“So this is the same D’Angelo guy from the hotel today? He was the one pulling Micah’s strings about killing you?”

“Yeah, he is like the banker, I guess. Someone comes to him with a hit, and he holds the money and assigns the hit man. When the job is done, he makes the pay-off.”

“If you hadn’t gone to the hospital that day to try to help your mom, you would have waited for him to come back, wouldn’t you, even though he said he was going to kill you?”

“I didn’t have a choice, Ryan. If I’d run, then Micah would have been killed. I don’t know if he could have actually done it, but I’ll never forget the way he looked at me when he told me my time was up.”

“Why,” he asked with his eyes large and round, “did you get back together with him?”

“I told you, I am so honestly in love with him. He’s not really that way. It’s just how he was raised. He’s changed everything to-to…” I had done well up until this point in only allowing a few tears to fall, but as soon as I considered everything Micah had done to change his life, to make a new life with me, I collapsed inside. It was like an implosion of the worst kind. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe and what was worse was I didn’t want to breathe.

He had changed his world for me and now I had pushed him away-I had no choice, but at the moment all I wanted was to be selfish and run back to him. To keep him for myself and the consequences be damned, but I knew if I did then one day very soon he would hate me for what I’d done to his family. “Oh, God, Ryan, what is he going through right now? He knows by now that I’m gone. He thinks I’m some trashy whore who couldn’t make up her mind about which guy to sleep with. He must hate me so badly. Oh, Ryan… Oh, God,” I sobbed, my shoulders convulsing from the depth of emotion coming to the surface.

He pulled me into his arms as I disappeared into my pain. In all the points in my recent life when I had felt broken, nothing ever, ever hurt so badly as what I was feeling now. All I could see was Micah’s face and the hurt, pain, anger and betrayal. All I wanted at that moment was to disappear from the planet earth, but I didn’t know if even Heaven could heal the gaping wound inside my heart. The full effect of what was irreversibly put into motion this morning was like the impact of hitting cement after jumping from a high rise, obliterating everything inside me.

I must have literally cried into unconsciousness because when I woke up it was dark and I was tucked into a bed-alone. I got up and found Ryan asleep in the adjacent bedroom. It was two in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. I imagined Micah was awake wherever he was at the moment.

I pulled the cell phone from my purse and sat there for another hour trying to decide if I should turn it on. I wanted nothing more than to call him, to hear him answer his phone as he breathed out my name. I would at least tell him how very sorry I was for what happened. I wanted to tell him I loved him with all my heart, but that wouldn’t make much sense when I needed him to believe I left him for Ryan.

I finally turned it on and noticed I had twenty-seven new messages. I didn’t want to play them, but I knew his voice was waiting for me at just the push of a button. The first message began the slow tearing of my heart from my chest.

“Hey baby, call me as soon as you get this message-I just need to know where you are right now. Call me back.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I know you love me, Annalisa. Don’t do this to us, please baby. I can forgive you for anything, just don’t leave me.”

“Why won’t you at least answer the damn phone? Tell me what I did wrong-and then tell me what I can do right to fix this. You’ve got to at least talk to me, Leese, please. I know you’re listening to this message-if you ever loved me, call me, baby.”

There was a message from my mother begging me to think about what I was doing to everyone, Micah’s family, her and Kimmy, and even to Ryan, “I never thought of you as selfish, honey, but this was the most… God, Leese, what’s gotten in to you?”

There were twenty three more messages, two more of them from Mom as she balled her eyes out and asked me to come home, and twenty-one more messages were from Micah’s cell number, but they were all silent. The silence hurt worse than the pleas.

I was still awake when dawn broke. There was no need to go back to bed as I groggily walked to the kitchen. Even though I wanted food, coffee would do for now. I think the sound of me in the kitchen must have disturbed Ryan’s sleep because I could hear him moaning and tossing around, but he didn’t wake.

The coffee finished perking and I poured myself a cup and unlocked the sliding doors that led to the back porch. A mist was lying down the intensely green mountain side as I sat in a rocker and watched a hummingbird by a large flowered bush at the end of the porch. It was so peaceful to look out upon when my inner self was in total shambles. I heard the sliding door as Ryan appeared carrying a cup of coffee; he didn’t appear to be fully awake.

“Not a morning person?” I asked. Micah and I had both been early risers.

“Absolutely not,” he said, rubbing his sleepy face, “but you? I figured you were a morning person; morning people always seem to be so bubbly.”

“Jewels is bubbly, I just like to get up early no matter what mood I’m in.”

He laughed, “Yeah, you’re right. She was off the charts bubbly most of the time-it drove me crazy.”

“So was there ever any chance for the two of you to get together?”

“No. She wanted to try her wings out at-at sex, but I wasn’t-”

“Jewels?” I said, clearly surprised. “She wanted-”

“Yeah, like majorly bad. I think I was the complete opposite of what her parents would approve of and that was a big turn on for her.” He shook his head at the memory and breathed in the vapors rising from his coffee cup.

“Well, I’m impressed with you. Most guys would have been happy to oblige her, especially if it was her first time.”

“I suppose you’re right, but I honestly didn’t want my first experience to be in the back of my Trans Am with her cheering me on to make the goal.”

I wondered for a moment if I’d heard him correctly. Did he say his first experience or hers? I stopped the rocker and stared at him, mentally reviewing what he’d said.

“Big shocker, huh?” he laughed lightly.

I still hadn’t found the speech button for my mouth. This 6’3” tattooed, Air Force bound, electric-blue-eyed, raven haired angel was exactly what I had been four days ago-virgin. Now I really heaped a huge pile of guilt upon the ashes of my life. He risked everything and ran away with someone who could never be with him the way he was hoping to experience. And, for that matter, how was he ever going to find the right girl as long as he was in my company?

“That wasn’t your-your first kiss back at the hotel, was it?” I was cringing hard.

“I’ve kissed girls before…” he said.

I took a breath.

“…but never the way you kissed me, Leese. I usually back away if a girl wants to try getting that hot and heavy.”

I rolled my eyes heavenward as they filled with tears.

“Don’t be upset about it,” he continued, “they were the best kisses of my entire life.”

“God, just send down a lightning bolt right now and fry me,” I whimpered, still looking up.

He looked up at the sky and then back down at me, “Don’t talk like that.” He grabbed my arm and made me go back inside. Yeah, he and I both knew I deserved that lightning bolt.

“We’re doing your hair,” he stated, setting down his cup of coffee and grabbing the boxes of color and frost on the table, “come on.”

I think I was still numb up until he rinsed out the first batch of dye. He was towel drying my head and had gotten a little too rough when I snapped out of it.

“Yikes, give me that towel. You’re about to remove my scalp!”

“Oh, sorry,” he said and then went for the blow dryer.

“I can do that part myself.” I handed him back the towel. It usually took me twenty minutes or more to dry my hair when it was long, now it seemed to be dry in five.

“Okay, now we’ll streak it,” he stated matter-of-factly, getting the product out on the bathroom counter with all the little foil papers. “Crap, this looks complicated.”

“I don’t have to have streaks,” I argued.

“We bought it, you’ll look good with them so you’re getting them, got it?”

“All right hair-god, but if my head goes up in flames, it’s your fault.” Why did I worry? He could work in a salon, even if that isn’t what he considered macho enough for his persona. I looked fabulous when he was done with me.

The red dye didn’t go quite as smoothly as the blonde. He just didn’t have enough hair to keep from getting it on his skin. Once the time was up and I rinsed it off his head, it wasn’t so bad, but it was certainly different. I didn’t, and I don’t think he did either, consider the shocking contrast with the red hair and the blue eyes.

“I look freaky,” he remarked as he studied his reflection in the mirror.

“We’re dying you back to black before we leave here.”

“Nah, it’s cool.”

“Ryan, it looks like your heads on fire-you’re going back to black.”

He grinned as he put himself cheek to cheek with me as we looked at the blonde and the redhead in the mirror, “Whatever you say.” He kissed my temple and walked away.

The rest of the day was spent lounging on the comfortable couches in the living room and flipping between the news and the weather channel. Ryan snoozed most of the time. He wasn’t kidding about not being a morning person. At the rate he was sleeping, I’d be lucky if he was a late afternoon person.

It didn’t surprise me there was nothing on the news about me, especially since we’d kept every detail about the wedding hush-hush from the press. I chuckled to myself as I considered we had the tightest security possible during the wedding because it was provided for us by the mob; even the most die-hard paparazzi would have been dissuaded.