With nearly twenty thousand people living in the city of Traverse City, Michigan, I had told myself the likelihood of running into her would be slim to none when I found out she was moving here.

Apparently, her grandmother bought her a new home. One Adriana never knew about until she met with a lawyer to go over her grandmother’s will. A lawyer I know very well. The irony of how unlikely something nearly impossible like this could happen isn’t lost on me, that’s for damn sure. It shocked the living hell out of me. I’m still in shock, still unable to remotely comprehend she’s within minutes of me. The woman I vowed to protect. Christ, this is unbelievable. Every single day, I’ve been telling myself this is the day I’m going to go see her. Tell her everything. I always end up stopping myself like the coward I am.

My heart tells me it’s not ready, my head screams that I need to figure it out, and my body craves her touch, my ears perk to hear her voice. It’s a sign there’s a possibility I won’t continue to live in hell. “Or else it’s a sign you're going to stay there for the rest of your life, you pathetic ass,” I mumble. The blood pumping to my heart slows down the more I think about her.

I should have gone to her when Hunter first told me she was moving here. I couldn’t. Not when I was flipping the fuck out thinking this was some kind of Goddamn trick and she either found me or was being followed.

I’m being pulled in all kinds of directions when all I want is to go to her. I simply don’t know what I’ll say to her when I do.

But the shit running through my muddled-up brain hasn’t stopped me from driving by the building she bought, or her home late at night, hoping to get a glimpse of her. All I’ve been doing is punishing myself more. “You’ve suffered years of punishment, Blake. What're a few more days going to hurt?” Everything, that’s what. It’s increasing the ache of missing her in my chest with every breath I take without her. I wake up gasping for air with a twinge in my chest that makes me feel like I’m really dying.

All I want is to breathe clean air. Fresh air to share with her.

A month ago, I showed up unannounced in NYC. Hiding in the backseat of my friend Mason’s car. I had to know what in the hell was going on with Adriana moving to the same town I disappeared to. I was once a man who vowed to live on the right side of the law, and I did until it was stripped away from me. Along with my wife and our dreams.

It wasn’t easy to convince the man who helped raise me to understand my reason for showing up in a city I vowed never to go back to. I had to say good-bye to it for good. If she was moving here, then I knew with everything in me that I would never step foot in that state again. I doubt Adriana will understand any of it at all. In fact, I know she won’t. She won’t see that the reason why I left was to protect her and those we love.

I’m sure it hasn’t been a walk in the park for her to mourn the loss of me. It sure as fuck wasn’t for me. I’ve missed her every minute of every day. Time doesn’t erase itself. But knowing I’ll be able to see her face, hear her voice, and gather her in my arms if she’ll let me has been easing my pain. I have to be careful when I tell her the story. I have to make it clear to her how safe we are, that the odds of us being found are slim. That is if I can get her to understand the importance of secrecy along with the likelihood neither one of us may ever be able to return to New York again. It was dumb of me to chance going there in the first place.

I can’t erase time, but I erased my name as if I never existed. In fact, four years ago, Blake Jensen was declared legally dead and Blake Mitchell took his place.

Now, I need to find a way to see her. Regardless of how these past years have come and gone, my dreams have mostly consisted of her as my days blended together. I love her so fucking much I ache without being able to tell her. It was one of the best parts of my day to say and show my love, to steal her heart away from her every time I expressed it.

I’ve lived with a shredded heart for four fucking years over something I was forced to do. Something I’ve regretted; yet as much as it pained me, it had to be done.

Every time I drove past a photography studio, saw a piece of lingerie or a tulip, a heavy, weighted-down brick would lie on my chest. It didn’t matter that I had that bitch locked up tight and the key had been left in the palm of Adriana’s hand. It was her I would see in the window. Her I would see walking out the door. A purple tulip instead of a yellow one, or her body wearing the lingerie instead of a mannequin. Everything was her even when I knew it wasn't.

For the first few years, I did nothing but work in the fields of a vineyard. A recluse not to be seen. A promise to become a silent partner to the man who secretively put me here. I could have brought her with me. But I still wouldn’t have had her. Not really. For she, too, had lost herself along the way somewhere. She was halfway gone before I left. Barely hanging on to her sanity with trying to keep her sister alive. If I had brought her with me, she would have ended up resenting me. I couldn’t bear it. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. “The worst possible nightmare imaginable,” I grumble into the silence of my truck.

When I first moved here, I didn’t know a damn thing about making wine. I was a lawyer, for fuck’s sake, not some harvester sweating his ass off in the fields. Sheltering himself away at night in a cellar full of wine. Needless to say, the growing of grapes, the harvesting, all of it became my life. It didn’t take long to learn how the warmth of the day, the coolness of the evening blends together to preserve the growth of the grapes. How, over time, the changing seasons lead to savoring their acidity until they’re fresh and ripe. I love every minute of what I do. Except I wish I were doing it with her.

I’ve made a hell of a lot of money over the years with the sales of our wines, juices, and tours. I have more money than I know what to do with, and it has killed me not to be able to share my success with her.

I’ve made a few good friends who were placed here for the same reason I was. All of us hiding, existing, but none of us are really living. It doesn’t matter if their circumstances are different. We’re all lonely men who live a profitable yet sad, nonexistent life.

All these years, I could have had anything I wanted. I could have found a new woman. Decided to have a family. The thing is, finding someone else is impossible for me because my heart belongs to her. There isn’t a woman who can compare to the one I gave up, and every day since I’ve paid the price with my heart.

The thought of us not belonging to one another has rotted my soul. I may never be able to call her mine again. Lord knows I have no right to.

“You had to leave.” Once again, I remind myself I did it to save her life.

I thought about her all the time. Hoped she was doing well and that her sister had finally gotten her shit together. I could have asked Hunter, an old family friend and the man who helped me, how she was. If her sister did indeed stop doing drugs, or if Adriana had found herself someone else. I didn’t do any of those things. I needed to leave that world behind. Pretend I was someone else when inside, I was really dying.

I could have found a way to call Adriana when Hunter broke down and told me Alexis did not pull herself out of it. Fuck, I could have come back to her. I did none of those things. I only thought of myself and how watching her fade away before my eyes was too much for me to handle before my own life went to hell.

I hated her sister. God, only Alexis and I know all the reasons beyond what she was doing to Adriana as to why I loathed that woman. I wanted to punish her for being a selfish bitch. For putting the woman I loved through hell. It was too late, though, before I realized that by me faking my death, I had dragged Adriana through hell myself. I know I did. Adriana loved me as much as I loved her. We had goals. Life plans. And her sister fucked them all to hell.

I told Hunter to keep an eye on her for me. To keep her safe. I wasn’t about to hear him tell me ever again how I could have brought her with me and together we could have started this farce of life I live. I couldn’t take her away from her family. The greedy bastard in me has regretted it every day since.

I thought I was doing fine; until I heard her sister had died and a year later, she lost her grandmother. Not in a million Goddamn years did I expect that woman to die. Let alone so close after Alexis did. Guilt. So much of it I can barely stand to look at myself. I know Adriana must feel the guilt, too. She lived with it every day over the death of her parents.

“Your surprise visit to her is going to freak her the fuck out. You better start safeguarding your balls now. Because she’s going to castrate you,” I groan out to myself. My nerves are coming out of hiding. I haven’t been this nervous since I walked out of our house the day I disappeared.

Four fucking years of living the worst mistake I ever made in my pathetic excuse of a life.

She will never forgive me. Never understand why I left her behind.

I haven’t loved anyone the way I love Adriana. How could I even try when from the first moment I saw her, she held my heart in the palm of her hands? Stole my soul and shook it up with hers. We blended. We mixed. Together. The organ beating in my chest is only there to keep me alive. A life I hated living without her.

So, now, here I am, pulling up to a place I’ve driven by many times, hoping she’s here like Hunter told me she would be. Probably should have sent him to explain all of this to her. I couldn’t; she needs to hear this from me; and Lord help me because I need to see her more than I need air, which means everything, since we all need air to stay alive. How I’ve survived this long without her, I’ll never know.

Regardless of the fact that I fucked up her life, there is shit to be done, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to avoid doing this forever. I have a choice to make, and I’m choosing her. It’s always been her.

I swing my truck into a parking spot and shut the ignition off. Close my eyes to gather my frantic nerves. The moment I open them and lift my head is the moment my thoughts go in the opposite direction.

My dick goes from his shriveled state he’s been in for years to painfully hard. Inches of strained, hard cock, a cock that hasn’t wanted to be inside another woman since her. He’s raging. His veins are stretching to the Goddamn max, pulling my balls agonizingly tight. “Fuck me. What in the hell is going on with my life right now? I swear to God this has to be a fragment of my imagination.”

This isn’t a dream at all. It’s reality in the purest form. A calming before the sudden strike of an eruption. I’m actually staring at my beautiful wife.