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“Say that you’ll stay… and help us preserve the memory of Connor together.”

Sixty-Six

DALLAS

I sat there in a daze, trying desperately to understand. Attempting to comprehend what they were saying… what they actually meant by the words coming out of their mouths.

“Y—You want me to stay?”

They nodded collectively.

“With all of you?”

“Of course,” said Austin.

They were looking back at me casually, like they’d just suggested something simple like going to the movies. Like they hadn’t just dropped some incredible, life-altering proposal in my lap, with all the nonchalance of asking what I might want on my pizza.

“Stay with you,” I said again. “As in… as a…”

“Girlfriend,” Austin answered. “Yes.”

“More than that though,” Kane grunted. “Much more.”

My mouth was dry. My head was spinning.

“What’s so hard about this to understand?” said Maddox, smiling. “We love you. We need you.” He shrugged. “We want to be with you.”

Now the whole kitchen was spinning. I put my hand on the table to stop it.

“But… it’s not fair to you,” I replied, kicking myself as I said it. “You all have lives. Or rather, you had lives before all this, and you gave those lives up for me.”

The kitchen was silent again, except for the ticking of the clock. That damned clock. I wanted to break it.

“You’ve been protecting me for so long, you don’t have anything else,” I said. “Maybe you don’t want me. Maybe you’re just used to me. You know, having me around. On your monitors at first, and then in your home.” I swallowed dryly. “And then... well…”

“Do you love us?” Kane asked suddenly. The question seemed even more abrupt, coming from him.

“With all my heart,” I said immediately.

“Then that’s all that matters.”

I felt warm, but it was a good warm. An enveloping warmth that brought with it peace and comfort.

“Dallas listen,” said Maddox. “We could all go our separate ways. Maybe meet other people, eventually even fall in love. We’d marry different women. Raise families…”

I felt a pang of jealousy. It came from out of nowhere, hitting me hard, surprising me fully.

“But then we’d lead different lives,” Austin went on. “We’d be forever apart. Forever separated by divergent paths.” He paused for a moment. “Yet with you…”

“With you’d we’d remain together,” Maddox finished for him. “As a unit. The unit we’ve always been.”

“The unit we’re best at,” Kane added.

A hand touched my cheek. Maddox was kneeling now, turning my face toward his.

“We already love you Dallas,” he said. “And you love us. It could work, the four of us together. We’d be more inseparable than any couple ever could. We’d be a team.”

Together. Inseparable…