Page 180 of Snowbound Threat

I won’t let her.

He straightens as reds and blues flash outside my windows. “Looks like they’re here.” Turning, he sprints through my house, and I hear him directing them inside.

“Beckett, please don’t leave me,” I whisper as I press a kiss to the top of her head. “Please stay with me.”

But she doesn’t answer.

21.Beckett

The world is a blur as I come awake. Bright lights surround me, and the steady beeping of machines fills the otherwise silent room. My nose is dry, my throat scratchy, so I reach up to tug the oxygen tube away. Pain shoots up through my arm, and I groan.

“Easy,” a masculine voice says. Blinking rapidly to clear my vision, I focus on the blurred form above me.

“Shawn,” I choke out when my vision clears and I see him standing over me. He’s wearing blue scrubs, and his hair is a mess on top of his head as though he’s been running a hand through it.

“Hey.” He smiles down at me, then rests his hand on top of my head as his thumb gently caresses my forehead.

“I—what happened?”

“Do you remember anything?”

I close my eyes and focus on my breathing while I try to remember. It all hits me in rapid succession. Coming back to his house, getting shot, the ambulance. “I got shot. Oh no, Lauren, is she?—”

“She’s fine. Safe with my mom right now.” He swallows hard. “You coded. Twice.”

“Coded? I died?”

He nods and takes a steady breath as he takes a seat on the bed beside me, taking my hand in his. Shoulders slumped, he looks absolutely beaten down. “The bullet nicked your subclavian artery and got lodged in your clavicle. By the time we got you here, you’d lost so much blood that your heart stopped on the table. They gave you transfusions and finally managed to stabilize you so they could remove the bullet.”

His expression is broken, his shoulders sagging. I can see the pain on his face, the ache over what happened. “I’m sorry.”

His brow furrows. “Why do you keep apologizing?”

“Since I showed up in your precinct, you’ve been led into one dangerous situation after another. I’m glad it was me who got shot and not you.”

“I’m not,” he replies without hesitation. “I would have gladly taken that bullet. It would have been preferable to watching the life drain from your body.” His tone is sharp, frustrated.

“Shawn—”

“Do you not get it, Beckett? Do you notsee?”

“See what?”

He clenches his jaw, then releases me and stands. “When you were bleeding, all I could think about was what a coward I’ve been.”

“Coward? You’re a lot of things, Detective, but a coward is not one of them.”

“When it comes to you, I’ve been a coward.”

I try to read between the lines. Try to see what it is he’s getting at, but the drugs have me so groggy that thinking too hard makes my head hurt.

“From the moment you walked into my precinct that very first time we met, you’ve monopolized my thoughts. Even after that first date, I’ve been unable to stop thinking about you. And then...” He trails off.

My heart begins to race, something that has nothing to do with the pain radiating from my injury.

He turns back toward me. “You walked back into my life, and it felt like a second chance.”

“It was. For both of us.”