I can’t catch my breath. My heart is hurting so deeply for Michael. There’s so much to process and I’m trying to do it in short bursts, but he keeps giving me more and with each new detail, I’m robbed of air. This isn’t something I can digest and ignore. This will take days to truly understand and I want to understand. I need to know the hell that Michael has been locked inside. I need to, because as much as I try to run…I want Michael for keeps. I want him to stay and as stupid as it sounds, someday I hope he will come to care about me. I have so many questions. What did he mean when he said Jan was a bitch? What happened with Lucy? Was he able to talk to Skull and Beth? Did he tell Briar how stupid and thoughtless it was for him to bring children in to see him? Did that entire club have no idea of the pain and misery Michael was living with? Did they not get that they were adding to it? I bite my lip and try to keep concentrating on nothing but Michael. This is important. In this story there is something I really need to know.

“Do you still…do you still resent…” Crap. I’m messing it up. I don’t know how to ask what I want to know, because I’m scared of the answer.

“Do I resent Maggie?” he asks, showing me he understands. I hold my head down in shame. I hate that I asked him that, but at the same time I need to know.

“Yes,” I breathe the word quietly, so quiet you can barely hear it.

“I can’t lie, Beauty. I did. Then, slowly, Maggie became something else. She became hope.” I look up at him then, waiting for him to explain. Needing him to.

“Hope?”

“Before I met you, I told you the world had changed for me. I was being swallowed by the blackness inside of me. Somehow you, even against my will, managed to get under my skin. You taught me how to breathe, how to take in clean air. Holding you in my arms, hearing your laugh, sliding inside your body, I didn’t feel the black as much anymore. I felt hope. I saw…beauty. You gave that back to me, Hayden. That’s why I call you Beauty, because you gave it to me again. When I didn’t think I would ever see or feel it again, you gave me beauty.”

He’s said so much for me to take in. Michael’s words slide inside of me in a way I know I’ll never be able to let it go. If I was smart I would run away right now, push Michael away anyway I can. He’s injured deeply inside and the damage is so intense, I’m not sure it can ever be repaired. I know more than anyone that life doesn’t give you happy endings. Everything inside of me is screaming for me to run. Instead I pick up one of the extra pillows, pull it into my lap, and reluctantly take my hand away from his.

“Hayden?” he asks, and I can hear the concern and anxiousness in his voice. I keep my head down and close my eyes for a minute. I just need to give myself time to pull my reactions in. “Hayden?” he prompts again.

I let out a large breath. My mind is a mess. My emotions are a bigger mess. My mind keeps repeating over and over, “Pull away, pull away.” My heart is demanding something else entirely. I slide off the bed, clutching the pillow as if it was a lifeline. Finally, I bring my head up to look at him and before I can stop them, words come out. Words that probably should never be spoken. Words that might prove my downfall.

“You can keep calling me Beauty,” I tell him, completely giving in against my better judgment. I watch as shock streaks across his face as clear as day. He expected me to run. I expected me to run. Slowly I watch as one by one the shadows of the memories he had been discussing begin to fade. It’s like watching the sunset. Beautiful, poignant and breathtaking.

“So I don’t have to pay a fee this time?” he asks, and his eyes are sparkling. He looks younger like this. He’s attractive—even fascinating. Terrifying. He’s terrifying.

I toss the pillow at him and sigh, “You can sleep on the floor tonight. That will be your fee.”

“The floor?”

“You said you can’t rest in another room. So, sleep on the floor,” I mutter, blushing and trying to avoid his eyes.

“There’s a bed here.”

“My bed.”

“It’s a big bed, Hayden.”

“It’s not that big, Michael,” I tell him shaking my head.

He growls in complaint, but before he can try to talk me out of it. I escape to the bathroom and close the door on him. I lean against it hoping I didn’t just make a huge mistake…and being terrified that I did.