“I’m a nice person, Joseph. I like everyone I encounter and chances are if you had asked I would have gone on a second date with you because I always give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Don’t do something you can’t take back.” Don’t kill me like you killed your mother. Don’t hurt me like you hurt Elma and her nurse. Don’t shoot me like you shot Church. I couldn’t even get my head around the thought and my heart refused to believe that fate would force Church to attend another funeral of a woman that mattered to him. Nothing in this life could be that cruel.

My captor’s eyes went flat. There was no emotion. No regret or fear. There was nothing there but chilling intent and cold-blooded resolve. “I don’t regret anything. You’re the one, Dixie.”

A broken laugh burst out of me as I lifted my hand to wipe my face. All I did was smear moisture around and show Joseph how badly I was shaking.

I’d always wanted to be the one. It was my one wish. It looked like I should have been more specific when I was tossing my pennies into the well. I wanted to be the one for the person that was the one for me, not for a lunatic with mayhem and murder on his mind.

If I made it out of this alive there was no way I was going to let the man that was my one get away or let him send me away.

Church

Hey, Church. You know I love you, right?”

There was no stopping my fall after that. My knees hit the ground. My head fell forward on my neck and my heart turned itself inside out. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see past the haze of everything I had to lose suffocating me and pulling me under. I don’t know how the words escaped but I managed to tell her, “You don’t get to do that, Dixie. You don’t get to give me that when you’re risking your neck like a little fool.”

She laughed but it was sadder than anything I’d ever heard in my life. It was so final, so fatalistic when she whispered the damning truth and gave me a good-bye I was bound and determined to obey: “You’ve always had it.”

Then she was gone and there was no getting her back. I let out a roar that was inhuman and dragged my bloodied, battered body down the driveway even though there was no way in hell I could catch up the car that squealed away with my entire life inside of it. I fell to my knees again. Leveled by emotion and hammered by pain, none of it coming from the graze across my arm or the jagged hole that burned right under my collarbone. I’d taken a bullet before. It never felt good, but I knew enough and had been wounded enough while I was overseas to know that while these injures hurt like a bitch they wouldn’t be the end of me. I felt a heavy hand land on my shoulder and looked up at my dad through eyes that wouldn’t focus. My lungs were burning and my mouth felt like it was full of acid and bile. He handed me something that looked like a spare T-shirt and ordered, “Put that on your shoulder and get your ass up. Let’s go get your girl, son.”

I barely heard him. I was too lost in my own spiral of panic and remorse. I wanted to go back and do it all over again. I wanted to leave Dixie at home so that she was never in danger in the first place. I wanted to take her to bed the first time she gave me the opportunity so that I could tell her with my body what I didn’t have the words to say. I wanted to make sure she knew that if I could love her I would. I had forgotten how but I was willing to learn for her and because of her. She made me want to face my biggest fear. She was the only woman that made me want to take that risk. I wanted to wake up with her in my arms every single morning and I wanted to spend all day, every day making sure she knew that she came first. She was the sun in my sky and if something happened to her there was absolutely no way that anything would ever get the chance to flourish and grow in the soul she had been cultivating and nurturing from the moment we met. In fact, all that rich and fertile soil that she had been tilling and digging her way through would go back to ash and dust if anything happened to her. I would be barren and desolate, like I had been before her bright light found its way into all my dark places.

“If anything happens to her …” I trailed off and allowed Jules to haul me up to my feet.

“We’re gonna make sure nothing happens to her, Dash.”

I winced in pain that had nothing to do with the bleeding hole in my shoulder. “I wish I could believe that, Dad. Our track record isn’t so great in that department.” I followed him to his cruiser all while he was shouting orders and rallying the troops, and we hit the doors at a run and peeled out into the street and after the speeding sedan. Jules tossed his radio at me and ordered me to relay every twist and turn we took as we followed. I knew he was trying to make me feel productive and helpful in the pursuit but all I could feel was panic and fear threatening to choke me. She’d sacrificed herself for me, for Elma. She took care of me when it was my job to take care of her. She would give up everything for the little bit of good we’d had together.

“We might not have a winning track record when it comes to keeping them, but we’re undefeated when it comes to finding the best women to make a life with. I think the big guy upstairs owes us a solid, son. Keep your head in the game.” I was trying to, but I felt like I was getting sucked into a black vortex that was filled with familiar pain and hopelessness.

“She told me she loves me.” The words ripped out of my chest. It couldn’t be the last thing she ever said to me, not without me being able to give that back to her. I needed to give that to her regardless of what happened between us in the future. “She loves me and I was so fucking worried about Elma falling that I didn’t stop and grab my gun when we left the house. I knew trouble was brewin’ and I dropped the ball.” I felt my head fall forward as pain and blood loss started to zap some of my energy. She loved me and she very well could die because of it.