THE BED JOLTS, AND RYAN’S arms tighten around me as he rolls me over to my back.
“Don’t move, baby,” he whispers, but there is no softness to his demand.
“What?”
“Someone’s in the house. Grab your phone, call 911. Fuck, the fuckin’ alarm didn’t go off.” He grabs a gun from the nightstand drawer, one that I didn’t even know was there, and walks to the door. “Lock this, do not leave. 911 now.”
My hands shake, but I manage to grab my phone and dial the three numbers as I watch him hold up his gun and exit my room. I rattle off my address, and then tell them there’s an intruder and an armed US Marshal in the home before I hang up and call Jay. He answers on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Someone’s in my house.”
“Call emergency.” Sleep long gone from his voice.
“I did. Ryan’s here, and he went down there.”
“Good.” There’s a bit of shock in his voice, but I’d gather he’s too worried that someone is in my house to care too much right now. “He’s good, Opal. Just stay where he told you. I’m on my way.”
I open my mouth to tell him to hurry when I hear yelling. Ryan yelling and more than one voice yelling back at him. Oh, God. Then something breaks. And then one gunshot. Then nothing. The phone falls from my hand, and I vaguely hear Jay calling my name. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What do I do?
If he’s hurt, I need to help him. What if he’s lying on the floor bleeding out? What if Olivia hears that and tries to go downstairs? What if whoever shot him is going to come for my daughter?
My body isn’t connected to my brain as I silently put my feet on the floor. He told me to lock the door. I should do that. Should listen to him. But I can’t. I need to make sure my little girl is okay. And Ryan… God, Ryan.
I turn the knob and silently thank the Lord for wall-to-wall carpet. Opening Olivia’s door, I see her still sound asleep, so I quickly shut her door. Then I walk on my toes to the stairs, and using the same technique, I descend. By the time I make it to the bottom, I’ve finally realized what a stupid idea this is.
I don’t have a weapon—not that I’d know how to use a gun—and absolutely no plan.
The way my house is set up, as soon as I hit the last step, I’m in my living room. So I freeze when I see the state of said room. A man lies in the middle of the floor, blood pouring out of him from somewhere and another stands next to him, pointing a gun at Ryan with shaky hands. And then there’s Ryan; directly across from him, pointing his gun, his arm steady and sure.
“Do not move, Opal,” Ryan growls without looking at me, a low timbre in his voice I’ve never heard before. “Put your weapon down, man. This doesn’t have to go bad for you.”
The intruder’s hand shakes even more, and the gun goes right along with it. “It’s already bad. Can’t get much fuckin’ worse.”
“You can get dead. That’s pretty fuckin’ bad.”
“No.” His eyes dart to me, and his arm moves.
“Stop fuckin’ moving and put your weapon down!”
Sirens sound in the distance, getting loud very, very fast.
“No. No, shit, shit.” The guy is clearly whacked. He’s high on something, and when his eyes come back to me, I suck in a breath at how pale and sweaty his face is. I’m slowly trying to inch my way back toward the stairs, and I see the moment he makes his decision.
Ryan sees it too because he fires his gun the same time as he dives for me on his left side. The room is blurry as I’m taken down. I land with an insanely hard thud as Ryan’s body weight is on top of me. Covering me. Like armor.
I can’t breathe. Literally, the wind is knocked out of me, and the room is entirely silent, except for the sound of Ryan breathing. “You okay, baby doll?”
“Ryan?” I gasp his name as my breath returns, and he rolls off me. “Oh, my God. Are you okay?” He lies on his back, and when I sit up, I feel something sticky. “You’re bleeding.”
“That generally happens when you get shot.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
He sits up, but I instinctively try to push him back down because I feel like if you just got shot, you should be lying down for some reason. “Fuck.” His arm goes to his shoulder and pushes my hand away, but it comes back covered in blood. “I’m fine, Opal. It just grazed me, but shit, woman, don’t grab it.”
“You’re not fine. You got shot!” I cry, throwing myself at him where he manages to wrap his good arm around me.
With my head on his chest, I can’t hear anything over my crying. I focus on the rhythm of his heart, thankful it’s still beating, and cling tighter, imagining what else could have happened if he wasn’t here. A different hand touches my head, and I jump. “It’s just me,” Jay’s familiar and soothing voice penetrates, and I pull back enough to look at him.
“Nope. Eyes on me, doll,” Ryan says firmly.
I have no problem looking at him instead of a dead body. Two. Oh, my God, there are two dead bodies in my living room. They got in without the alarm going off. I’m sure Jay shut it off when he got here, but what the fuck. “I have to get Olivia. She can’t…” I try to scramble up, but something is holding me back.
“Opal. Relax.” Jay squats down. “I need you to let go of the vise grip you got on your man.”
My man.
My man.
My man got shot. And then I realize I’m the one clinging to him, my nails are digging into his flesh. My hands tingle when I pry my fists open, and I slowly sit up, noticing the discoloration to his stomach and bicep from where my fingers were. “Olivia,” I mutter.
“Get her to her room and pack bags for her and Olivia. They can stay with me tonight, and Opal’ll give a statement tomorrow,” Ryan tells Jay. He tells him. Doesn’t ask. Doesn’t run it by him. He tells him, like it’s his right.
“Let’s go get you guys a bag.” Jay grabs me by my elbow and starts to lift me up, but I sink my weight to the floor.
“He needs a doctor.” Some of the adrenaline is coming back, and my eyes burn and become blurry as I stare at the chunk of flesh missing from Ryan’s shoulder. “He needs a fucking doctor. He’s bleeding!” I press my hand to the wound, trying to stop the blood from leaving him even though he told me not to. “He needs help.”
Jay pulls me away, and I lash out, needing to do something. “Somebody needs to help him!”
“They will,” Jay reassures me.
“He can’t die. They have to help him.”
“They will.”
No. “He needs help! He can’t die! He can’t!”
“He’s not going to.”
“You can’t let him die. God Jay, I can’t lose him, too. He can’t die!”
“Look.” He points at the EMTs walking in. I didn’t even notice the shit ton of cops in my living room, but I look past them. Then I look through the two dead bodies. Seeing them doesn’t do anything for me because they tried to kill him. They were going to shoot him. They were going to take him away from me. “See. They’re going to make sure he’s okay.”
He doesn’t wait any longer before he drags me upstairs. I have enough sense not to scream and wake Olivia up, thanking God she’s such a heavy sleeper. I put a white noise machine in her room to try to drown out the sound of the neighbors, and it’s worked pretty well. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
I let him bring me to the bathroom where I watch Ryan’s blood wash off my hands. He wets a towel and wipes my face and a couple of other spots on me. “Can you pack yourself a bag while I go grab Olivia? I want her out of this house.”
My mouth doesn’t work, but I manage a nod. In a trance, I put some clothes in a bag and slide on a pair of shoes. Jay walks into my room with a still sleeping Olivia and a small backpack dangling from his wrist. I’ve never been more thankful for how heavy she sleeps. “You good to walk down the stairs?”
Again, a movement of my head is all the answer he gets as I follow him down the stairs. I look over and see the spot where Ryan was lying and find it empty. “Where did he go?” I ask in a panic.
“They’re fixing him up, Opal. He’s going to be fine.”
I shake my head. “Look how much blood there is.”
“Can you take her, man?” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jay handing Olivia over to another guy. My heart races for a moment until I realize it’s Jay’s old partner, Brandon. “Opal.”
The dark red puddle on my floor seems to expand before my eyes. So much blood. Nobody can survive if they lose that much blood, can they? God, it’s my fault. He’s going to die, and it’s my fault again.
When I went into labor with Olivia, I should have gone to the hospital earlier. I shouldn’t have waited so long. If I had given Josh more time, he wouldn’t have had to speed, and he wouldn’t have crashed.
And now Ryan. He was protecting us, and he… he’s… he got shot.
“Let’s go, Opal.” Jay lifts me up, and I wrap my arms around his neck.
“He can’t die.”
“He’s not going to, sweetie.”
He drags me through the house, and somehow, I end up in Jay’s car. My eyes dart around to try to find Ryan. If he was really okay, he’d still be here. I’d see him in the yard with all the other cops. Jay’s lying to me. Ryan’s not going to be okay.
That’s why when he pulls up to his house, he tells me he’ll be right back after he takes Olivia inside. That’s why he doesn’t say anything to me when he lets me lean on him as I barely walk into the mudroom.
He sets me on a chair in the kitchen, and I reach over and grab the half-drunk bottle of wine and take a long swallow.
My vision becomes murky as I try to set the bottle back down, but it crashes off the table. I absentmindedly reach for it and end up falling off my chair. I have no strength even to hold my head up as the weight of this horrible, horrible night finally hits me. Liv is right here, all of the sudden, pulling me into her arms, and I curl into her. A wail tears through my chest, and the force of it makes Liv fall to her ass. I can’t hold it in anymore, and let everything out.
I didn’t have my big sister when Josh died, but I have her now when I need her the most. Because this is the worst. I’m barely able to inhale a full breath but manage to calm down enough to tell her, “They shot him.”
“I know.”
“He can’t die.”
“He didn’t, Opal.”
I talk through the tears, and my words don’t make sense even to me. “He can’t die. He can’t die. He can’t.”
“He’s not going to.” She rocks me back and forth. “He’s not going to die.”
“He can’t die.” I chant the words over and over until my throat aches. My sister tries to calm me, shushing me and promising me everything is going to be okay. I want to believe her. I want to pretend that I live in a world where I can believe that.
But this is exactly why. Feeling this fear and living through it are something I can’t do again. I can’t put my daughter through it. We can’t love someone and have them leave us. I knew him leaving would hurt, but I had no idea just how bad.
“I told you they were coming with me.” I hear Ryan’s angry voice coming from somewhere in the fog of my mind, and I think I must have fallen asleep.
“They needed out of there, Ry. Wasn’t gonna wait any longer,” Jay responds.
“Where is she?” Jay doesn’t answer right away, and Ryan growls. “Where the fuck is she?”
I then hear heavy footsteps followed by a thud. “Get your goddamn hand off me,” Ryan warns, and Liv’s arms around me spasm. “See, he’s okay.”
“You saw exactly what I did. You heard it, too,” Jay states.
I have no clue what he’s talking about, but apparently, Ryan does. “I fucking know, Jay. I was there. I heard it. I fuckin’ saw it, and that’s exactly why I’m here. This bullshit ends tonight.”
“Then I don’t need to tell you.”
“Even without all this shit, you don’t have to. Didn’t have to the first time and definitely not right now.”
They’re silent a moment before Jay speaks again. “Okay.”
“Wasn’t asking your permission,” Ryan snaps, and those heavy and hurried footsteps get louder until a pair of familiar black boots fills my vision.
When he squats down, my eyes go right to his shoulder, and since he’s wearing a t-shirt, I can’t tell that he was even shot. “You’re not dead.”
He doesn’t say a word, just grabs me and hauls me up, then swings me so he’s cradling me like a baby. I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face in his chest; a completely different kind of feeling weighs me down when I’m in his arms. “You’ve got Olivia?”
“Yeah,” Liv answers quietly.
“She’s with me from now on.” He carries me outside and sets me in a truck. I jump when the door slams and again when his does, too. Then he reaches over and puts my seat belt on and drives us away. He doesn’t say anything and neither do I.
My head rests on the window, and tears just roll out of my eyes. When the door suddenly opens, I almost fall out, not realizing he’s stopped. He reaches over me and undoes my buckle then carries me into his apartment.
He sets me on his bed and sits next to me. If I were cognizant enough, I’d wonder why he still has a place if he’s leaving. His boots plunk on the floor when he takes them off, and then he tosses my shoes next to his. His body shifts, and he turns me to face him, then I’m falling until we’re lying on his bed.
I don’t even realize it happened. I suspected it. Felt something deep. Thought maybe it could be true and tried to fight it, but I didn’t know for certain until right now.
When he runs a finger down my face and over my lips, his eyes so full of everything follow the same path. When he leans over and kisses me, those same eyes never leaving mine, that’s when it hits me like a damn bolt of lightning. And when he whispers my name and wipes away a tear, that’s when I know.
I’m in love with him.
Fully and completely and totally in love.
He realizes my revelation at the same time as me because his eyes go even softer and he says, “I know, baby doll.”
“You could have died.”
“I didn’t.”
I should probably ask who those men were. I should make sure he’s okay. Should probably even get up and make him take me back to my sister’s. But I don’t.
Instead, I push him down and kiss him. Desperately. I barely sit up enough to rip his shirt off, but when I see the bandage, I freeze.
“I’m okay.” His hands slide under my shirt, and his fingertips slide along my skin.
I press my lips just below the bandage, then lower, and then over his heart. When I continue south, he brings his hands to my head and gathers my hair. “Where are you goin’?”
Too unnerved and emotional to answer, I undo his button. Then slide down the zipper. All I know is I want him in every way. I need him. “Opal.”
He’s not wearing anything beneath, and I realize when he sprang out of bed, he just pulled his jeans on and hasn’t had a chance to change. He was so intent on getting to me he didn’t even take the time to put on his freaking boxers.
His cock springs free. Hard and long and perfect. As I pull his jeans down farther, I lick him from root to tip.
“Christ,” he moans.
I grab him with my hand and pump up and down a couple of times. When a bit of moisture beads at the tip, I’m mesmerized by the fact I did that to him. I made this big, strong man, who was just shot protecting me and my daughter, so turned on that he’s already this hard and this ready.
“Yeah, baby doll. That’s because of you. It’s all just for you… only you,” he confirms, reading my mind.
I lick the tip and am turned on by his flavor. In fact, it makes me want more. So I suck him in my mouth as far as he can go. Then I pull back out and do it again and again. He fists my hair tighter and lets loose a string of curse words.
“Jesus fuck, baby.” He starts to sit up, presumably to pull me away, but I grip him harder as I suck him even deeper. “You want me comin’ in your mouth, Opal?”
I don’t answer, but the thought of it makes me rub my thighs together.
“Fuck yeah, you do.” He yanks my head away by my hair, which should hurt, but does nothing but shoot pleasure through my skull. “I’ll give it to you, but you’ve gotta give it to me first. Take your shorts off and sit on my face.”
“What?” I still have his cock in my hand and haven’t stopped stroking.
“Take your shorts off and sit on my face. I’m gonna eat you out while you suck my cock. Then you’re gonna come in my mouth before I come down your throat.”
That sounds amazing, but I still don’t get what he’s saying. His patience must run out because he yanks me up, rips my shorts off, then turns me around and pulls me down on top of his face. “Oh, my God.”
He flicks my clit. Licks it, sucks on it, even nips it. His fingers spread me open, and he fucks me with those, too. I don’t forget I’m supposed to have him in my mouth, but I’m too far gone to be able to multitask right now.
His fingers do some crazy twisty curl thing, and then his hand is gone and he’s pulling me down hard. I gasp and try to sit up, but he squeezes my hips.
“I’m going to suffocate you.” I grunt.
“You’re not. Fuck my mouth, doll. Grind down and take whatever you need.”
I hesitate, but he immediately pulls me back down, and I start to move my hips. I find a spot and push down, taking it in a way I have never ever felt before, until I explode, screaming his name as my entire body shakes and spasms.
Then I collapse on top of him and put him back in my mouth, using every ounce of energy I have left to make him feel as good as he always makes me feel. He slides a finger inside me, the tremors still there, and I buck my hips. “Christ, baby.”
I moan around his cock and feel a rush of moisture leave me.
“I’m close, baby. Come with me.”
He presses his thumb to my clit, and unlike last time, I keep him in my mouth while I take even more from him. He gives it all to me with a loud growl against my pussy that makes me moan around his cock. I swallow every drop, and without another word, he pulls me up, tucks me close, and holds me until I fall asleep. His legs entwined in mine and the steady beat of his heart cradle me and make me feel safe until I wake up and have to face reality.