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“Wait, wait!” Liv shouted, holding both hands up with her palms facing outward. “Please, you don’t have to do this.”
“I’m not doing it, Captain,” the man in the ski mask said. He was standing between Barba and Stabler with a gun pointed at each of their heads. “You are.”
“No. Let them go, you don’t want—”
“One of them can go, as soon as you choose.”
“I can’t do that,” she said, unable to keep the tremor from her voice. Her hands were shaking. The men were too far away for her to get there before he shot one or both of them, and she didn’t have her own gun. She was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, and the cement floor of the warehouse was cold against her bare feet.
How did I get here? she thought, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was what was happening in front of her.
“Choose, Captain Benson,” the masked man said, waving the guns near their heads. “Who lives, who dies?”
Stabler was staring at her, his expression unreadable except the silent plea in his eyes.
When she looked at Barba, the lawyer closed his eyes.
“Shoot me instead,” she said.
“No,” Barba said immediately without opening his eyes. “Think of Noah.”
“I’ll make it easier for you,” the gunman said. “This one has kids who already lost their mother.” He poked a gun against Stabler’s temple for emphasis and Stabler’s head tilted to the side. His jaw was set in anger, his hands fisted at his sides, but he was still looking at Liv. She prayed he wouldn’t do anything rash and get himself shot. “Do you want to be the one to tell them you got their father killed, too?
“Now this guy,” he continued, bumping the other gun against Barba’s temple, “he’s got a mother who already lost everyone else. He’s the only family she has left. Losing him would destroy her, you know that. But, she’s old, she can’t have that much time left to suffer, right?”
“We’re all walking out of here,” Liv said, trying desperately to remember her negotiation training. She couldn’t keep the emotions from her voice, couldn’t think of the words she needed to say. She had no control, no power, no way to stop this from happening. No way to protect them. “Please,” she said.
“Choose,” the man said, his voice sharp and impatient.
Barba’s eyes opened and found hers, and she could feel hot tears spilling down her cheeks. “It’s okay,” he said, the words barely audible.
“Liv,” Stabler said, and she looked at the detective who’d once been the single most important person in her life. “We can get out of this,” he told her.
“Choose one.”
“I can’t do that—I won’t,” she said. “It’s me you want to hurt—”
“Fine, I’ll choose for you.”
“Wait—No—”
The masked man looked at Barba and cocked the gun. “Say goodbye,” he said, and Barba tensed as his eyes closed again.
“No no not him,” she blurted, starting forward with her hands thrown out.
“Okay,” the man said, turning his attention to Stabler. The gunshot was impossibly loud, and Stabler’s face exploded outward in a spray of blood and brain and bone, splattering her face and shirt, and she screamed.
She jerked awake in her bed with the muted cry still breaking in her throat, with the blood roaring in her ears and her heart slamming in her chest. She threw off the covers, scarcely able to make sense of the room around her, and scrambled unsteadily from her bed.
Dream, she thought desperately, only a dream, just a dream. But she could still see Stabler’s head disappearing, could still feel the hot splatter of his blood on her face. She rushed toward the bathroom in the darkness and dropped to her knees on the rug, barely managing to get her head over the toilet before her stomach sent up every bite she’d eaten for dinner.
She heaved and retched, puking until there was nothing left. Hot tears streamed down her face. Closing her eyes couldn’t rid her mind of the images, and the roar in her ears couldn’t drown out the sounds of their voices, or the gunshot—
She sat back onto the rug, leaning against the bathtub, and dug the heels of her hands into her burning eyes. “Just a dream,” she said aloud, her voice raspy in the darkness. She still felt ill, but her heart rate was slowly returning to normal as reality settled into place around her. “Just a dream,” she repeated, drawing a deep breath as she lowered her hands.
Not him.
She swallowed hard, grimacing at the bitter taste, and reached out to flush the toilet. She got to her feet on shaky legs and rinsed her mouth several times before gargling a bit of mouthwash. She splashed cool water onto her flushed face.
She looked at herself in the mirror in the darkness and swallowed again.
Not him, she thought, her own words echoing in her brain. She could still feel the panic, the gut-wrenching terror when she’d thought—
She turned away from her dim reflection and drew a bracing breath as she walked back to bed. She still felt jittery, a million miles from sleepy, and she’d picked up her phone before she could second-guess what she was doing.
He answered on the second ring with a groggy “Hello.”
And suddenly she had no idea what to say. “Hey.”
“Liv? Is everything alright?” He sounded abruptly more alert.
“Yeah. Yes,” she said, although she supposed the tremor in her voice was less than reassuring. She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath through her nose. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called so late.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, really—I promise everything’s fine. I just…I needed to hear your voice.”
There was a long pause, and she was about to apologize again when he finally said, “Okay. Tell me what you want me to say and I’ll talk as long as you need.”
She dropped her head into her hand as fresh tears spilled from her eyes. “I had a bad dream is all. It’s stupid, I shouldn’t…I wasn’t thinking clearly, go back to sleep and I’ll—”
“Liv.”
She fell silent for several seconds, and he waited on the other end. “I need you,” she finally whispered.
“Do you want me to come—”
“I need you in my life,” she clarified, because she could hear the rustling of sheets as he started to get out of his bed. “You’re the one I love unconditionally, Rafael. And I’m sorry to say it like this, to wake you up and…and lay this on you, I needed to hear your voice and I needed you to know.” She sat with her eyes closed, listening to the silence broken only by the soft sounds of his breathing.
Then he said, “Give me a second,” and hung up.
She pulled her phone away from her ear and looked at it, and within moments she was receiving a video call. She knew she looked terrible, but she wanted to see him so badly that she didn’t hesitate to answer.
“Hey,” he said as his face filled her screen, and some of the tightness in her chest loosened. His graying hair was sleep-tousled, his eyes full of concern as he searched the screen for a few moments before looking at the camera.
“Hi.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“About me being in love with you, or—”
“About the dream. We can circle back to—You did say ‘in,’ though?” He shook his head. “Tell me about the dream.”
“Not on the phone,” she answered, already wondering if she could even explain how the moment had felt, how real it had seemed, how horrifying…
Or how she’d known even after waking that she’d made the only choice she could.
“Do you want me to come over?”
“It’s almost 3am.”
“That’s not an answer,” he said, looking pointedly into the camera.
“Because answering honestly would be selfish.”
“I want to come over.”
In spite of the uneasiness still clinging to her skin, she smiled. “I want you to come over,” she admitted softly, studying his face on the screen, “but I have to be up in a couple of hours, anyway. Do you have time to meet later for—”
“Yes.”
“—lunch,” she finished with a small laugh. She ran a hand down her face. The general sense of ickiness was finally fading. “I’m afraid to go back to sleep, though.”
“I’ll stay on.”
She looked into the camera and arched a brow. “Watch me sleeping?”
“Not if you’re gonna make it sound creepy,” he said, and she laughed.
“I actually have to, uh…”
“Piss like a racehorse? Thank god, I didn’t want to say anything, but—”
“Rafael,” she said, and he stopped, looking into the camera so she’d know he was paying attention. “Thank you.”
“For being hilarious?”
“For being you. And for answering your phone in the middle of the night.”
“Literally anytime, Liv.”
She smiled. “But I do need to use the bathroom, yes.”
“Yeah, okay, don’t hang up,” he said, his camera angle shifting as he got out of bed. “Just set the phone—”
“Are you wearing clothes?”
“—on the bed. No, it’s the middle of the night. Don’t worry, I’m being careful to keep it PG.”
“PG-13, maybe,” she said, and she heard his chuckle even though she could suddenly see nothing but a dark view of the ceiling above his bed. She set her own phone face-up on her bed and walked back to the bathroom. She could still smell the faint, sour odor of vomit lingering in the air, but her stomach felt pretty settled. Her nerves had been calmed, too, and when her thoughts tried to stray toward the horrifying image at the end of her nightmare she forced them to Barba instead.
When she got back to her bed, he was already onscreen. He was lying on his back with his head on the pillow, phone held over his face in the low light, and he smiled when he saw her reappear.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Much, thank you. Hold on.” She set the phone aside while she settled down onto her side in bed, and then she propped it against the other pillow so she could see him beside her. It looked like he’d done the same, and she smiled.
“Can we circle back, now?” he murmured.
She yawned, shifting her cheek against the pillow. “Mm, I thought you wanted to watch me fall asleep.”
“I do.”
She looked at his face for a few moments, wishing she could reach out and touch him. “Rafa…”
He smiled. “Goodnight, Liv. I’ll stay here and keep the nightmares away, and tomorrow we’ll have a hopefully early lunch.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said softly, still smiling, “and I won’t hold you to that ‘in’ if it’s not what you meant. But just so there’s no misunderstanding, I love you in all the ways I’m allowed.”
“I wish you were here.”
“I am.”
“I wish I could kiss you.”
“Hm. I can be there in half an hour.”
She laughed quietly. “No, stay in bed. It can wait until lunchtime.”
“Maybe we should get breakfast,” he said with a grin that made her laugh again.
“We’ll discuss it in a few hours.”
“I’ll be here,” he promised.