I could still smell him on my skin, still taste him on my lips as I cradled our son close to my chest and heard the lock click as I closed the door behind the two of us. It was so hard. There was a part of me that screamed to turn around and go back. To shred the note stained with my tears, slide back on my engagement ring, and curl up beside him in our bed and whisper how sorry I was for what I had nearly done. But I didn't. Instead, I kept moving, sheer blind will moving me from the front door all the way to the parking garage, and the Lexus. I tucked Malachai into his seat, and he murmured sleepily, but was quickly back asleep again. And then I slid into the driver's seat, locked the doors, and caught the sight of my hand upon the steering wheel. The hand where the ring had lain upon my finger since the first moment he'd slid it on, and asked me to be his wife. Now, it was empty, and foreign looking to me there against the black of the steering wheel's leather covering. I flexed my fingers, and then, I felt the tears fall ... in torrents.

With my son sleeping behind me in his carseat, I fell apart. I know he won't understand, that he'll be hurting, but I think, I hope he'll see that what I've done was the best thing for us all.

I have felt loss, felt grief, but never has a pain been so bone-deep as this. I hurt in a way that words can never express, and though they seem so trivial, so worthless scrawled upon paper.. they will always be true. I love him. I always will.

****** ****** ****** ****** ******

[ The letter left upon the nightstand of their bedroom, with Abri's ring carefully set atop it.]

Mi amoré,

You will wake in the dawn of a new year, and find both myself, and Malachai gone. I know you will be angry, and hurt, but even in such states, you'll know what I say here, in this letter, is the truth.

Things have changed between us, and though we have brushed past then, and danced around them for months now, there is no denying that we're not in the same place we were when we first whispered the words that scared us both to death to one another.

You are a wandering spirit, a rock star with a nomadic desire, and I know that, have always known that. For two years you've been a rock, steady in your dedication to our son ... to me. It's not just you who feels the longing to be free, Fallon, I can hear it in the band, see it in them, just as I see it in you.

My time is here, my place is here, in New York, with the Agency I've built from the ruins of those who held it before me.

I'm leaving now, while you sleep, because I know if you wake, I won't be able to get up the strength, or the courage, to leave. Things have been good, but they haven't been what they were...and I don't want us to grow to the point where the love we hold for one another turns to hatred, or resentment. I couldn't bear to have that happen, and despite our best arguments, we both know in time that everything would take its toll, and we would reach that point.

I love you, Fallon. I will always love you. Malachai is testament to what we had together, to how beautiful things were then.

You know how to reach me, and I've enclosed the address where Malachai and I will be staying.

You may never forgive me, and I have to accept that.. but never.. never doubt that my heart breaks even as I write this.

Your Chimera Always,

Abri