by Snow, Nicole
Please. Let it hold me steady, one more time. Let it aim straight for Jim’s heart.
And pull the trigger.
There's a noise like the world ending in thunder.
Red explodes over Jim’s shirt as the bullet goes wide and buries into his left shoulder. He cries out in pain, then goes tumbling off Gabe.
Gabe’s swearing, snarling, and his shirt’s stained in blood. There’s a hole above his collarbone and close to the nape of his neck.
Oh, God. No...
He’s bleeding and clutching at it, but he’s alive and Jim’s on the ground, thrashing, gasping. Even though I missed his heart, he’s bleeding out fast enough so that he’s not going anywhere.
Especially when Gabe hauls himself around and uses all of his weight to drop an elbow down on the top of Jim’s head.
Jim’s eyes sag closed. I let the gun fall, my entire body shaking as I drag myself toward Gabe, choking back the cries of pain, relief, chagrin, joy.
Joannie’s crying, probably scared by all the loud noises, but when I slump next to Gabe and look in her crib there’s not even a speck of blood on her.
My little girl’s safe.
I had to shoot the man I love to do it, but she’s safe, and we saved her together.
Now, I just have to make sure we actually walk away in one piece.
Hissing under his breath, still clutching at his wound, Gabe sags back on the ground, resting his back against the side of the crib, panting deeply.
“Nice shooting, darlin’,” he says, a strained grin crossing his face.
“Oh my God – Gabe, I – are you...” I don’t know when I started crying. I just collapse against his side, the salt of my tears and his blood filling my nostrils. “You idiot! I could've killed you, but I know you –” I break off with a choked sound, too lost for words, thudding my fist softly against his chest.
He winces, somehow still smiling. “Maybe beat me up after I get this bullet out of me,” he manages through his teeth, around a choked laugh.
He peels his hand away from his neck and shoulder and tries to look behind himself at the entry point, but what I can see from his front, there’s no exit wound.
Thank God, Jim had crawled high up on his back. I don’t think it’s hit anything vital and the blood doesn’t look like arterial flow, but I can't say for sure. It could've been worse. Maybe.
Definitely worse, still, if Gabe hadn’t been willing to sacrifice himself for Joannie.
And for me.
“You wonderful freaking idiot,” I gasp again, and lean up to kiss him hard, quick, needy, and rough, before pulling away. “I’m going to yell at you about this for weeks. Fucking weeks. After you’re out of the hospital.”
“Weeks, huh?” Pain-darkened, liquid hazel eyes search mine. “Makes it sound like you might keep me around after this, Sunbeam.”
That name. I can't even contemplate it pissing me off again. Right here, right now, it might be the stupidest, best thing I've ever heard.
I take a shaky breath.
“Just might, Gabe,” I manage, before offering a shaky smile. “But for now, let’s take Joannie and get out of here before that bastard wakes up. We gotta call the cops. I tried earlier when he was up there after you, but there’s no cell reception down here.”
“Can you stand?”
“I don’t know...but I don’t have much choice. I just hope my ankle’s not broken. Can you?”
“I’ll manage.”
He grips the edge of the crib, powerful muscles bunching, struggling. His blood pumps harder with the effort, soaking his shirt, worrying me more.
I want to reach for him. Too bad I’m hardly in better shape.
But he manages to haul to his feet, bracing his bad arm against the crib, before leaning down laboriously and hooking an arm around my waist.
Next thing I know, he’s hauled me up, and I manage to get my good foot under me before he’s guiding me against the crib for support with a nod.
“Get your girl, and let’s get moving.”
I'm face to face with the insane truth like never before: I love this man.
Even in this moment, even when he’s bleeding and haggard and shaky, he’s a rock.
I love that he came here for me, that he didn’t give up on Joannie, that he didn’t give up on any of this.
That he didn’t give up on me.
I love him, period, and God, I’m going to screw this up so bad but I can’t let him go, can’t push him away, can’t live without him. Not ever.
And I can’t live without Joannie’s warmth in my arms, as I bend over and lift her up.
Her scent floods me, warm and perfect and wonderful, something I’ve missed all these months. I’ve missed months of her growing up, her teeth coming in, her hair going from little baby wisps to a thick thatch of curls.
She’s different, yeah, but she’s still my little girl. And Monika's. And I can’t stop my tears of pure, raw, unfettered joy as she snuggles into me with her perfect familiarity and the recognition that says she still knows her Auntie Sky, and that vile psycho, Jim, hasn’t poisoned her against us forever.
Her little eyes are huge and happy. My tears are already quieting as she fists handfuls of my shirt.
“Oh, baby,” I whisper, cradling the back of her head, soaking my tears into her hair. “You’re safe. You’re safe now, and I’ve got you. I’m taking you home to Mommy and Grandma.”
“I’m taking you both home,” Gabe rumbles, catching me off-guard by lifting me up into his arms, pulling me against his chest, the warm wetness of his blood against my side, Joannie cradled against my chest and stomach. We're a total mess but we're alive, and nothing else matters.
Nothing else may ever matter again.
I suck in a gasp as he turns to carry me toward the stairs, moving slowly but steadily. “Gabe, your arm!”
“It'll heal,” he says grimly. “I can manage this. Your ankle’s in no shape, and you don’t weigh no more’n a mosquito.” He looks down at me with a pale, tired, but entirely warm smile that brings that sunlight back to his eyes. “Or maybe I’m just a damn helpless fool looking for an excuse to hold you.”
I swallow thickly. “You don’t need an excuse,” I whisper, and his face lights up.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, all right, then.” He grins, then angles me through the door at the top of the stairs and out the front door of the house, where lights blind me. The sudden harsh wail of police sirens and chattering voices fills the night. The first voice I hear is Landon’s.
“Skylar!”
Oh, thank God.
The cavalry’s here. We’re really safe.
And Joannie and Gabe and I are finally going home.
20
Don’t Want to Let You Go (Gabe)
I’m in so much pain I can hardly see, and I’ve never been happier in my life.
It was touch and go there for a moment.
That drug hardly got out of my system fast enough, and I was still about as goddamn agile as an elephant in a full-body cast when I threw myself on that twisted bastard to get him off of Sky.
For a minute, I hadn’t been sure things would turn out okay. Don't know what I was thinking.
I should’ve known Sky would be ready to take him out.
And I’d take a bullet a thousand times over to see that smile on her face.
The scene outside Jim Appleroth’s house is pure chaos.
In a jiffy, I’ve been separated from her by an EMT, who’s got me sitting on the bumper of an ambulance while they pull the bullet out of me right then and there. I’d refused the hospital and refused a local anesthetic.
Didn't want to be doped up, taken away from the wonderful sight of Monika and Eva tumbling down the street in their nightclothes, only to crash into Sky and Joannie, all of them sobbing and laughing and hugging and nearly collapsing into a mess of all this beautiful emotion.
I almost feel sorry for the baby ca
ught in the middle of all of it, when she looks so damn confused by all this fuss.
It’s over.
Finally, finally done.
Everything except the little odds and ends. Sure, there’s gonna be police wanting statements and testimony, an investigation, a trial, but it’s over. Jim Appleroth is conscious when they drag him out of the house in cuffs. Bloody, but conscious.
He’s lucky Sky’s too caught up with her family, or she’d probably have slugged him a good one before he was shoved into the back of the police car.
Hell, I might’ve thrown one in for good measure, if there wasn’t an annoyed EMT trying to hold my twitching shoulder still while she stitches me up.
“I have the right to declare you incompetent and force you to the hospital, you know,” she mutters.
“I’d be real grateful if you didn’t, ma'am,” I counter with a tired chuckle. God, I just want to collapse and sleep for a week.
Preferably in Sky’s bed.
As if she knows I’m thinking about her, she looks up, watching me from the close knot of her family, her eyes so broken and open and full of such warm emotion, that soft blue turned from glacial ice to warm spring skies.
She’s always been so closed off. Now, there’s so much of her in every glance I almost can’t stand the weight of what she’s saying with every look.
The apology. The need. The question of whether or not we can start again from here.
I want to tell her yes. We gotta talk, sort things out between us, put things out there in real words, but goddammit yes.
How could I ever turn down the chance to be with her?
It’s over two hours before the police let us go. The medics look Joannie over to make sure she hasn’t been hurt, then send her home with Monika and Eva about an hour in.
There’s still Skylar’s ankle to set, too. Plus, a long barrage of questions trying to give them a complete picture of what happened. Skylar’s investigation, mine, the trails we followed, what tipped us off, what we found in that house, how we fought Jim.
They’re in and out of the house, cataloging evidence. The whole time Landon, Riker, and James are hovering close by, glowering and protective, keeping the police from getting too harsh with us, too suspicious.
I’d almost think the cops were pissed we cracked a case they’d given up on.
Some people care about all the wrong things.
Finally, though, it’s just me and Sky sitting in the back of an ambulance while the cops talk to each other. There’s a moment of quiet. We’re the only stillness in a night of chaos. She looks over at me for the first time since the interrogation started.
Those deep, brimming eyes search mine; lines of exhaustion circle underneath them. She offers a shy smile.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi, beautiful,” I answer. “Nice to meet you.”
“Meet me?” She shakes her head. “I don’t understand. Gabe, don't tell me you've lost so much blood you're –”
I grin. “Nah. It’s like we’re meeting again for the first time, ain't it? That's why. Just Gabe and Sky, not a job and that big ol' wall of anger. Feels like I’m finally getting to look over the top and see what’s inside.”
“Maybe. I...yeah.” She lowers her eyes, fidgeting her hands together, and swings her legs a bit. There’s a temporary splint on her ankle, and she winces when it knocks the bumper and holds still.
“Look, I’m sorry. For everything I said. For everything I did. For treating you that way. I’ve been so scared all this time, Gabe. Even before Joannie got taken. I was so scared of someone else leaving me, and so I’ve just been pushing you away before you ever could. And I was so scared of her leaving me, too, when someone took her...” She swallows, her mouth trembling. “I couldn’t stand the idea of letting you in when I knew you’d be gone as soon as the job was over. It was wrong, it was dumb, and I'm so, so sorry.”
“If you thought I’d be leaving you once the pay ran out, darlin’, you don’t know me at all.” I lean over and bump her shoulder with my good one. “Always knew the second I saw you that I wasn’t going nowhere.”
Her smile strengthens. “The second, huh?”
“Yep.” I lean in closer to her. “It’s your eyes, y’know.”
She makes a wryly amused sound, leaning toward me as well. “My eyes. Really.”
“Yeah, Sunbeam. They’re blue, ya see.” Closer, closer, till my nose brushes hers. Then till I can almost touch her smile with mine. “And I’ve got this thing with the color blue. To me, blue’s the color of love. It ain't pink or fluffy or screaming red like desert sunsets. It's blue. Cool and peaceful and just plain right.”
She stills, her smile fading, her eyes widening. She sucks in a breath, her gaze flicking back and forth, searching me. “Love? You love me?”
“You serious? Thought I made that pretty obvious when I let you shoot me, darlin’.”
She breaks out a sharp, shaky laugh and swats my side. “That was so stupid. So reckless,” she chides, then lays her head on my shoulder. “And so...so you, Gabe. Only you'd do something like that. That's why...I think maybe, I just...” She sounds like she’s chewing nails, trying to get the words out, and they come out strained and heavy and thick. “That’s why I love you, too.”
I think the only reason my heart doesn’t burst out of my chest is because I ain’t got enough blood left in my body for it after that fight. I can’t even talk for a moment, so I don’t.
I just kiss what's mine.
I kiss her quick and hard. Full of all the warmth and happiness inside me, because while I thought maybe I might get Sky to accept I love her, I’d never in a minute expected she’d say it right back.
And I’d have been okay with that, because I’m a patient man. Patient enough to wait for her to love me.
But I didn’t have to.
I didn’t have to because she’s right here in my arms with her mouth soft against mine and her lips flavored with those three warm, perfect words spoken under the shining expanse of a brilliant blue night sky.
When my chest gets too tight to breathe, I finally pull back, resting my brow to hers. “Let me take you home,” I whisper. “They’re done with us here.”
She leans into me, her breaths short, her voice husky. “Home sounds good. Monika and Grandma won’t want me barging in anymore tonight. I want to finally, really rest. I want to be with you.”
“I ain’t going nowhere.” I curl my hand against the back of her neck, trace my thumb along the fine lines of her jaw. “I got a lotta pages to fill in my book, darlin’. So many memories of you.”
Skylar laughs, tired but bright. “The whole book’s going to be me, huh?”
“Because that’s all I want to remember.” I grin. “But I mean, c’mon. I gotta stick to you anyway. It’s only practical. Job’s not over, right? Appleroth might’ve had accomplices.”
“Accomplices?”
“Co-conspirators,” I say.
“Of course.”
“Cronies.”
“...cronies?”
“Cahoots. Wait, can people be cahoots? Or just in cahoots?” I'm lost in my own train of thought.
She cracks into a laugh again and pushes me gently with her shoulder. “You can stop. I wasn’t going to say no.” She tilts her head, her mussed hair falling in dark strands across her lovely face, regarding me thoughtfully. “Take me home,” she says, and I stand, pulling her into my arms.
“I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go, Sky. This day forward, you're mine.”
By the time I get her to the truck, she’s already unconscious in my arms, sleeping more deeply and peacefully than I’ve ever seen.
* * *
If this is the last thing I ever write, I scribble in my book, Eva Szabo murdered me.
It wouldn’t be too far off from the truth, probably.
After all, I did only give Sky’s grandmother twenty-four hours to plan a wedding.
I couldn’t help myself. It took a few bl
issful weeks of recovery.
Okay, yeah, we probably would've healed up faster if we weren’t naked and wrapped around each other twenty-four seven.
We’d been out walking in the park yesterday after Sky was going stir-crazy cooped up with her ankle. She’d looked so light. Carefree, content, swinging her arms and looking up at the trees, breezy in a loose, white linen tank and a pair of shorts that let me take in those gorgeous legs to my heart’s content.
And then a beam of light fell across her, and I just about forgot how to breathe.
My Sunbeam standing in a sunbeam, and the way the light falls down on her...it’s pure gold, wrapping her up till she’s sun and moon, stars and night, clouds and sky.
Everything I consider heaven in a single moment all shaped out in gold edges and perfection. The breathlessness of her, the light in her eyes, the way they shine when she laughs...
That’s the blue I’ll always remember.
That's perfection.
Even if time takes my memory away, even if that demon I fear takes every thought from my brain and carves me out hollow, it won’t take that from me.
The blue of her eyes.
The color of love.
And I didn’t even know what I was saying before I was down on one knee. Her hands in mine, a question on my lips, and then suddenly she was laughing and crying and hugging me and saying yes, yes, Gabe, yes, you idiot, what are you thinking, are you crazy?
Yes, let's get married.
And that’s when the chaos started.
Because that’s when we decided we were basically gonna elope without the running away, and whip up a wedding by morning.
For half a second, when we put that at Grandma Eva’s feet, she looked like she was gonna have a conniption fit for a proper Southern lady. There was a mumble about how it was so fast, how we had to stick to tradition, before those determined Szabo eyes snapped with fire and she just said leave it to me.
Frankly, I think proposing is the only damn thing that saved my life after Eva and Monika found out we’d been lying to them for weeks – even if it was all for the sake of getting Joannie back.