up. But he couldn’t help himself. Unlike Adam who threw his letter into the fire so that he could focus on what he needed to do now. And unlike Rob, who folded his letter back up neatly and tucked it into his pocket to read again later. Michael pressed the letter to his heart as if it were a piece of Lisette that he could not let go of. He sobbed and his body shook, and he hung his head as he slumped over on the floor.

His cries were so painful that it made Adam and Rob hurt not only for themselves, but also for him.

Adam came and knelt down beside him and wrapped his arm around his friend and held him as Michael’s shoulders shook. Rob stood behind him and placed his hand on Michael’s back just to let him know he was there. They had become friends, all this time while sleeping around Lisette’s body in a heap of bodies on the bed. They had protected her and loved her, and now they all longed for her and bled for her. There was no more jealousy or competition, there was only their mutual and shared sorrow over having lost the one thing that they all loved the most. But even as they shared in that mutual pain, Rob and Adam knew that Michael felt it the most.

They knew that he would be the most shaken and in the most danger of being swallowed whole.

None of them knew what they would do. They didn’t know whether they would listen to Lisette’s plea not to search for her and just stay inside the cottage on the mountainside together, or whether they would chase her to the ends of the earth until they found her and defeated every adversary that threatened to keep them apart. All that they knew right now was that they were broken, and broken things needed to be fixed before they could work again.

For a very long time, they stayed just as they were on the floor. Then finally, they got up. Rob went to get the whiskey and the glasses. Adam went to sit in front of the fireplace hearth and pulled Michael there to sit with him too. And Michael sat staring into the flames with the letter clenched between his fingers so tightly that his fingers started to cramp but he didn’t care.

None of them spoke a single word to each other that night, though. They didn’t have to. They knew the suffering that they all shared. And when the whiskey bottle was emptied, Rob got up and got another.

Before they all voluntarily chugged that one down, too.

27

The drive to Maine was long and tiring and I was pretty sure that I fell asleep for a few seconds at a time behind the wheel and didn’t even care.

When I was almost out of gas, I stopped at a gas station, wearing only Michaels T-shirt and with only the money that Rob had in the glove box of his car. The station attendant was at first going to tell me that I couldn’t come in without shoes on, but when he saw that I looked like a sliver of death with legs, he took pity on me and let me buy gas.

He also gave me a hot coffee on the house because he said he didn’t want me to kill anyone else on the road by falling asleep at the wheel. I asked him what state I was in and how to get to Maine and if I was going in the right direction. He asked me if I needed him to call someone for me and I told him no thank you, that I just needed to know how to get to Maine. Then he said he would tell me and even give me a free map, but that I had to promise to sleep an hour in my car first.

So, I gave him my keys and took the nap.

When I woke up, the light in the sky had changed and I knew I had been asleep for much longer than an hour. The station attendant lived up to his word. He told me which way to go, gave me the map, and another free coffee. I thanked him and got back in the car to drive,

By now the guys would be up, and they would have read my notes. They would be hurt and angry and maybe even as broken as me. I was sure that Rob’s car had a GPS or something that they could use to find me, but I was hoping that they’d do as I asked and not. When I started to drive again, I let myself do what I promised I wouldn’t. I thought about the furs and the bonfire and Michael. And I cried until I couldn’t breathe to cry anymore.

I tried to make out the address that I had written on my hand, but since I’d used my hand to wipe my tears, it was all smudged and hard to see. I felt like I just wanted to give up and sleep and not do anything anymore. I guess that’s what the coffee was supposed to help with, but it didn’t really work because mine was a different kind of tired, the kind that comes from your whole soul being too exhausted to go any further and not just your body. I didn’t even fight it when I fell asleep, I just let myself go. I don’t even think I felt the car go off the road. I think I was all done with feeling anything at all.

The last thing I remembered really feeling, was making love to Michael beneath the furs under the night sky as the flames of the fire sparked beside us.

“Is she alive?”

“I don’t know, I think so.”

“How long does it take for the damned ambulance to get here?”