Back at it again with a new chapter. Again, thank you so much for the positive feedback! I have a lot of ideas for upcoming chapters, this one focuses on Michael and Amanda while they were separated (apologies if the ending seems a bit rushed on this one.)

"Ahhh!" Michael slurred as he was shocked awake from yet another nightmare. Blindly, he wildly waved the gun in his hand around his empty bedroom before coming to his senses, realizing that whatever danger he'd been in wasn't real. "Oh, fuck," he whispered, dropping the gun onto the sweat dampened sheets like it was a hot iron scalding his skin with each passing second. With a labored sigh, he sat up and put his head in his hands, nearly knocking over the glass half filled with whiskey next to him over. He immediately picked it up and downed the remainder of the golden liquid, figuring that getting at least a little bit drunk would help ease the pain of the bad dream.

It had been a while since he'd had nightmares as bad and frequent as these. Most of the time he felt comforted in the presence of his wife, no matter how distant they'd become, but she was gone. They were all gone. His hold on the glass tightened, knuckles going white with the force. You brought this on yourself, didn't you? You were a depressed asshole so they moved out, a voice inside his head coldly reminded him. The glass finally shattered, no match for his destructive hand. A hand that only knew how to hurt, how to kill. So useless now that he looked back on it. "God damn it," he muttered as a sharp pain hit him. Eerily fascinated, he watched the blood from the numerous cuts in his hand drip onto the floor along with the broken glass, whatever wasn't embedded in his skin, that is. Michael stood up uneasily, the shards crunching beneath his shoes. Whatever. He'd get rid of it later. It wasn't like he had anyone to clean up for, anyways.

Cursing, he stumbled through the closet and into his bathroom, barely having enough energy to raise his head to look in the mirror. Remnants of his torture he'd barely escaped from alive a few days ago still remained. His face had been relatively unscathed, save for the fading black eye and bruises dotting his jawline. The dark stubble on his jaw was a sharp contrast to his ghostly white pallor and he looked almost gaunt, probably a side effect of consuming almost nothing but alcohol the past couple days. It had turned out the physical wounds were the ones that were the easiest to heal.

He still thought of the way the knife cut through his skin, how he watched the blood run down his body, how he could practically hear how his ribs crunched as a baseball bat smashed them even now. He remembered how his insistent pleas of how they had the wrong guy were met with a punch to the jaw. At first, he didn't care, he had nothing left to live for anyways. That he deserved all the bruises, all the scars. That he deserved to die. But as he'd been hanging there from a meat hook, staring at the machine where he would have meet his end, he realized how much he wanted to live, or rather how much he wanted to live a better life.

"This is gonna hurt like hell…" he said under his breath, only partly referring to the fragments lodged in his palm. Reluctantly, he started pulling them out with his free hand, grimacing in pain. Many tiny shards later and one large, agonizingly deep one, he was done. Michael carefully flexed his injured hand, examining the damage before he turned the sink on, which had become stained red with his blood. He ran a hand under it, the water turning pink as it ran over the cuts.

Finally, he wrapped a bandage around it, barely sparing enough time to pop a couple of painkillers before staggering back into the bedroom. Michael kicked off his shoes before starting to take off his bloodstained suit. Well, one of them, anyway, he noted with a bitter chuckle. Stripped down to his boxers, he slipped beneath the sheets, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling lifelessly. Maybe he could get a couple hours of sleep before the sun inevitably rose in a few hours. In a few hours, he'd get up, drink some more to dull the depression, and probably receive a call from some higher being wanting him to do their illegal bidding. But he was fed up with it, tired of it all. Tired of drinking until he passed out on the couch every single day, tired of doing the FIB's dirty work, tired of being alone.

A glint of light off of his hand caught his eye. His wedding ring. He couldn't bring himself to take the damn thing off, even though there had been plenty of times he hadn't worn it while they were still together. Part of the reason was his out of his own stubbornness. If he actually did, he knew that he would have finally given up, that he'd let her win this twisted game they had played for so long. The other part was that he still did love her, no matter how horribly he showed it. No, he wouldn't take it off...not yet. At least not until the divorce papers showed up.

He laid on his side, staring at the spot where Amanda would be. Should be. Those two regretful words filled his mind: what if? What if he had apologized to her on the day she left instead of giving her more incentive to abandon him? He figured some of the anger would drain from her but she'd give him a sad little smile, those blue eyes staring straight through his, and tell him that it was a bit too late for that.

With a sigh, his gaze shifted upwards to the message on the mirror she'd written to him with her red lipstick. Fuck you very much, it practically screamed at him. As much as he wanted to blame her for having the affairs and leaving him, he knew that most of the reason she did was to get payback for him cheating on her and maybe to get his attention. He winced as he thought back to an argument they'd had on the phone after he'd caught her with that tennis coach.

"Is he dead?" she asked angrily.

"I didn't kill him...but I shoulda," was his cool response.

"Well, he isn't answering his cell and he didn't show at the tennis club."

He almost laughed despite the circumstances. "Hm, must have skipped town. As he shoulda."

"Next time, I'll run your street skank outta LS," she snarled.

"If I bring one to the house and ask you to pay, you're more than welcome," he replied before hanging up on her.

He'd really screwed that up, hadn't he? Michael shut his eyes and let out a remorseful sigh. He briefly wondered how his wife and kids were doing. A small part of him hoped they felt the same way, maybe he wouldn't feel so helpless. "Ah, who am I kidding?" he mumbled into his pillow. They were probably off living the good life with that fucking yogi. Without him. With a low growl, he turned over to the other side of the bed and grabbed his phone off of the nightstand. He pulled up the contacts list, staring at Amanda's picture. His finger hesitated over the call button. She had to be asleep, it was almost three in the morning. Even if she wasn't, what would make this call any different from the many others that she had ignored?

"Fuck...I miss you," he sighed as he took one last longing look at the picture before he tossed the phone back on the nightstand and closed his eyes. Maybe one day he'd have enough confidence to go face her and try to fix their relationship.

I fucked up.

Those were the only three words that Amanda's addled mind could form. It was only now that she was realizing this, two months after leaving her husband and having sex with Fabien, who had rolled over and fallen asleep without another word. Making love, she almost scoffed at how ridiculous that sounded. In the end, she hadn't felt satisfied. She only felt like a trophy, a prize he had won. In a way, she knew she was. The fact that the yoga instructor was a complete prick didn't help anything either. She swore if she had to hear one more thing about how 'impacted' she was or even think about the word 'namaste' again, she'd scream.

Me and my stupid pride, she thought numbly, pulling the sheets up to her chest. That had always been a problem for both her and Michael, especially in the last few years. Especially when she'd caught him cheating on her and he'd acted as if he'd done nothing wrong...or when she had almost convinced herself that she hated him for everything he'd done to her, having some sick sense of satisfaction when he'd caught her in her own affairs.

Maybe he'll notice me again, maybe he'll love me again, had been her desperate mantra at the time. "So stupid…" Amanda muttered under her breath. In the end, he had only been more furious with her, focusing on how it had affected him without trying to see how she felt. The day she had left, she'd searched his eyes for any trace of the man he'd once been, maybe to find regret or longing, anything to convince her that he still cared about her, about their family. All she'd seen in those cold blue eyes was heartbreaking anger.

She thought of the bitter, depressing man who always found a way to put her down and tried to reassure herself that she'd made the right decision, that he hadn't wanted her for a long time. But then she remembered the charming boy she fell in love with, who spouted off cheesy movie lines to flirt with her and radiated a confidence that had drawn her in like a magnet. She thought of herself, a girl who'd been so hopelessly in love with her handsome husband, who now had eyes for about everyone but him. It was times like these where she wondered if they could ever be those people again. It was times like these that made her want to try.

One question still lingered in the back of her mind: how did this happen to us? They used to be happy! Or at least, they were until one day he woke up and acted as if he wanted nothing to do with her and the kids. She knew it had something to do with him missing his old life. It had always confused her why, but deep down, they both knew that he needed the thrill of the danger that risky job offered.

Bitterness filled her as the realization that he chose that...that path of death and destruction over her set in. She had to have been better than that, right? As she sulked there, she was reminded of all her failures as a wife. Her crazy obsession with payback, the lies she'd told him so effortlessly, all of the arguments, the cheating…

Amanda shut her eyes with a frustrated growl, feeling tears starting to spring up in them. Maybe she hadn't given him much choice after all. She turned over and grabbed her phone from the nightstand, staring at all the missed calls and texts from Michael. Oh, he'd been angry at first but then the texts had gotten concerned, apologetic even. He begged for just one more chance, told her that he'd changed and how he had a real job now. She'd listened to all of his voicemails in her way to assure herself that he was alive, if not exactly well, even calling Franklin to make sure he was okay because she was too scared to do it herself.

She sighed. "Look, I know that you and my husband and Trevor Philips...I don't know what the fuck you're up to but I can make a pretty good guess. There's some weird things going on. Is he okay?"

"I don't think okay is the right word, but he's alive. You should call him. He'll appreciate that."

"I don't want to speak to him," she lied. "I just wanted to know he wasn't dead somewhere. Thanks. Don't tell him I called."

"Alright. But look, he ain't doing too good without his family," Franklin said

"I know…" she muttered once she ended the call.

How many times had she stared at her phone, wondering if she should call him back? It took everything in her not to. By now he probably thought she hated him too much and moved on, which was the opposite of the truth. Pride was part of it, she guessed. A part of her had wanted him to chase after her when she had left, but he was never the type of guy who'd come begging to her on his knees and he knew that she wasn't the girl who'd jump into his arms and say how sorry she really was. Most of all, she knew if he picked up, she might not want to say goodbye ever again.

"Shit...I still love him…" she said under her breath. It wasn't as if she already didn't think that but now she knew despite her lingering resentment for how much he'd hurt her. All of her complaints of wanting a divorce had been just empty threats, those times where she told him she didn't love him were lies.

With her lower lip held hesitantly between her teeth, she opened her husband's Lifeinvader page, wincing as she read all of the terrible things she said about him. Not only had she made an ass of herself, but then she did it where anyone could see it. "Just let me know you're okay?" she typed out, finger pausing over the send button. There was so much more she wanted to say to him, like how much she wanted to come home and how she really did love him. "Baby steps…" she reassured herself as she sent it.

Amanda put the phone back, hands shaking slightly as she did. God, that was pathetic, she reflected. It wasn't enough that she couldn't even talk to him directly, no, she did it on a website he rarely, if at all, checked. She wiped away the tears trailing down her cheeks before squeezing her eyes shut.

I'm sorry, darling, was her last hazy thought before she fell asleep dreaming of better times.