Trembling fingers. A sloppily written death letter. Blood stains mixed with tears. Unfinished words. The heartache it caused me.

The man smirks as he brings up the gun. "You say you won't help? Fine. I'll just have to break your crippled boyfriend in the other room by blowing your brains all over the walls!" He gives me time to finish my final thoughts. I love you, Dylan. Stay strong. His smirk is pure evil as his finger tightens around the tri... Amber's fine, neat handwriting stops and the note is instead written with a much sloppier hand who writes much too hard. Three bullets to the brain is all it took. One down, one to go. It's then signed with two lines of blood running down the remainder of the page. Amber's blood.

Amber had always wanted to be an author. Her words inspired people and I could even see beauty in her final note to me. She may have always thought of herself to be living in a movie and of course made her death dramatic, but the pain of it hit my like a punch to the gut, over and over and over again.

Do I regret not being killed? Yes and no. I heard the three shots and knew what had happened even before the man who had captured us had came into my cell, wiped Amber's blood across my face, and laughed like a maniac. I'm only grateful that I didn't have to see Amber's dead body like that, blood pooling from her head with lifeless eyes staring back at me. That would have broken me. However, I was rescued before that and though I was in denial, I knew I was wrong, deep down. It destroyed me, but I survived. Amber told me to stay strong. And that's exactly what I plan on doing. No matter the pain, I'll write our story. The good, the bad, the ugly, and hope you see the beauty in it. See the beauty that Amber radiated with a single smile.