Insisted on Mia. On holding her. On one last minute with her sister pressed against her chest, Mia sobbing hard and loud now that she finally could. Riley’s good arm wrapped tight, her face pale but set, like she could still keep the world together if she tried hard enough.
She made me promise. Stay with Mia. Bring her to the hospital. Don’t let her out of your sight.
Only then did she let them take her.
Someone said the bullet went clean through her shoulder. Someone else said no major arteries. Words floated past—clean entry, clean exit, surgery, physical therapy—none of them sticking.
I held onto one thing.
She was alive.
She was going to be okay.
Everything else stayed blurred at the edges, like my mind hadn’t caught up to what my body already knew.
I kept repeating it to myself, a mantra against the image that wouldn’t leave my head: Riley on the ground, blood seeping through her fingers, the moment I thought I’d lost her.
A deputy approached me. She said something about a statement, about coming to the station, about standard procedure after an incident like this. I nodded without really hearing. My eyes kept drifting to the ambulance, to the doors they’d closed behind Riley, to the lights starting to flash as they prepared to move.
“Mr. Murphy.” Sheriff Daniels stepped into my field of vision. “That was either very brave or very stupid. Probably both.”
“Probably.”
“You grabbed his arm as he fired. You know that, right? If you’d been a second later, that bullet would have hit her center mass instead of her shoulder.”
I knew. I’d been replaying it on a loop since the moment the gun went off. The fraction of a second that meant the difference between a wounded shoulder and a shattered heart.
“She’s alive because of you,” Sheriff Daniels said. “Don’t forget that when you’re beating yourself up later.”
I looked at my hands. At the blood. Todd’s and mine and maybe some of Riley’s—all of it mixed together, impossible to separate.
“She’s also shot because I wasn’t fast enough.”
Sheriff Daniels shook her head. “She’s shot because a violent man made a violent choice. You didn’t pull that trigger. You stopped him from pulling it again.”
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to let myself off the hook, accept the version where I wasn’t the problem, and not the man who’d almost beaten someone to death in front of a child.
But the blood on my hands told a different story. And I wasn’t sure which version was true.
Mia had watched me.
That thought cut through everything else—the relief, the rage, the adrenaline crash that left me shaking and hollow. She’dseen me. Seen what I was capable of. Seen me ready to beat a man to death with my bare hands.
I’d told myself I was nothing like Todd. Nothing like the monsters Riley had survived, the men who used their fists to control and terrify. I was the good guy. The protector. The man who ran into burning buildings to save strangers.
But for one red moment, fists raised, blood pounding, I hadn’t been so sure.
I’d wanted to kill him. Not just stop him. Kill him. End his life with my bare hands while a twelve-year-old girl watched.
What kind of man did Mia see in that clearing? Would Riley ever look at me the same way again?
Whatever the answer was, I wasn’t ready for it.
CHAPTER 18
Riley
I had preparedmyself to die in that clearing. I wasn't prepared for what came after.
