“Jared, you need to listen to me and drop the gun.”

“What the fuck!” He sounded scared, which wasn’t encouraging.

“Put the gun down, Jared.” I made sure I sounded calm and kept his attention on me.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“That’s not important. What’s important is that we all want to walk out of here without anyone getting hurt.”

“Fuck you, lady.” I heard Asa growl and saw Jared start to turn in his direction when suddenly sirens could be heard outside the bar. Jared looked from me and back to Asa, who just shrugged and held up his cell phone. Instead of opening the register when he turned around, he had called 911.

“Sorry, dude, I’m not letting you rob this bar.”

Jared howled like a wounded animal and swung the gun back toward Asa. I knew he was going to pull the trigger, so I didn’t hesitate to pull mine first. The blast of both gunshots simultaneously was deafening and had my ears ringing and my nose twitching from the gunpowder. A bottle shattered behind the bar and I watched as Asa suddenly vaulted over the top of the long bar and took a flying leap through the air to tackle Jared to the ground. I hadn’t aimed to kill the young man, just to get him to drop his weapon. The gun was lying on the ground at Jared’s feet and he was struggling in Asa’s unrelenting hold as he bled from the gunshot wound I had just put in his arm.

I walked over to kick the gun away just as the front doors flew open and several of my coworkers stormed into the building. I laid my own gun on the ground and lifted my hands up in the air, knowing it would take a second to sort out who was who. Luckily one of the guys on scene had gone through the academy with me and Dom, so I got to put my hands down and gave a rundown of the chaotic scene pretty quickly. I knew I was going to have to go through another investigation since it had been an off-duty shooting, but luckily the bar had cameras and there was a viable witness, so I wasn’t too concerned about the fallout this time around. I made sure they knew Asa was a victim and not a suspect because if they ran his background it would raise more questions than the situation called for and he had enough of being accused of crimes he didn’t commit already.

I was sitting on one of the bar stools recounting the events to one of the detectives and Asa was sitting next to me telling his version to another. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point he had reached out and taken one of my hands in his own. His fingers curled around mine and let my fingertips rest against where his pulse was steady and strong. Even if it really was the end of us, I was so grateful for the fact that nothing had happened to him.

“So do either of you know the girl?” The detective that was talking to Asa looked between the two of us as he asked the question. I moved a little closer to Asa so that my side was pressed into his side.

“What girl? Jared came in on his own.”

“He might have entered on his own but he didn’t arrive on his own. There was a girl waiting in front of the building with the car running when we pulled in. She said she was just waiting on him, that he was running in to apologize for some stink he caused, but that sounds suspicious as hell. What kind of junkie needs to make amends in the middle of the night?”

Asa sighed. “Does she have pink hair?”

The detectives shared a look. “Kind of.”

“She’s his girlfriend. Her dad used to own this bar. Jared has her all twisted up and acting crazy. She probably had no idea he was planning on robbing the place.”

“She was in a running vehicle while an attempted armed robbery was taking place. She’s going to get charged as accessory to the crime.”

Asa stiffened. “Don’t do that. I really doubt she understood what he was up to.”

I squeezed the hand I held in mine. “They have to charge her, Asa.”

He sucked in a breath. “Jesus. Brite is going to lose his mind.”

One of the detectives snorted. “She wouldn’t be the first girl to get in trouble for a no-good man. Get her a good lawyer and hope for the best.”

Asa swore and the detective rushed through the rest of the questions as the crime-scene tech finished up all their pictures and measurements. It took a few hours and it was almost dawn by the time we were finally alone. Asa looked worn out and even more haggard than he had when I walked in the door what felt like a lifetime ago. I laid my head on his shoulder and asked him, “Are you okay?”

He laughed and it sounded ugly and hard. “Yeah, but I have no idea how to explain any of this to Rome or what I’m going to tell Brite about Avett.”

“I think maybe you could worry about that after you take a second to be happy nothing terrible happened. You just had a gun fired at your head, Asa.”

He turned his head until his lips touched the center of my forehead. “I know, but that wasn’t nearly as terrifying as watching him point that gun at you.”

“It’s part of my job.”

“Your job sucks.”

I laughed a little. “Sometimes, but today I was so happy that I got to do it.”

We fell into a heavy silence again and I knew I needed to get up and walk away from him once and for all. I just didn’t know that I was going to be able to do that.

“Is this really the end, Asa?”

He made a noise in his throat, then climbed off the chair he was sitting in next to me. He walked around the front of me and put his hands on either side of my face. He tilted my head back and bent down so that his lips brushed softly against my own.

“I don’t know, Royal. Do you think you can love me enough to let me lie to you for the rest of our lives?”

I jerked back from him just a little bit and blinked at him. “What?”

He kissed me again and this time put some force behind it. His tongue snuck out to touch the center of my lips and I felt the scrape of his teeth when I let him in. He kissed me until neither of us could breathe and I was forced to hold on to him or melt away into nothing.

“I love you, Royal. I love you enough to live for you, to be awake for you, to be here in this moment as long as you are in it with me. I love you enough to let you know every little dirty secret I have and to tell you all the terrible things I have done and how those things left their marks on my soul. I love you in a way that makes me want to be more than I ever have been before, but I also love you enough to want to protect you from things that I know are going to hurt you. If you love me enough and trust me enough to let me keep those things from you for an eternity, then maybe we have a shot. I know it’s asking an impossible thing, but that’s the only way.”