I watch Sean and his friends approach, feeling like my stomach is doing flips and my heart is about to beat out of my chest. Guns. They have guns. I force myself to breathe slowly to keep from hyperventilating. I didn’t expect guns.

But then I guess by now the security and maybe even Dean and his brothers are somewhere above, watching us with guns just as deadly pointed straight down into this decaying valley of mobile homes.

I’ve never felt more aware of the fragility of my own life than I do right now. Even in the darkest moments with Sean, the times when I thought he might not loosen his grip in time for me to get the life saving air to my brain, or when I thought he might hit me so hard he would break something permanent and end me, even then it didn’t feel this real.

Right now I feel death breathing down my neck, and what surprises me is how badly I want to live. Thinking about everything ending makes me realize how much I’ve taken my life for granted. I’ve let years and years be squandered by my parents anger and a long chain of abusive boyfriends that ended with a finale like Sean. I want to live so I have a chance to fix this, so I don’t have to answer to someone up there and explain why I didn’t think I deserved anything better than this.

“I thought you said come alone,” I call out when Sean and his friends are close enough.

He smirks. “Yeah, I did. You didn’t think I wasn’t going to bring some insurance, did you? How do I know you didn’t tell your rich cocksucker boyfriend to come?”

“Did you see any other cars when I came in?”

“No,” he says, stepping close enough that he could reach out and touch me. “No, I didn’t see them, but I’m not a fucking idiot.”

It takes everything in me not to glance toward the treeline where I think Dean and the security might be waiting. I want to know they are here, that I’m safe and not completely alone right now, but I can’t. If I look he’ll suspect, and if he suspects…

“Where’s Jen?” I ask.

“Somewhere safe,” he says.

“The deal was me for her. I need to see her or the deal is off.”

He sneers, looking at his friends who all laugh cruelly. “Honey, I already have you. I had you the moment you stepped foot in this place. Take a look,” he says, pointing up to the peak of the valley to my left. “Wave, Collins,” he shouts.

I notice a series of clumps I thought to be bushes or rocks are actually men lying down with rifles pointed down at us.

“So don’t try anything stupid,” he says. “Don’t worry though, all the men have strict orders not to hurt you. That was my condition,” he reaches to stroke my cheek and I flinch away, glaring at him.

He clicks his mouth in disapproval, snatching my face tightly this time and squeezing me by the jaw so I can’t look away. “I still love you, even if you disobeyed me. I want you back in one piece, because if anyone is going to break you, it’s going to be me.”

There’s a popping sound that reminds me of the Fourth of July. The first pop is followed by an explosion of sound a split second later.

It all happens so fast it doesn’t register at first. Sean lets me go and runs toward one of the trailers, ducking his head and covering himself as he runs. I take a few confused steps backwards, watching the strange way the ground seems to explode upwards in small patches, like little bombs are going off underground.

Sean’s friends only have time to half-crouch and aim their guns toward the source of the sound before the air mists red and what I now realize to be bullets rips through them. The three men are jostled by the impacts, suspended on their feet as they twitch and writhe in a final, morbid dance before collapsing to the ground.

But the shooting doesn’t stop there. More gunshots erupt from where Sean said his men were.

“Get to cover!” comes a roaring voice from the opposite side of the valley ridge. I look toward the sound and see Dean sprinting down the steep valley toward me, somehow managing to keep his balance and aim a pistol toward the other valley peak and fire shots off as he runs.

I see bullets pelting the ground near him and can’t bring myself to run away, so I run to him.

He half-tackles me when he reaches me, pushing me to the back of a mobile home. He grips my shoulders and cups my face, kissing me hard and then pulling back. “Are you hurt?” he asks, eyes scanning me with concern.

“I’m okay. Are you?” I ask.

“I’m fine. Where did Sean go?”

“He--” I flinch, ducking my head when the trailer shakes behind me and part of the wall bursts open from gunshots.

“Come on,” says Dean, firing his pistol around the corner and taking me to another trailer. “Here, get in,” he says, reaching for what looks like some sort of storm cellar. “I have to get Sean before he gets away.”

“Don’t leave me,” I say. “Please. I want to help.”

“You already did your part, Camille,” says Dean, who doesn’t seem to even notice the bullets zipping overhead and pounding into the ground and trailers all around us. “You were so fucking brave. I’m proud of you. I mean that.”

Even in the middle of such chaos, Dean is composed and strong. He’s a beacon of light in a storm, strong and unwavering as a lighthouse, and my brush with death just a minute ago has me looking at him in an entirely new light. I see it now more clearly than before. Any last ounce of doubt I had about he and I is blasted away like the flimsy walls of these trailers against the hail of gunfire.

I don’t care if I’ve only known him a few weeks, I want Dean in my life. I never want to let him go, and I never want to go back to Sean or anybody like him who would put me down to boost their own ego.

“I love you,” I say.

Dean was about to help me down in the cellar but he pauses, eyes intense. He doesn’t immediately say the words back. It’s not some reflex that burps out of him with no meaning and no force. Instead, he seems to conjure up the words only when he knows without a doubt they are true, and each syllable hits me with the force of a hammer.

“I love you too. I fucking love you, Camille.”

I wrap my arms around his neck, closing my eyes and wishing we could snap our fingers and make everything perfect right now, that we could have Jen back and get all these people out of our lives who want to see us hurt and suffering. I just want it to all go away so I can be with him and be happy in the way I finally think I deserve.

A bullet explodes through the wall just above Dean’s head, showering us with plaster and tearing me from my thoughts. If he hadn’t been kneeling to help me down to the cellar, that bullet would’ve hit him.

“Dean, please be careful,” I say.

“Only as careful as I have to be,” he says with a smirk. “Get down there, okay?”

I nod, closing the hatch and surrounding myself in darkness. I climb down the ladder a few rungs until I feel cold water. I pull my leg back, hanging on tight to the ladder and waiting, for what--I don’t know, but I wait in the dark, eyes closed tight not against the light, but against what kind of life I’ll be stepping into when the light returns. Will the hand that reaches to pull me out of the darkness be Dean’s or Sean’s? Will I come out of this dark hole in the ground to find the only man who could ever pull me out of my misery is dead? Will Jen be gone?