Could this be worse? Yes.

At least he's not dead. At least the author of this great novel hasn't killed him. At least the chapters are long enough to fully indulge in the narrative and ride the flow of the plotline.

And at least it wasn't a cliffhanger.

I had always wondered how I'd act in one of 'those' situations… whether I'd play the hero and be organized enough to be the one everyone relied on in a moment of crisis. But I was a wreck. It was almost funny in a way… I'd never even expected to care as much as I did for no reason. He was fine.

It was only a bullet to the arm, it wasn't even lethal. But I didn't know that, did I? So there I was, scared as hell, completely forgetting about the pedophile I'd let escape from my sight. Instead, I watched in slow motion as he fired the bullet toward my partner, and how badly I wanted to dive in front of it to save him. But no, I was too far away. I ran to him immediately though, that has to count for something. I caught him as he fell, and instead of smashing his head all over the cement floor, he fell into my arms, and I fell with him.

I felt blood, warm blood ooze onto my hands and I searched frantically for the wound, checking his pulse, breathing and trying to stop the bleeding from a wound that I couldn't seem to find all at once.

Tears formed behind my eyes but I didn't cry.

"Olivia," he gasped, "Olivia I'm fine! Where is he?!"

I was angry with him.

"Shut up!" I was still searching for the source of the gallons of blood that had now soaked through all of his clothes and mine.

"Olivia stop!" He tried to sit up but I pulled him back down, "Where's Peterson?!"

I paused. Peterson. "Who?! Elliot… what?!"

"Peterson!! Where is he?!"

It clicked. Fuck.

I pulled out my radio and scrambled to find the right button. I almost let a tear fall. "What the hell is wrong with this thing?" I bashed the radio into the ground a few times before I finally found the button. "Officer down, I repeat, officer down..." Elliot interrupted me.

"Olivia, I'm fine!" He shouted.

I looked down at him, still lying in my lap, unable to move because of the force of my arm holding him there. I stopped.

"You're fine?" I asked.

"I'm fine," he laughed.

"You're fine." I breathed.

Well isn't that just wonderful? Fucking wonderful.

Afterwards, he walked into the crib, where I'd been crying for the past half an hour. He walked in with his arm in a sling, and an exhausted expression smothering his beautiful face.

"How are you?" He asked. I laughed.

"How am I? I'm not the one who just got lead forced through his arm," I kept my back to him, and tried to ignore the butterflies in my stomach as he sat down on the other side of the bed, his back to me.

The silence wasn't awkward. It was long. And quiet. The perfect kind of quiet between two people who know each other perfectly and who are completely comfortable just sitting in an endless silence.

We sat there for at least half an hour, in silence, before I finally spoke.

"You scared the shit out of me."

He sighed with a heavy laugh.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

I turned around and pulled my legs up onto the small bed and looked right at him.

"Elliot, I shouldn't have-" he cut me off.

"No, I should've been quicker, I should have taken him down when I had the shot."

I moved around so I was sitting next to him.

"I should've gone after him! You didn't need me," and I mumbled, "You don't need me…"

He looked at me. And we held eye contact for almost as long as we'd sat in silence. For the first time we allowed ourselves to really see each other. We poured our souls and as cliché as it sounds, we felt each other's heart.

I won't tell you that we kissed right there, in the crib. And I won't tell you what I really felt that night. This is my cliffhanger. And it can't get worse than this.

End.