“Receipts,” he said.“A whole damn stack.”
“Means something,” I said.“She risked her life for it.”
He nodded.“I’m locking it up.”He jogged up the stairs, and not even a minute later, cops flooded in.
Tyson was the only one hit, and they quickly loaded him up on the stretcher.Britta tried to go with him, but Tyson shook his head.“No.You stay.”
She froze.
“I can’t protect you from a hospital bed,” he said.Then he looked at me.Really looked.“Stay with him.”
That was it.
That was the moment.
No more fight.
No more doubt.
He got it.
She nodded slowly.
The ambulance doors shut and pulled away.
I wrapped my arm around her.
“He’s gonna be okay, sugar.”
She leaned into me.“I know.”A pause.“I just wish it didn’t take him getting shot for you two to be nice to each other.”
I huffed a laugh.“It’s just a graze.”
She elbowed me.
I grinned.
We stood there for a second watching the street.
The aftermath.
“Well,” she said quietly, “that’s not how I expected our morning to go.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, “me neither.”I pressed a kiss to her temple and held her a little tighter.
For a second, everything slowed.The sirens were gone.The shouting had died down.It was just us standing there in the middle of a mess that could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.
Britta shifted in my arms, her fingers curling into the front of my shirt like she needed something solid to hold onto.“What happens now?”she asked softly.
That question hung there between us because there wasn’t some easy answer I could hand her.No clean fix.No neat little plan that made all of this go away.
I exhaled slowly, tightening my arm around her.“I don’t know, sugar,” I said honestly.
Her grip tightened just a little.
“But I do know this,” I continued, tipping her chin up so I could see her eyes.“Whatever it is, we’re not facing it alone.”
Her brows pulled together slightly, like she needed me to keep going.
