PARTNERS

chapter 1

I open my eyes to darkness.

I know they're open but I can't see anything.

I rub them with my fists, bumping my face with something hard and scratchy, then open them again.

Still nothing.

My heart rate increases as my chest expands and contracts at a rapid rate, until I finally hear him rustle beside me.

"Baby, it's me, I'm right here. Everything's fine." I hear Toren's deep, soothing voice, with a tinge of breathlessness.

"I can't see!" I cry out, trying to catch my breath, sitting into an upright position, feeling softness around and under me.

He flips a light switch on bringing me back into my surroundings.

I'm not on that floor, blood covering my eyes, disrupting my vision.

"You're safe." he whispers.

I'm not staring into the open, empty eyes of a man that was once my best friend.

"I've got you."

I'm not standing above Tommy, emptying the rest of the loaded gun into his limp body while the screams pour from my mouth and the tears from my eyes.

"I'm right here." he continues.

I'm not back in that hospital, having to see Annie's face as she collapses onto the tile of the hallway when they tell her her only brother died in the line of duty, saving my life.

"Everything is going to be alright."

And I'm not in danger anymore.

I'm in Toren's arms, with that damn cast on my hand, crying out in the middle of the night for the millionth time this week.

"I know. I know it's hard." he comforts me, pulling me into his embrace until I'm curled up into him under the covers again.

He trails his hand up and down my arm softly, holding me together as I fall apart.

It happened so slowly, and yet so fast at the same time.

That day will forever be ingrained in my head. A stained memory that will never be removed.

I'm back in that room.

The gun cocked and Ryder turned back towards a fallen Tommy, pulling his gun from his holster at the same time. Two shots fired as Ryder flew in front of me.

He dove before me, taking a bullet to the head, spraying my face with his blood as he fell back, covering my vision, while the other shot hit Tommy dead in the middle of his forehead. He was killed instantly.

Adrien grabbed me as I passed out onto the floor beneath me. Coming to, in his arms, I thought I'd died. I knew I must've been shot because there was blood everywhere. But it wasn't my blood. He checked me over with panicked eyes as I pulled away to get to Ryder's body.

He laid there, his eyes open, deprived of life in a fleeting second.

He saved me.

I collapsed on him, fisting the wet shirt on his blood covered chest, crying the silent cry. The kind of cry that you never quite get out, not without a pained scream.

I screamed.

I screamed over and over again.

It wasn't possible.

The anger overwhelmed me before the sadness could reach me. I grabbed Ryder's loose gun, the one laying on the floor beside him, and walked over to Tommy.