Qhuinn lifted his hand up, the hand that had been on the letter his brother had written. And as he brushed at the side of Blay’s face, it was tenderly.

“Don’t cry,” Qhuinn whispered.

“Am I?”

Qhuinn nodded. “I’m going to try to get through this. I don’t know what I’m doing, though, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

Blay put his hand over Qhuinn’s, and then he kissed that palm. “However long you need, I will wait. Whatever you want from me, I will do. Wherever you go, I will be right there with you. If you still want me like that.”

Those beautiful blue and green eyes closed. “I love you so much right now, too.”

Instantly, all of the tension disappeared, not just in Blay’s own body, but in the air between them. What had been stuck was now unjammed, and the release was so great, Blay trembled.

The kiss they shared was soft. Reverent. More of a vow than anything else.

And then they eased apart, and both stared down at the letter.

Dear God, Blay thought. He hoped that what was in there . . . didn’t drive them apart all over again.

Qhuinn’s hands started to shake as he eased a finger under the envelope’s flap. There was a lot of resistance, and somehow he wasn’t surprised that his brother had taken care to make sure it was properly sealed. Luchas was precise like that.

Had been precise like that.

Opening the envelope slowly, Qhuinn pulled out . . . a single sheet of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven copier paper. The page had been folded in thirds, and there was only writing on one side—and at first, his eyes just focused on the handwriting. The pen was the same Bic that had been used for Brother Mine, the same one that was on the bedside table, and the cursive script was beautiful, flowing, yet easy to read, each letter executed perfectly.

“He had such wonderful penmanship,” Qhuinn murmured as he ran his thumb down one of the margins. “And look at how straight the lines are. I don’t think he used a ruler. I think he just . . .”

Did it the right way, as he’d been trained.

Before Qhuinn started reading, he had a thought that his brother was so much better than multi-purpose office paper. Luchas should have had personalized stationery, embossed with his name and address at the top. Maybe with a pen-and-ink drawing of the family house as a header.

As Qhuinn trained his eyes on the salutation, he considered reading the letter out loud—but his throat was too tight for that. So instead, he leaned forward and moved the sheet of paper so that it was in between him and Blay.

Dearest Brother Mine,

Firstly, allow me to apologize. You have always been far braver than I, and I believe that what is about to happen proves this truism once again. I am sorry that I am not strong enough to continue upon this path from which I cannot escape, but I am tired. I am bone weary of the pain and the restlessness, and of late, the unchanging nature of my body’s compromises. All has worn me down, whereas you would have persevered. I am weak, however—and the biggest regret of this weakness is that in my actions you may search for, and feel that you find, some sort of personal culpability. Allow me to assuage your conscience. This is naught to do with you.

Secondly, I beg of you a favor. I realize that this is an imposition. For certain, if you are reading this, I am gone and you are in pain. It is entirely unfair of me to ask anything of you in your current state, and yet I beg of you this. Please go unto our family home, and into the confines of my former bedroom. There is a loose floorboard where my bureau was. Hidden beneath it is a secret I have kept. There have been times when I nearly broached this matter that I have kept to myself, but in the end, I was too cowardly. I think I also had hope that I would heal enough to be an advocate for mine own interests. Alas, that did not come to pass. You will know what to do.

Finally, I need you to believe me when I say that our parents chose the wrong son of whom to be proud. I am the failure. You, the paragon. You should be so proud of all you have accomplished, and I wish our sire and mahmen could see you the now. You have proved them all wrong, wholly wrong. You are a Brother. You are a father. You are the mate of a wonderful male. You are everything anyone could have wished for in a son or a brother.

As Fate would have it, my own Honor Guard, the one that I deserved, came and found me. Those lessers and their hateful master were no less than I deserved, and they killed me many times. In retrospect, I believe part of their interest in me was in the reviving. I, however, intend to finish this night what they started. I am well done with resurrections of all sorts and I welcome the abyss. I am through with the seesaw between life and death.

I love you. I pray that you will believe me when I say that this choice is mine and mine alone. Perhaps you are angry at me, maybe you are in sorrow. I wish for you neither of these. I am just so tired. I want to sleep.

With my most sincere love and affection,

Luchas

Qhuinn closed his eyes. Then he read it all again. And a third time. By that last go through, he didn’t even see the words. He simply heard his brother’s voice in his head, the sound so missed that his heart skipped beats.

“Are you . . .” He took a deep breath. “Are you finished?”

Next to him, Blay nodded.

“I’m going to put it away now.” When his mate nodded again, Qhuinn carefully folded up the page and slipped it back into the envelope. “I wish we could have fixed him. I wish . . . our love had been enough.”

And he really wished he could have had a conversation about that night he had come home to their parents’ house to learn that he’d been sent away on purpose because Luchas had been going through his transition. That night when he had removed his makeshift belt and strung it up to the shower head. That night . . . when Blay had arrived in a nick of time.

“You saved me,” he murmured. “That night. In my shower.”

There was no need to offer further details. They both knew exactly what evening he was referring to: Sure enough, as he looked over at Blay, his beloved was staring off into the distance. No doubt the male was remembering when he’d had to bust down the bathroom door and manhandle Qhuinn off the shower head.

“I am so glad you called me,” Blay said roughly.

“I didn’t. You called me.”

“Did I?”

“You seemed to know.” Qhuinn put his hand on Blay’s knee. “You’ve always known.”

As Blay’s eyes blinked quick, Qhuinn reached for his mate, and then they were stretched out on the bed, their heads on one king-sized pillow, their bodies so close they were ankle to ankle, hip to hip, as they lay on their backs. The letter and its envelope stayed on Qhuinn’s chest, over his heart.

“I’m sorry my brother was in such pain,” he said. “And I wish . . .”

Blay turned on his side, and it was automatic, to reposition things so that the male was lying in the crook of Qhuinn’s arm.

“You wish you could have stopped him that night?”

Qhuinn put his free hand over the letter. “I wish I could have told him it gets better. I’ve been where he was. Hopeless, helpless. And now look at where I am. I never could have predicted how my life turned out—I certainly wouldn’t have hoped for even half of the good things that happened to me. Maybe the same was just around the corner for him. Maybe if he’d held on . . .”

“We’ll never know,” Blay said sadly. “And neither will he.”

“I wish I knew that he got into the Fade.”

“That has to be a cautionary tale—that whole ‘suicide keeps you out of the Fade’ thing has to just be a cautionary tale.”

Qhuinn frowned at the ceiling. “Does it? It got started for a reason.”

“Your brother was a just male of worth. It wouldn’t be fair.”

When was life guaranteed to be fair, Qhuinn thought.

He turned his head. Blay was staring off into the distance, his lashes low, his mouth slightly parted, his hair smudged on one side from his having drawn his fingers through it. His cheek, the one that had been cut by that tarp in the storm, was fully healed, nothing marring the smooth skin.

As Qhuinn remembered the two of them in the garage, him armed with a bandana and thoughts of a gurney, Blay batting his hand away from the minor injury . . . he felt a striking warmth in his chest.

The swell of love permeated his body, filling him up from the inside out, replacing the cold numbness that had frozen him in place even as he had moved and breathed and pretended to be among the living.

With reverence, he stretched over and pressed a chaste kiss to his mate’s forehead. “I’m so glad you’re here with me.”

As Blay lay beside his mate, he was grateful for a lot of things. For one, there was the fact that he and Qhuinn were actually lying together on their mated bed—and not just in a side-by-side, separated-bya-duvet-divide sense. And then there was his inclusion in the reading of the letter. He had wanted to be invited into his male’s grief so that he could help in some small way, even if it was just by being witness to the pain—and now it appeared that he had been.

Considering where the night had started, miracles had been granted.

And yet he was still feeling like shit. He’d read the note to himself twice, and what stood out to him were not all the reassuring things, the hopes for peace in the midst of the chaos of the choice Luchas had made. It was the reckoning.

Intrinsic in the words, in the decision, was a vista, a long view on where Luchas had been and where he was—followed by an extrapolation of the future that had provided no relief at all. If anything, the more-of-the-same had no doubt been yet another burden on top of so many others.

Whether or not it was true, Blay had decided that his conversation, which surely had been one of Luchas’s last, had provided that view. Or at least perhaps the ledge the male had been standing on as he had regarded the valley of his life as it unfurled before him.

God, if Blay could just go back and not have said a thing. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything, but at least he would be free of this sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach.