Three Broken Promises

Prologue

I don’t want to let her go.

She’s going to leave me and I can’t stand the thought. I’ve been coasting through life, confident with the fact that she’s always there. Working with me, living with me, talking with me, laughing with me, and sometimes, in those rare moments we never discuss, late, late at night when we’re all alone, crying with me.

Lying in my bed, wrapped around me like a vine wrapping around a trellis. Her hands in my hair and her breath on my neck, making me feel so alive I want to tell her how I feel. Tell her what she makes me feel.

But I’ve never had the courage to confess.

Now, she’s leaving. Wants her freedom, she claims. As if I’ve been holding her down, holding her back. I’m offended, when I know I shouldn’t be. She’s not ungrateful. She appreciates everything I’ve done for her. And I’ve done a lot—probably too much.

Guilt eats away at my insides. I started doing everything for her out of that sense of guilt. Truthfully, it’s my fault she left her family. My fault she ended up all alone, on her own, struggling to make it, subjecting herself to things no woman should ever have to do. Until I swept back into her life like some sort of Prince Charming on my mighty steed, saving her from a world of shit.

As time went on, the guilt I felt slowly but surely morphed into something else.

Something real.

I have to be honest and tell her how I feel. I need her. Desperately. Losing her would be like losing a part of myself. I can’t risk it. I think . . . holy shit, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with her.

But I’m the last guy she should be with. I have this way of ruining those I’m closest to. No way could I do that to her.

No way can I let her leave me, either.