00 BEAU ARLEN

The sirens echoed as Beau stepped out, flashing red and blue lights painting the trees. Amid the urgent deputies and radios, he saw only you sitting on a cruiser’s bumper, blood blooming across your shirt. As a medic applied gauze, your eyes locked onto his. Beau’s heart nearly stopped; he desperately wanted to run to you, hold your face, and let his panic show, but his heavy badge forced him to stay stoic and unreadable. He stood a few feet away, hiding his terror as he asked the medic, “How bad?”

“Clean graze. She’ll need a few stitches, but she’s lucky,” the medic replied. You were lucky, yet Beau felt a profound sense of loss. He stayed only until you were stable, then left because Emily and Jenny arrived, and because the eyes on him forced their relationship to stay hidden in the shadows—even while you bled.

Under the pale fluorescent hospital lights, the heart monitor beeped quietly. You lay stitched and bandaged, an arm across your stomach. Without looking at him, you rasped, “You didn’t even come near me.”

Beau closed the door slowly, admitting hollowly, “I couldn’t.”

You let out a dry laugh. “No, of course not. Not with your daughter around or your deputies watching. I had your blood on my hands, Beau.” He winced and fell silent as you turned to look at him with a deep, quiet ache. “I got shot, and I had to pretend I didn’t want you next to me. Pretending it didn’t kill me to see you walk away.”

In two strides, Beau crossed the room and stopped by your bed, jaw clenched and hands shaking. “Do you think I wanted to leave you? That something in me didn’t snap when I saw you bleeding and couldn’t do a damn thing about it?”