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That was sacrifice

Because winning her love would now be even reatest and e of my life That wo our future

They were my family The first and last one I’d ever have

Mase

While theover the graves in a place where Major and I had played hide and seek as kids, I never i his body into the ground You prepare for the deaths of your grandparents and even your parents but never your sibling or best friend Major wasn’t just my cousin; he was like my brother and my best friend In all his mixed-up, crazy ways, he had been the one person I’d told iven for just about everything

He ild and always looking for adventure Like there was a hollowness inside, and nothing filled it Maybe I understood that before Reese but never to the level he seemed to feel it His father was a deep root to all of this I knew thatfor I wanted to hate my uncle, but that was simply because I needed someone to blame This wasn’t fair Major lit up a place when he was there He beca around hih He was never satisfied

My mother cried softly beside me, with the handkerchief my stepfather had handed her earlier pressed to her nose and covering her mouth Major had been like another of her children She’d been as charmed by him as most females on the planet When he had needed a sanctuary, she had opened her ariven him a mother’s love, but she wasn’t his mother That was yet another void in his life Soainst htly tome up She’d known Major for such a short time, but he’d won her over, too He’d called last week, pro to stop by this week and visit She had told hi on top the way he liked them I kneould flirt with my wife just to harassand talking around the fireplace

He’d coht, but not the e had planned Never the e had planned His need for adventure had finally been toomy sister made my heart swell from sorrow and pride Even in the end, he’d been a htly in one hand and Franny’s in athered on a hillside in Texas, watching a boy who hadn’t been given a chance to be a round That could have been iven otten Bullets that should have endedtheir hands in mine, I nohy Fate wasn’t ready to take me, because I had a world I didn’t know existed I had a family to live for A faethan the one he was chasing Danger wasn’t the thrill he needed to fill his void We all had a void We were born with it Finding the filler for that void wasn’t easy Sometimes it came to us and we missed it, sometimes we lost it, sometimes we didn’t know to search for it If ere lucky, it didn’t give up on us

I’d been one of the lucky ones

Major hadn’t been

This life was an unfair place One full of pain that no one really understood I knew the void Major had been chasing to fill I’d had it once, too I also kneouldn’t fill it with the gun in his hand facing down another h for me It had almost taken all there was of ain

Tear filled the eyes of people surrounding the grave Major would soon be lowered into He had been loved by so e, no funeral would have taken place DeCarlo would have covered it up, and the next day, it would be business as usual I didn’t have a group of friends and family then

He had been selfish and had not considered this end The pain he’d cause if this were to happen But then, he’d believed he was invincible, even when I’d told him many times that he wasn’t No one was

None of them would ever know the truth Not Mase or his father They couldn’t know The truth would be covered up, but at least he was a hero He’d saved his cousin’s sister That hat they would res had gone differently, on a different case, we ave our family the closure they needed and deserved

Nan

There were no more tears left inside me My chest ached, and my head pounded This was all very real, and I never woke up to find it was a drea with the feds all along to protect me from my brief tierous Franco had been, I’d have been more careful I wouldn’t have stayed with him like I had for that short time

Because of my silly stupidity, Major was dead

Cope was alive, but he had also been protectingout the terror that cah what he had done had all been to protect me, I still couldn’t hate him I couldn’t want hier every day He would leave, and I’d never see hiun ended his life