The words assaulted me, and the pain was too intense to bear. I had to move to my marble countertop, bend to it to rest my elbows on it and hold my head in my hands.

Then it all came and blasted through me in a way that made my head feel like it was going to explode.

You love a man, Millie, you believe in him, you take him as he is. You go on his journey with him no matter what happens, even if that means you have to walk through fire.

His voice was not coarse back then. No abrasion to it. It was deep. It was manly. But it was smooth.

Except when he said those words to me. When he said them they were rough. They were incredulous. They were infuriated.

They were hurt.

Walk through fire.

The tears came and dammit, dammit, they should have stopped years ago.

They didn’t.

They came and came and came until I was choking on them.

I didn’t make a salad with wilting spinach and the dregs of shredded carrots. I didn’t hit my desk and get back to work until all hours of the night, trying to catch up.

Instead I pulled my phone out of my bag, struggled to my couch, collapsed on it, and called my sister.

I couldn’t even speak when she picked up.

But she heard the sobs.

“Millie, what on earth is wrong?” she asked, sounding frantic.

“Dah-dah-Dottie,” I stuttered between blubbers. “I sah-sah-sah-saw Logan at fu-fu-fucking Chipotle.”

Not even a second elapsed before she replied, “I’ll be over. Ten minutes.”

Then she was over in ten minutes.

She took care of me, Dottie did.

Then again, my big sister always took care of me in a way I knew she always would.

The bad part about that was that I never did any of those things I said I was going to do.

I never pulled myself out of my rut.

I never fought my way to strong.

When I lost Logan, I lost any strength I might have had.

That being him.

He was my foundation. He was my backbone. He made me safe. He made life right.

Hell, he made life worth living.

Then he was gone, so I really had no life and commenced living half of one.

Or maybe a third.

Possibly a quarter.

Likely an eighth.

In other words, I was the kind of sister who would always need to be taken care of.

I knew I should wake up one day and change that.

I knew that just as I knew I never would.

* * *

At a party, in a house, twenty-three years earlier…

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

He started it. He’d been checking me out since he got there ten minutes earlier and he didn’t hide it. He came right to me and started it.

I liked that.

I also liked that he approached, not wasting a lot of time.