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The shot was louder inside the classroom.
Amanda would remember that afterward—not Holden’s voice breaking off halfway through a breath, not the sharp crack of glass or the screaming that erupted somewhere beyond the door, and not even the force of his body collapsing against her before gravity dragged him to the floor.
Only the shot.
One violent sound, followed by the sudden warmth of blood striking her face.
For half a second, Amanda remained bent toward the space Holden had occupied, her lips still parted around the lie she had been about to finish.
May I kiss you?
The words had barely formed in her mind when Holden fell.
He lay at her feet with his eyes open, his expression emptied of the desperate hope that had been there a moment before. The gun slipped from his lowered hand and struck the floor beside him, landing uselessly on the linoleum.
Amanda stared at it.
He had lowered it.
She had gotten him to lower it.
The classroom door crashed open.
Tactical officers poured inside, weapons raised, their commands overlapping one another as if Holden might somehow get back up. One officer kicked his gun away. Another stepped over his body. Boots tracked through the blood spreading across the linoleum.
Amanda did not move.
“Amanda.”
Nick reached her before anyone else did. His hands closed around her arms, turning her toward him so quickly that the room lurched around her. His eyes moved frantically over her face, her throat and the front of her blouse, searching for an injury he could not yet see.
“Amanda, look at me.”
She looked at him.
The terror in his face lasted less than a second. Then his gaze shifted past her to Holden’s body, to the blood streaked across her face, and he understood that none of it was hers.
“Are you hit?”
Amanda heard the question as if it had come from somewhere far away.
“Amanda, are you hurt?”
“He put it down.”
Nick’s brow tightened. “What?”
“His gun.” Her voice sounded strangely flat, detached from the chaos around them. “He put it down.”
Nick glanced toward the weapon that had been kicked across the room. It lay several feet away, abandoned on the floor while tactical officers secured the scene and shouted overlapping commands.
One of the officers moved toward them, gesturing urgently toward the door. “Detectives, we need you outside.”
Amanda twisted out of Nick’s grip.
“They didn’t have to shoot him.”
“Amanda—”
“I had him.”
“I know.”
“He was listening to me.” Her breath caught, but her voice remained unnervingly controlled. “He put the gun down.”
Nick reached for her again, slower this time, his hands open as though approaching a frightened animal.
She shoved him away.
It was not a hard push. Under ordinary circumstances, it would barely have moved him. Nick nevertheless took a step backward as if she had struck him.
“Don’t.”
His hands dropped immediately.
“He was surrendering,” she said.
Chief Dodds entered the classroom behind the tactical officers. His gaze moved from Holden’s body to Amanda, cool and assessing.
“The suspect still represented an active threat.”
Amanda turned on him.
“He lowered his weapon.”
“He remained within reach of it.”
“I was right there.”
“Which is precisely why the sniper took the shot.”
“I could’ve talked him down.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
The words came out sharper than Amanda intended, but she could not take them back. Her pulse hammered in her ears as she looked from Dodds to Holden’s body and then back again. The classroom seemed to have narrowed around them, every sound reduced to the ringing aftermath of the gunshot.
“Amanda.” Olivia’s voice cut through the commotion as she entered the room. “Not here.”
Amanda looked at her sergeant and saw the same terrible knowledge in Olivia’s eyes. Olivia had not ordered the shot. She had not wanted it. Amanda knew that without being told.
That did not make it hurt any less.
Behind her, Holden’s mother began screaming somewhere outside the building.
The sound tore through the classroom, raw and jagged, cutting through the overlapping commands of the tactical officers and the frantic crackle of police radios. It was the kind of grief that seemed to have no beginning and no end, a single unbearable note rising from somewhere beyond the walls and filling every corner of the room.
Amanda closed her eyes.
For one suspended moment, she could no longer see the blood spreading across the floor or the officers moving around Holden’s body. She could only hear his mother calling his name, each repetition breaking apart as it left her throat. Amanda had spent the last several minutes convincing herself that Holden was a threat, that the gun had made every choice for him, that stopping him had been the only way to keep anyone else alive.
None of that made the sound outside less human.
None of it made the body at her feet less real.
Nick moved closer but did not touch her again. He seemed to understand that she needed the space, even as he positioned himself near enough to catch her if she faltered. His presence settled beside her like a quiet promise: he would not force her to speak, would not pull her away before she was ready, and would not leave her alone with the echo of the shot.
“Let’s get you outside,” Olivia said gently.
“I’m fine.”
“No one said you weren’t. But the EMTs need to check you.”
“It’s not my blood.”
“I know.”
Amanda opened her eyes.
Everyone was looking at her.
The tactical officers stood around Holden’s body with their weapons still raised, their faces hidden behind visors and the harsh glare of the classroom lights. Dodds watched from near the doorway, his expression unreadable. Olivia stood a few feet away, pale and tense. Nick was closest, his attention fixed entirely on Amanda.
Their concern made her skin crawl.
She pulled the back of her hand across her cheek and stared at the red smear it left behind. The blood was warm against her skin. It glistened across her knuckles, bright and unmistakable.
For the first time, she seemed to understand what was covering her.
Her stomach rolled.
The classroom tilted. The walls appeared to draw inward, and the sharp smell of gunpowder gave way to the coppery stench of blood. Amanda swallowed hard, but the taste remained in her mouth. She pressed one hand against the edge of a desk, trying to steady herself.
Nick stepped forward when her knees buckled.
Amanda caught herself before he could reach her.
“I can walk.”
“All right,” Olivia said. “You can walk.”
Her voice was gentle, but there was no room in it for argument.
Amanda straightened, forcing her legs to obey. She kept her eyes away from Holden’s body as she moved toward the door. The tactical officers shifted aside to let her pass, and one of them lowered his weapon only after she was safely beyond the line of fire.
Nick followed half a step behind her all the way out of the classroom.
The cold struck Amanda as soon as she emerged from the school, cutting through the thin fabric of her blouse and raising gooseflesh along her arms. Until that moment, she had been too focused on Holden, the gun, and the blood on her face to register anything beyond the immediate danger. Now the night air filled her lungs, sharp and metallic, and she realized she was trembling.
The street had become a maze of emergency vehicles, police barricades and portable floodlights. Blue and red light swept repeatedly over the school’s brick exterior. Radios crackled. Officers shouted to one another. The students Amanda had convinced Holden to release were being reunited with their parents beyond the barricade, their sobs carrying through the night air.
A body bag waited on an empty stretcher near the doors, its black plastic surface gleaming beneath the rotating emergency lights. Amanda recognized the shape beneath it before she could stop herself from looking. The stretcher stood only a few feet from the entrance, positioned where everyone leaving the school would have to pass it. She caught a glimpse of one boot protruding from beneath the edge of the bag, and the sight struck her with a force that made her chest tighten.
She looked away.
An EMT guided her toward an ambulance parked a short distance from the command post. She allowed herself to be led because Olivia had asked her to cooperate and because deciding where to put her feet had suddenly become too difficult.
“Have a seat for me, Detective.”
Amanda sat on the rear step.
Someone wrapped a grey wool blanket around her shoulders. The fabric scratched against the back of her neck, but she pulled it closed with both hands. Her fingers had begun to shake.
The EMT shone a light into each of her eyes, watching her pupils contract.
“Any loss of consciousness?”
“No.”
“Headache?”
“No.”
“Dizziness or nausea?”
“No.”
“Any pain anywhere?”
“No.”
Every answer came automatically, clipped and immediate, the same way she might have responded during a routine field assessment. The words left her mouth before she had time to consider whether they were true. Her body had already decided that she was fine, that she was standing, breathing and answering questions, and therefore there was nothing left to discuss.
The EMT studied her with the patient skepticism of someone accustomed to cops lying about their own bodies. He lowered the penlight but did not put it away, his gaze moving over her face and posture as though he could find the truth in the tension of her shoulders or the way she held herself too rigidly beneath the blanket.
“This blood isn’t yours?”
“No.”
“Did any get into your eyes or mouth?”
Amanda stared past him.
Holden leaning toward her.
His eyelids lowering.
That nervous, hopeful smile.
Warmth striking her lips.
“Detective?”
“I don’t know.”
The EMT’s expression tightened with concern. “We’ll flush your eyes as a precaution.”
“I can see.”
“I understand, but we still need to—”
“I said I can see.”
The EMT paused, the saline-soaked gauze hovering between them.
Amanda knew she was being difficult. She could hear it in her own voice, clipped and defensive, and she knew he was only doing his job. He was trying to make sure the blood had not caused an injury, trying to help her after a violent scene she had barely begun to process.
Knowing that did not make her capable of allowing another stranger to touch her.
The EMT lowered the gauze slightly. “All right,” he said carefully. “Can I at least clean your face so we can make sure there aren’t any injuries underneath the blood?”
“I’m not injured.”
“We still need to check.”
He opened a fresh packet of sterile gauze and soaked it with saline. Amanda watched his gloved hand rise toward her face.
Every muscle in her body locked.
The ambulance seemed to narrow around her. The cold air, the flashing lights and the voices beyond the open doors blurred into a single, distant hum. All she could see was the hand approaching her cheek, the white gauze darkening with moisture.
The gauze was inches from her skin when another hand closed around the EMT’s wrist.
“Wait.”
Nick’s voice cut across the ambulance’s open rear doors.
The EMT glanced up sharply, the damp gauze suspended inches from Amanda’s face. Nick released his wrist at once, as though only then realizing he had grabbed him.
“Sorry.” His voice was controlled, but his breathing was not. “Just—give it to me.”
“Detective, I need to assess her.”
“I know.” Nick’s gaze never left Amanda. “You can assess her after. Let me clean her up.”
The EMT looked from Nick to Amanda.
Only then did Amanda realize she was leaning away. Her shoulders pressed against the inside wall of the ambulance, and her hands had tightened around the grey blanket as if it could hold her in place. The EMT had been gentle, professional, and entirely harmless, but the sight of his gloved hand approaching her face had made every muscle in her body lock.
Nick stood beside the open doors, his coat unbuttoned and his tie pulled crooked beneath his collar. Dust marked one knee of his trousers from where Holden had forced him to kneel, and a red band encircled one wrist where the handcuff had pressed against his skin. He looked as though he had only just remembered that he was outside the classroom at all.
His eyes stayed on Amanda.
He did not reach for her.
He did not ask if she was all right.
He simply waited, giving her the choice.
The EMT seemed to understand something in the silence between them. After a moment, he handed Nick the gauze and stepped aside.
“I’ll be right over there,” he said. “If she reports any dizziness, blurred vision or nausea—”
“I’ll get you.”
The EMT nodded and moved toward the front of the ambulance.
Nick remained beside Amanda, the gauze held carefully between his fingers.
Amanda stared at the gauze in his hand.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“I can do it myself.”
“I know that too.”
“Then give it to me.”
Nick did not.
Instead, he moved slowly toward her, making no sudden gestures and leaving her enough time to stop him. He crouched in front of her until they were nearly eye level, one knee resting against the pavement between her boots. The position placed him between Amanda and the rest of the scene, shielding her from the flashing lights, the officers moving around them and the bloodied classroom behind him.
For a moment, all of it disappeared.
The red and blue lights flickered across Nick’s shoulders, but Amanda could no longer see the school, the tactical team or the body bag waiting near the entrance. There was only Nick in front of her, close enough to touch but careful not to do so without permission, the damp gauze held loosely in his hand and concern written across his face.
“Can I?” he asked.
Amanda looked at him.
The question nearly undid her. He had seen her bleed before. He had caught her when she stumbled, dragged her out of danger and pressed his hands against wounds without asking because there had been no time for permission. He had held pressure against bullet wounds, cleaned blood from her face and steadied her when shock made the ground tilt beneath her feet. In those moments, there had been no room for hesitation, no space for anything except survival.
Now he waited.
The difference was almost unbearable.
Nick was close enough to touch her, but he did not assume that closeness gave him the right. He did not reach for her simply because he was frightened or because he needed to reassure himself that she was still there. He asked, and then he left the choice with her.
Amanda looked at the gauze in his hand, then back at his face. His expression was carefully controlled, but she could see the strain beneath it—the fear he had not yet managed to hide, the restraint holding him rigid. He was giving her an escape even though every part of him seemed desperate to take care of her.
Amanda gave the smallest nod.
Nick raised the gauze.
His other hand hovered beside her face before settling carefully beneath her chin. The warmth of his fingers startled her.
“Close your eyes.”
She obeyed.
The wet gauze touched her forehead first.
Nick wiped slowly toward her temple, removing a streak of blood she had not known was there. He folded the gauze, found a clean section and passed it gently over her cheekbone.
Amanda could hear his breathing beneath the noise of the street.
In through his nose.
Out through his mouth.
Too deliberate. Too controlled.
He was trying to keep himself steady for her.
Around them, the scene continued without pause. A radio announced that the school’s second floor had been cleared. Someone called for the medical examiner. Officers moved behind the barricades, speaking in clipped voices as parents clung to their children. Holden’s mother was still crying somewhere beyond the flashing lights, her grief rising above the sirens and radio chatter.
Nick unfolded a fresh piece of gauze.
“I had him,” Amanda whispered.
His hand stopped against her cheek.
She opened her eyes.
Nick was watching her, his expression guarded but his attention fixed entirely on her face.
“He lowered the gun,” she said. “You saw him let the others go.”
“I saw.”
“He wanted to believe me.”
Nick dipped the gauze into the small bottle of saline the EMT had left beside her.
“You gave him something he wanted.”
“I lied to him.”
“You negotiated with an armed suspect.”
“I told him I understood him.”
“You did understand enough to get those girls out.”
“I told him he deserved someone who appreciated him.”
“Amanda—”
“I offered to kiss him.”
Nick’s jaw tightened.
There it was.
The reaction was so small that anyone else might have missed it. Amanda would have noticed it from across the squad room: the brief clench of his jaw, the way his eyes hardened before he forced his expression back under control.
“You know what the last thing he saw was?” she asked. “Me leaning toward him. He thought somebody finally wanted him, and then they blew his head off.”
Nick’s eyes flicked toward the blood along the edge of her hairline.
“He murdered people.”
“I know what he did.”
“He held a gun to a kid’s head.”
“I know.”
“He killed that teacher in front of his classroom.”
“I know, Nick.”
“I’m not defending the shot.”
Amanda fell silent.
Nick folded the bloodied gauze inward, trapping the red-stained side against itself.
“I’m not,” he repeated. “You said you had him. I believe you.”
“Dodds didn’t.”
“Dodds wasn’t in that room.”
“You were.”
“Yeah.”
The single word carried more weight than an argument would have.
Amanda looked at the red mark around his wrist.
Holden had made her fasten the handcuff.
For one awful second, she could feel the metal closing between the teeth of the ratchet again. She remembered Nick’s eyes on her while she did it. He had not resisted. He had known that any sudden movement could get one of the girls killed, and he had trusted Amanda to understand what she needed to do.
Holden had forced Nick to the radiator because Nick was the threat. Nick was the one who could overpower him, the one who might lunge for the gun or find a way to turn the situation against him. So Holden had restrained him first, binding him in place and keeping him where he could watch him.
Then he had treated Amanda like something else.
Not a threat. Not an equal. Something pretty. Something he wanted. Something he believed he could control.
He had looked at her as though her fear belonged to him, as though he could turn her compassion into obedience and her willingness to help into something personal. He had mistaken her patience for weakness, her careful words for surrender.
He had never understood that Amanda was choosing every word because she was waiting for the moment when he stopped watching the gun.
“You let me cuff you,” she said.
Nick’s gaze followed hers to his wrist.
“I didn’t have much choice.”
“You could’ve tried something.”
“And gotten a student shot?”
“I hated doing it.”
“I know.”
“He made you leave.”
Nick did not answer.
After Amanda convinced Holden to release the hostages, Nick had refused to move at first. He had stood in the doorway with the students rushing past him, his body angled toward her as if he could shield her from across the room. His eyes never left her. They were wide with fear and fury, fixed on the gun in Holden’s hand and then on Amanda’s face, searching for some indication that she was still in control.
Holden had raised the weapon again.
Not quite at Amanda. Not quite away from her.
The movement had been small, but Nick had seen it. Amanda had seen him see it. His shoulders had tightened, and one hand had curled into a fist at his side.
“Get out,” Holden had ordered.
Nick had not moved.
For one suspended second, the entire room seemed to hold its breath. The students were already spilling through the doorway, crying and stumbling into the hallway, but Nick remained where he was. He looked at Amanda as if he could refuse the order simply by refusing to leave her.
Amanda had looked back at him.
Go.
She had not said it aloud. She had barely moved her lips, but he had understood.
Nick had shaken his head once.
Amanda had forced herself to keep her expression calm. She had lifted her chin and repeated the command with her eyes.
Go.
The gun shifted again.
Nick’s face changed.
He knew what she was asking him to do. He knew she was sending him away because Holden had made him the threat, because his presence was keeping the gun trained on the room, because the students would not be safe until he was gone.
He also knew that leaving her meant trusting a man with a weapon to keep his word.
Nick had looked at her for one last second.
Then he had backed into the hallway.
He had not turned around until Holden ordered him to keep moving. Even then, he had walked backward, his gaze locked on Amanda’s, until the last student cleared the doorway and the tactical officers pulled him out of sight.
Amanda knew what that obedience had cost him.
Nick had not simply followed an order. He had chosen to leave her standing in front of a gun because she had told him it was the only way to save the others.
And he had done it believing he might never see her again.
“You came back,” she said.
The words emerged more softly than she intended.
Nick looked at her.
“You knew I would.”
“Yes.”
There was never a question.
Nick’s expression shifted, some part of him cracking before he forced it back into place.
He raised the gauze again.
“There’s some near your eye.”
Amanda closed it.
Nick’s thumb rested lightly against her cheekbone while he cleaned her eyelid. His touch was impossibly delicate, each movement slow and deliberate as he worked the edge of the gauze through her lashes, careful not to pull them. Amanda could feel the warmth of his hand against her skin, the faint pressure of his fingers supporting her jaw, and the uneven rhythm of his breathing as he tried to remain composed.
The sensation was intimate in a way Amanda had not prepared for. It was not simply that he was touching her, or that he was cleaning blood from her face. It was the care in the gesture, the restraint, the way he treated her as though she were something fragile despite knowing exactly how strong she was. After the violence of the classroom, after the gunshot and the shouting and the sudden certainty that Holden was dead, Nick’s gentleness felt almost more disorienting than the chaos had.
She kept her eyes closed, allowing herself to remain still beneath his hand. For a few seconds, she did not have to look at the blood, the flashing lights or the people watching her. She only had to feel Nick’s thumb against her cheek and trust that he would tell her when it was safe to open her eyes.
“You can tell me it was reckless,” she said.
“I could.”
“You want to.”
“I usually do.”
That almost made her smile.
Nick wiped beneath her eye.
“You saved five kids,” he continued. “You got me out. You got him to put down the gun. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that you did something wrong.”
“What if he figured it out?”
Nick’s fingers tightened slightly against her jaw.
Amanda opened her eyes.
“What if he realized I was lying?” she asked. “What if he knew I never intended to kiss him?”
“Then I would’ve found another way back into that room.”
“You were outside.”
“I would’ve found a way.”
“You couldn’t even see us.”
“I know.”
The answer came too quickly.
Amanda looked down at his hand. The gauze trembled between his fingers, not enough for anyone else to notice, barely enough to disturb the surface of the saline. But Amanda noticed. She noticed everything about him—the tension in his shoulders, the careful control in his breathing, the way his thumb had gone still against her skin.
“Nick.”
He lowered the gauze.
“What?”
“Your hand.”
He glanced down as though he were only now becoming aware of the tremor.
“It’s cold.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Amanda—”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s my line.”
“It’s everybody’s line.”
Nick reached for another square of gauze, but Amanda caught his wrist before he could take it. The red mark left by the handcuff felt raised beneath her thumb, the skin warm and tender from where Holden had restrained him.
Nick went still.
“What happened outside?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nick.”
“We waited.”
His voice had flattened, the words stripped of everything except the bare facts.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes.”
“I don’t know how long it was.”
Amanda watched him. Nick looked past her into the ambulance, avoiding her eyes as though the interior offered something safer to focus on than the memory he was trying not to revisit.
“They got the students clear,” he said. “Tactical took their positions. Benson was arguing with Dodds. They were trying to get audio from the room.”
“And you?”
“I was waiting.”
The muscle in his jaw jumped.
“For what?”
His gaze returned to hers.
“For him to kill you.”
The street noise seemed to recede around them. The radios still crackled, officers still moved through the wash of emergency lights, and somewhere beyond the barricades someone was crying, but Amanda heard only the rough catch in Nick’s breathing.
He swallowed.
“I stood out there listening to people talk about lines of sight and whether they had a clean shot. I couldn’t see you. I didn’t know where you were standing. I didn’t know where his gun was. All I knew was that I had walked out and left you alone with him.”
“I told you to go.”
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
“Those girls needed you.”
“And you didn’t?”
Amanda’s fingers loosened around his wrist.
Nick looked down at the bloodied gauze in his hand. For a moment, he seemed to be seeing something else entirely: the classroom door, the officers taking position, the narrow slice of time between obeying her order and hearing the shot.
“When I heard it, I didn’t know who they’d hit.”
The confession was scarcely louder than the radios.
Amanda stared at him.
“I ran in, and you were covered in blood.” His voice roughened. “You wouldn’t look at me. You wouldn’t answer me. For a second, I thought—”
He stopped.
Amanda’s throat tightened.
Nick had been the first person through the door.
She remembered that now. Tactical had entered first in the technical sense—guns raised, clearing the room, securing Holden’s weapon—but Nick had been the first person who came in for her.
He had crossed the classroom before the sound of the shot had even stopped echoing.
“Hey,” she said.
Nick shook his head and reached for her face again.
Amanda caught his hand before he could touch her.
“It wasn’t mine.”
“I know that now.”
“You didn’t leave me.”
“I walked out of the room.”
“To get those kids to safety.”
“I left you behind.”
“You came back.”
“I almost came back too late.”
“But you didn’t.”
Nick stared at her.
Amanda guided his hand to her cheek. His palm settled against her skin, warm and unsteady.
“I knew you were outside,” she said. “The whole time I was talking to him, I knew you were out there.”
“That was supposed to make you feel better?”
“It did.”
Something moved through Nick’s expression, too tender and painful for Amanda to name. His thumb swept lightly beneath her eye, careful not to disturb the last traces of blood.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“For not getting you out too.”
“You don’t get to apologize for trusting me to do my job.”
“I didn’t trust him.”
“Neither did I.”
“You got close enough to kiss him.”
“I had to.”
“I know.”
The words came through clenched teeth.
Amanda tilted her head, studying the tension in his jaw. “Is that what this is about?”
Nick frowned. “What?”
“You’re mad because I offered to kiss him?”
He stared at her in disbelief.
“Seriously?”
“Well, you got that look.”
“What look?”
“That jealous Catholic schoolboy look.”
“I do not have a jealous Catholic schoolboy look.”
“You absolutely do.”
“Amanda, he had a gun.”
“I noticed.”
“I’m not jealous of the spree killer who nearly murdered you.”
“Nearly?”
Nick’s eyes narrowed.
Despite herself, Amanda felt the corner of her mouth twitch.
It lasted only a second.
The smile disappeared when Holden’s mother cried out again.
The sound rose above the radios and the idling engines, raw with grief, and Amanda turned her face away. She could not bear to look toward the school. She could not bear the thought of the woman seeing her sitting there with Holden’s blood on her skin, as if Amanda had somehow carried the last piece of him out of the classroom.
Nick’s palm slipped from her cheek.
“I shouldn’t be joking.”
“You can joke.”
“He’s dead.”
“Both things can be true.”
Amanda stared down at the blanket gathered in her lap. The wool had caught on one of her rings.
“I wanted to help him.”
“I know.”
“He killed all those people, and I still—” She pressed her lips together, trying to force the words back down. They would not stay there. “For a minute in there, he wasn’t pointing the gun at anybody. He was just this lonely kid who wanted someone to see him.”
“You saw him.”
“I used it against him.”
“To save lives.”
“He died believing me.”
Nick sat back on his heel.
The movement created a small distance between them, though his knees still rested between hers. He looked at her as if he wanted to argue, but he seemed to understand that there was no argument she would accept yet. Amanda had not asked him to tell her she had done the right thing. She knew what she had done. She knew why she had done it.
That did not make the ending easier to live with.
“Amanda, look at me.”
She did not.
Her gaze remained fixed on the blood beneath her thumbnail.
“Amanda.”
Slowly, she turned.
Nick was still crouched between her knees, the bloody gauze forgotten in one hand.
“You didn’t make him do any of this,” he said. “You didn’t make him hurt those women. You didn’t make him kill anyone. And you didn’t take that shot.”
“I put him in front of the window.”
“You got the gun out of his hand.”
“I made him vulnerable.”
“You gave everyone else a chance to live.”
His voice was firm now, stripped of the hesitation that had colored his words before.
“You can hate what happened,” he said. “You can be angry that they took the shot. You can believe there was another way, that you could have kept talking until Holden surrendered completely. But you don’t get to put his choices and Dodds’ call on yourself. Holden chose to hurt those people. Dodds chose to authorize the shot. Neither decision belongs to you.”
“I could’ve done more.”
“You did everything.”
Amanda’s eyes burned. She blinked hard, refusing to let the tears fall, but the effort only made them gather more heavily. Her face tightened as she looked away, toward the flashing lights and the dark windows of the school.
Nick saw it and softened.
He reached for her hand beneath the blanket, his fingers closing around hers with careful pressure.
“You don’t have to be strong for me,” he said quietly. “Not right now.”
“Don’t,” she warned.
“Don’t what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t.”
“Then what?”
Nick’s answer took too long. His gaze remained fixed on her, steady and unguarded, and Amanda felt the silence gather between them. She wished she had not asked. There was something in his expression that was more difficult to withstand than pity—something raw and frightened, as though he had come too close to admitting what the night had nearly taken from him.
He looked down and folded the gauze again, even though there was no clean part left.
“I thought I lost you.”
The words landed between them with a weight neither of them could pretend not to feel.
There were no evasions in them. No anger to conceal what he meant. No attempt to soften the confession or disguise it as something more practical.
Just the truth.
Amanda forgot how to breathe.
For a moment, she could only stare at him. Nick’s face was open in a way she had rarely seen, stripped of the controlled expression he wore at crime scenes and interrogations. He looked frightened still, though the danger had passed. Frightened for her. Frightened by how close he had come to losing her.
Before she could respond, Nick reached for a fresh piece of gauze.
“There’s still some by your mouth.”
His voice was quieter now, as if he could make the confession disappear by continuing what he had been doing. As if cleaning the blood from her face could restore the distance between them and return them both to something safer.
Amanda let him.
He dampened the gauze with saline and touched it carefully to the corner of her lips.
She flinched.
Nick pulled back immediately.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
“What is it?”
Amanda tasted metal.
She was no longer sure whether it was real or remembered. The taste clung to the back of her tongue, sharp and coppery, refusing to fade no matter how many times she swallowed.
“Some got in my mouth,” she whispered.
Nick’s face changed.
Not disgust. Never disgust. Something closer to grief moved through his expression, quiet and immediate, as though the words had reached somewhere inside him that he had been trying to keep guarded. His eyes softened, and the tension in his jaw gave way to something more vulnerable. He looked at her as if he could understand exactly what it meant to carry the taste of blood, the memory of the shot, and the knowledge that she had survived only because someone else had died.
“All right.” His voice became gentle. “We’ll get you some water. The EMT can help you rinse it out.”
“I can still taste it.”
“I know.”
“I can taste him.”
Nick set the gauze aside.
Amanda stared at her hands beneath the blanket. There was blood under one thumbnail, dark and stubborn in the ambulance light. She began scraping at it with the opposite hand, dragging her nail against the stained skin until the motion became frantic.
Nick caught both of her wrists.
“Stop.”
“I need to get it off.”
“I will.”
“It’s under my nails.”
“I’ll get it.”
“I need it off me.”
“I know. Amanda, I know.”
The first sob escaped without warning, raw and startled, as though it had been torn from somewhere deep inside her before she could stop it. Amanda jerked at the sound, her body recoiling as if someone else had made it.
Nick released her wrists and stood.
For one frightened second, she thought he was leaving to call the EMT or find someone who could help her. The sudden space between them felt unbearable. Panic surged through her before she could reason with it, and her hand shot out, catching the front of his coat.
Nick stopped.
Amanda’s fingers curled into the fabric, gripping him with desperate strength. She could feel the rough weave beneath her knuckles, the solid warmth of him just beyond the trembling in her hands.
She did not look up.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She pulled him closer.
Nick stepped between her knees.
The blanket slipped from one of Amanda’s shoulders as she pressed her face against his chest. She did not decide to do it. One moment she was sitting rigidly on the ambulance step, holding herself together by force of habit; the next, her forehead rested beneath his collarbone and both fists were twisted into his coat.
Nick’s arms came around her immediately.
One hand cradled the back of her head, shielding her face from the rest of the scene. The other spread across her back and drew her into him, firm and steady, as though he could hold her together by refusing to let go.
Amanda broke.
The first sob tore out of her before she could swallow it. Then another followed, and another, until the control she had maintained inside the classroom finally gave way. She cried for Holden and for the people he had murdered. For the girls who had run out of that classroom. For the hopeful expression on his face immediately before the bullet struck him. For the blood in her mouth and beneath her nails.
She cried because she had looked into his eyes and made him believe she wanted him, even if only for the few seconds necessary to save the hostages.
She cried because Nick had been handcuffed to a radiator and still looked more frightened for her than for himself.
She cried because he had come back.
Nick held her through all of it.
He did not tell her to calm down. He did not tell her Holden had deserved it or that the shooting had been clean. He did not offer her any of the empty phrases cops used when there was nothing else to say. He did not try to pull her away from the grief or make it smaller than it was.
He simply stayed.
At some point, he pulled the fallen side of the blanket around her again. It closed over his arms too, wrapping them both in the same thin layer of grey wool.
Amanda’s breathing gradually steadied.
Her cheek rested against Nick’s shirt. She could hear his heartbeat beneath her ear, faster than it should have been.
“Your heart’s going crazy,” she murmured.
“So is yours.”
“Mine’s got an excuse.”
“So does mine.”
Amanda shut her eyes.
Across the street, Olivia stood beside the command vehicle, speaking quietly with Fin while the investigation continued around them. Her gaze drifted toward the ambulance and settled on Amanda and Nick beneath the grey blanket.
Fin followed her line of sight.
For a moment, they both watched the two detectives sitting close together on the ambulance step, Amanda’s hand still held tightly in Nick’s beneath the blanket. Neither of them said anything. They did not need to.
An officer approached with a clipboard, glancing between the command vehicle and the ambulance as though looking for someone to give a statement. Olivia noticed him before he reached them. She stepped into his path and spoke in a low voice, her expression firm.
Whatever she said made the officer hesitate, then turn away and head back toward the school.
Amanda saw none of it.
Her eyes remained closed, her fingers curled around Nick’s hand while the warmth of his shoulder pressed against hers. For the first time since the shot, she allowed herself to stop listening for orders, questions and footsteps.
She simply sat there and breathed.
Nick eased back only when her grip on his coat loosened. His hands remained on her shoulders.
“Better?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
The answer relieved her more than another lie would have.
Nick crouched again and picked up the gauze.
“Can I finish?”
Amanda nodded.
This time, she did not close her eyes.
She watched him clean the last streak of blood from beside her mouth. He used his thumb to lift her chin and turned her face toward the ambulance light, searching carefully for anything he had missed. His gaze moved over her forehead, cheeks and lips, lingering just long enough to make certain she was truly unharmed. Amanda had never felt so seen—not merely examined for injuries, but recognized beneath the blood, the fear and the rigid composure she had been using to hold herself together.
“All gone?” she asked.
“Almost.”
Nick took one final piece of gauze and wiped gently beneath her left eye.
“There.”
He examined her again.
His thumb brushed over the spot he had cleaned.
“All gone.”
Amanda knew that was not true. There would still be blood on her blouse, caught in the strands of her hair and lodged beneath her fingernails. It would remain in places she could not immediately see, in the fabric against her skin and in the memory of the warmth striking her face. For a while, perhaps for a long while, she would find it again every time she closed her eyes. But none remained on her face.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Nick’s hand lingered against her cheek.
Amanda leaned into his palm before she could stop herself.
His breath caught, and the small sound seemed to pass between them more clearly than anything either of them could have said. His thumb rested just beneath her eye, warm against skin that still felt cold from the night air and the shock of what had happened. Amanda could feel the restraint in him—the effort it took not to pull her closer, not to ask for more than she was ready to give.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
The noise of the scene continued around them: radios crackling, officers calling to one another, the distant sobs of Holden’s mother and the steady rush of traffic beyond the barricades. Yet the back of the ambulance felt strangely separate from it all, as though the open doors had created a small shelter in the middle of the chaos. There was only the scratchy blanket around her shoulders, Nick standing close enough for her to reach him, and the quiet pressure of his hand against her face.
Amanda looked up at him.
He was still watching her with that same unguarded fear he had tried so hard to hide since the shot was fired. It was not pity. It was not even relief. It was the raw knowledge that he had come close to losing her and had not yet convinced himself that she was truly safe.
“I’m here,” she whispered.
Nick’s fingers shifted against her cheek.
“I know.”
But he said it as if he needed to hear her say it again.
Amanda turned her face slightly and pressed her lips to the center of his palm. The gesture was brief, almost tentative, but Nick went completely still.
Then his hand closed gently around the side of her face, and for one suspended moment, the rest of the world disappeared behind the ambulance doors.
The EMT approached cautiously.
“Detectives?”
Nick’s hand fell from her face.
Amanda immediately missed it.
“I need to finish checking her,” the EMT said. “And somebody from Critical Incident wants statements as soon as you’re both cleared.”
Nick nodded, but before he could move away, Amanda caught his hand.
He took one step back, then stopped when her fingers closed around his. He looked down at their joined hands. Amanda followed his gaze, watching the way her thumb rested against his knuckles and the way his fingers instinctively curled around hers.
Usually, the gesture would have embarrassed her. Usually, she would have covered it with a joke or released him before anyone could read too much into it. She would have pretended she had only reached for him because she was tired, shaken or still disoriented.
Tonight, she did none of those things.
She held on.
Nick’s attention returned to her face. He did not ask whether she wanted him to stay. He seemed to understand that asking might give her an opportunity to retreat behind another lie.
“Don’t go yet,” Amanda said.
Her voice was quiet, but the plea beneath it was unmistakable.
Nick’s expression softened.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Nick looked at the EMT.
The man raised both hands. “I can work around you.”
Nick turned back to Amanda.
“All right.”
His fingers closed around hers.
He sat beside her on the ambulance step, close enough that their shoulders touched. Amanda drew the blanket around both of them and kept hold of his hand beneath it.
Nick stayed.