No matter how much we change ourselves, you can never touch what’s on the inside. I tried so hard to shed my former life and become Milo Murray but Jacob Tyler will always be one-hundred percent of who I am.

And fifty-percent of who my daughter is.

Being Jacob Tyler might not be all that bad after all. Surprisingly, Anna seems to like him. And I really like her.

The sun’s coming up. It’s what I’ve been dreading since the moment she showed up at my door. As great as last night was, it doesn’t change anything.

I’m still a wanted man. And not in the good way.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

I look at Anna lying on my chest. I didn’t realize she was awake yet. I thought I’d have another hour or so of just listening to her breathing before we’d have to have this conversation.

I chuckle. “Pretty solid detective work.”

She doesn’t laugh. Or smile. She turns her head up to look at me and waits for an answer.

“Yes,” I say. “I am.”

“When?”

I rub her shoulder. “As soon as you do.”

“Are you coming back?”

I focus on my hand on her body. Our feet entwined beneath the covers. Her breath on my skin. The tiny red marks the handcuffs left behind on her wrists. The little details of the moment. I’d rather remember them than dwell on what’s coming next.

“Probably not,” I say.

She nods slowly.

“You were right, Anna. I’m a bad guy. You’re a good girl. It’s not right.”

She shifts onto her side. “You’re also the father of my daughter,” she says.

My lips twitch. “I thought I hadn’t earned that.”

Anna looks down. “She was so happy to see you. I’ve never seen Charlotte get that excited over someone before,” she says slowly. “I shouldn’t have said that stuff to you. I’m sorry.”

“No, you had a point. I don’t know the first thing about being a dad. My own wasn’t the best role model, either...” I look into her soft eyes, wishing I could curl up and stay there. “But Charlotte doesn’t deserve a dad like me. We both know that.”

“And what about me?” she asks.

“Nothing wrong with you. You’re a perfect mom.”

She tilts her head. “I don’t mean that. I mean, don’t I deserve you?”

I sigh. “In my humble opinion, I don’t deserve you.” She smiles and I kiss her forehead. “Anna, you can stay for as long as you want but we both know…”

I let the rest fall away.

We both know you have a life to get back to.

An important job. Family and friends. A daughter.

I promised her that I wasn’t going to destroy her life. I’m going to keep that.

Anna leans forward and kisses me. Her lips feel different than they did last night. Before, they felt new and full of possibility.

Now, they feel like a goodbye.

I close my eyes, taking sensory snapshots of this moment. Her warm, pliable lips. Her thigh gently sliding along mine. The light graze of her breasts on my chest. The warm twitch in my nose as I inhale her natural scent.

Anna motherfucking Silva.

She puts her feet on the floor and stands up, signaling the beginning of the end. I get up with her, testing the pain in my body but it’s not nearly as bad as last night. My ankle is still sore but nothing I can’t walk on.

Anna gathers her clothes, slowly dressing piece-by-piece. With each article she slips on, I picture myself taking it right back off again. It’s all I want to do. Grab her. Undress her. Fuck her. But that wouldn’t be right. I can’t keep pretending that I have a place in her life.

I step into a pair of jeans and grab a white shirt from my dresser. When I look over at her again, she’s gathering her wild, unkempt hair behind her head. She pulls it back into a tight ponytail. She leans over to fastened her gun holster to her ankle. She clips her badge to her belt. Costume complete.

I follow her to the door and she turns back, looking up at me with those burning, beautiful eyes.

“I’ll see you later, Jake,” she says.

Fuck. Don’t let her leave yet.

I kiss her, slowly sliding my hands around her back. She doesn’t resist it and I feel her fingers cling to my shirt. I breathe her in, fighting against logic to justify another ten more seconds of her.

We break away slowly. I kiss her cheek.

“I’ll see you later, Anna,” I say, neither of us brave enough to say goodbye.

Anna smiles and opens the door.

I close my eyes, too chicken-shit to actually watch it close again.

On the bright side, we got one night. I spent one blissful night with the mother of my daughter. No baggage. No mob bullshit. Just Anna and me acting on the urges we had since the beginning.

It’s time to go. Again. It’ll be more difficult getting out of the city but not impossible.

I search my closet for a second bag. I left my last one at the train station, meaning the identity I created is now useless. No time to create another one so I’ll just have to improvise and—

A knock echoes through the apartment. I smile at the light rapping behind me. Instantly betraying the logic I fought so hard to obey before.

Just one more kiss, I tell myself. Maybe Anna told herself that, too.

I walk toward the door with a bounce in my step and throw it open.

Ah, crap.

A familiar man stands in the hallway. It takes a second for me to place his face and another second to notice the silenced pistol pointing at me.

Detective Rhys. Anna’s partner.

He pulls the trigger.

It feels warm, at first, but a cold shiver sets in and fires to my toes. I look down at the deep red blood soaking through my shirt. I touch it. It covers my trembling fingers.

“You are not an easy man to find, Mr. Murray,” he says.

I step back and place my hand on the wall as my knees start failing me. He watches in the doorframe, amused at my attempt to remain standing.

I drop to my knees. Pain spreads from my already bruised ribs and knocks me down a little closer to the floor.

He walks in and kicks the door behind him, moving calmly toward me. “She hears about your little spat at the train station…” his eyes twitches, “and not thirty seconds later, she’s racing to your fucking side. I hoped I was wrong. She’s been obsessed with you since the moment she saw you.”

I cough, tasting blood on my tongue. “Really? Cool.”

He lashes out and punches me in the face, sending me down. My hands break my fall but the pressure on my ribs make my elbows give. The pain isn’t as bad as I expect it to be. Either that or half of me has already gone numb.

“On the bright side, she led me right to you. I thought she’d leave after a while, but…” He heaves in anger, unwilling to finish his thought. “Did she come for you? Huh? Did you like her sucking you off?”

I squint at him. “The fuck is your problem, man?”

“Eight months I’ve spent with her!” he shouts. “We were partners. I brought her coffee, I supported everything she did, fawned over every aspect of her being. I worshiped the ground she walked on… and she gives me nothing. Then, all of a sudden, you show up. One look at you and she’s drooling for cock. It’s fucking gross!”

I gawk at him. “You shot me because she put you in the fucking friend zone?”

“No, I shot you because life in prison wasn’t good enough for you,” he growls. “All the evidence was there. The case was open and fucking shut. You know, you’re really fucking stingy with that hot sauce. Took me weeks to hoard enough of that shit to frame your sorry fucking—”

“You framed me?”

He kicks up, knocking me in the ribs. Blind spots take over my vision and I clench to keep from passing out.

He paces along the floor, glaring at me with dead, black eyes. “Just one spark,” he mutters. “One spark between the Quinns and the McGregors and me and Anna would have been buried in new cases. She and I…” He looks ahead, his eyes distant. “We’re partners. I needed her… and she needs a real man in her life.”

I wince. “That’s fucking creepy, man.”

He flexes his jaw. “It was supposed to be easy. Canon was easy. Kill a McGregor, frame the Quinns. Sit back and watch as they destroy themselves but Martin Wells didn’t like that. He wouldn’t mind his own fucking business. Threatened to expose me and I…”

His wrist jerks up and he tightens the white-knuckle grip on his gun. Beads of sweat drip off his brow. He keeps pacing, unable to keep still. I try to slide away but the pain is too much.

Fuck, I’m gonna die here.

I look down at the bullet wound. It’s as if I’m standing outside my own body, admiring the poor schmuck about to take his final, gasping breath. A cold chill flashes throughout my body. My fingers and toes turn numb. I try to sit up but I slip right back down.

He turns away again and grumbles to himself. I try to feel for my phone in my pocket with the precious few seconds I have.

He scoffs and marches back over to slap my hand away. “She’ll forget about you.” He walks to the window and yanks it open before tossing my phone out. “I’ll make sure the only name she ever says again is mine.”

A jolt of adrenaline delays the shock taking over me. I’m not ready to die yet.

“Stay away from her,” I warn.

He turns to me with a dark squint in his eyes and a soft chuckle on his tongue. It rises to a snort as he looks at my now crimson shirt. “What are you gonna do? Huh? You have an hour left, at best. I mean, I could…” He points his gun at me. “I could put another one between your eyes but that’d be too merciful for you. I want you to die in agonizing pain because then you might have some minute understanding for how I’ve felt for last eight months standing by her side, dreaming about her…”

I groan with nausea. “Oh, grow up.”

He bears his teeth. “What was that?”

I spit out the blood coating my tongue. “She owes you nothing,” I say. “Go cry about it on the internet with the rest of the whiny, self-righteous tools.”

“Fuck you!”

“She certainly did,” I say, proudly smirking.

He punches me again, bashing me in the eyes twice. I recoil, curling even more in a fetal position but I can’t say it wasn’t worth it.

He rights himself but he’s unable to stop the uncontrollable twitch of his hands. “I’ll show her,” he whispers. “I’ll show her how good I can be… how we can be…”

I look up as he stomps through the room. He throws open the door and pauses, turning back again to barely glance at me.

“Don’t worry…” he says. “In a few days, I’ll make an anonymous tip. Someone will come and discover your rotting corpse.”

“Yeah. Thanks, man…” I murmur.

The door closes behind him.

Silence. The room feels quiet, almost uncomfortably so. I didn’t realize how much I was used to the sound of my own breathing or the subtle thumping of my heart. My pulse slows, growing weaker. My lungs burn and I’d give anything to be able to take just one deep breath.

I’m sorry, Anna. You were right about everything.

And I hope, someday, when Charlotte is grown up, she understands that I didn’t want to leave her. I didn’t want to abandon her like my family did to me.

In the end, if I had the choice to take it all back, I wouldn’t. I might be dead but there will still be a Charlotte Silva out there in the world.

And that’s pretty cool.