Author's note: I. Have. No. Words. I mean, I do, but... That finale took my breath away. *SPOILER ALERT* OUR BABIES ARE ENGAGED! This is going to be at least a two-part story about how I would like things to have gone. The next chapter will contain how I pictured the proposal/pre-proposal. I don't know. I just wrote what I pictured. I hope you guys like it! And to my No Safe Place readers, the next chapter will be up soon!

Also, follow me on my Jamko Instagram, TeamJamko, and on Twitter at Team_Jamko.

Read and review! Love you guys!

Chapter 1: The Confession

They stood there for God only knows how long.

Eddie was shaking like a leaf, and she was positive that if Jamie hadn't been holding her so tightly, she would have fallen right down to her knees.

She didn't know it, but Jamie was shaking just as badly, his arms around Eddie the only thing keeping him upright. She was acting as his anchor, and she didn't even know it. She was keeping him grounded.

She always had.

Jamie's heart was pounding so hard he felt like it would burst through his ribcage. Eddie's head was now nestled in the space between his neck and shoulder, and her tears were just now slowing. Her hand was wrapped around the back of his neck, and her fingers were absentmindedly stroking the skin there. It seemed to be comforting to her, and truthfully, the rhythmic pattern she was tracing was comforting him, too.

Finally, Eddie burrowed her face in closer to the sensitive spot behind Jamie's ear and said the three words he'd been wanting to hear – and say – for longer than he cared to admit:

"I love you."

The words were low and Eddie's voice was hoarse from crying, but Jamie heard her loud and clear. The husky, whispered words sent shivers down his spine.

With tears in his eyes, Jamie finally pulled away from Eddie just enough to see her face. Her cheeks were flushed and heartbreakingly tear-stained and beads of sweat were dripping down her forehead, but he was sure she had never looked so beautiful. She was studying his face just as he was studying hers, her stunning blue eyes flitting to his and then roving over his forehead, his cheeks, his chin, his neck, and then locking with his eyes again. It was as if she were searching for injury and taking a mental photo of his face at the same time, trying to memorize every detail.

All sorts of emotions were clogging Jamie's throat, but he would be damned if he didn't get out what he wanted to say. Eddie felt his hands run up her back, over her arms and shoulders, and eventually come to rest on her face. His coarse thumbs were laid perfectly on her cheekbones, running back and forth and leaving chills in their wake.

Jamie's eyes bore into Eddie's and absolutely nothing else existed in that moment. There were additional squad cars all around them, but Eddie only heard and felt Jamie (and her soaring heartbeat pounding in her ears). Jamie's thumbs on her cheeks and his eyes searing into hers were all Eddie could focus on.

Until he finally spoke. Then her heart was racing and she honed in on his words and then they were all she could hear. They were breathless and hoarse but they were the most beautiful thing she had ever heard.

"Eddie, I love you, too. I love you so much… More than you'll ever know, and I refuse to go back to pretending I don't."

Jamie's voice was wavering with ragged, raw emotion, and Eddie felt the tears start to fall unchecked. A combination of the running, the pure fear, and every other emotion that was clogging her throat had Eddie completely winded, and she felt like her heart was about to pound clean out of her chest.

She shook her head, swallowing hard. "No, Jamie, I do know. I love you just as much, and I'm so sorry that it basically took you almost dying for me to say it." She chuckled a little at the end, realizing the complete and total insanity of the fact that she'd told him she loved him for the first time after he'd almost been killed and she'd blown the perp's head to smithereens. "Don't think I'm saying it just because you almost got your head blown off… I'm not. I'm just… When I saw him with that gun aimed at you, everything we've ever said to each other, and everything we never got to say ran through my head, and I realized that you not being here has literally become my worst nightmare. I'm so sorry it took this happening for me to have the balls to say that I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone and I'm sorry that-"

Next thing Eddie knew, Jamie's lips were on hers, effectively stopping her breathless apologies and confessions. His kisses were somehow urgent and gentle at the same time, and Eddie couldn't help but sigh into the kiss. It was a sigh of pure bliss, but it was also a sigh of relief.

Jamie was here. He was alive, uninjured – as far as she could tell – and they were holding each other. His lips were on hers and his arms were around her.

When they pulled away from each other, breathless for a whole new reason now, Jamie's forehead was against Eddie's – much like their first kiss on that sidewalk what seemed like a decade ago – and when their eyes connected, it was as though something had shifted. Everything had changed.

Jamie's mind wandered to that ring he had in his dresser, literally in the sock drawer, the one he had bought the day he was late for Sunday dinner. He had lied and said he was helping Eddie study, when really, he was shopping for the perfect ring. Now he just needed the perfect time to ask her, something he'd laid awake thinking about for nights on end lately.

He had wanted to badly to propose to her on that bridge a few days before, when they had rescued that kidnapped baby and Jamie had comforted Eddie as she held the baby girl in her arms, emotional and out of breath and awe-struck. Her heart was so huge, and it showed more than ever that day.

Emotionally, he was ready right there to propose. He had never felt more in love with her.

Until today, that is, when she had taken a life to save his.

Someone who wasn't Eddie calling out his name was what brought Jamie back to reality, and he pulled away from Eddie just enough to see a paramedic coming towards him. Embarrassingly enough, he didn't even realize ambulances had arrived; he'd been far too caught up in Eddie and almost being shot to death, he supposed.

"Officers, I need to check you both over. You know the drill." Automatically, the man annoyed Jamie, probably because he was intruding on one of the most important moments of his life. No matter the reason, his voice felt like sandpaper on a sunburn.

Jamie and Eddie both went through an exam by paramedics. Jamie's face was cut from the glass that had hit him when Sorrento had fired, but that was about it. Eddie was, of course, unharmed, but only physically. Jamie could tell she was haunted by having to shoot Dante, and by seeing the bloody mess that had once been his head.

The fact that was haunting them both, though, was that that could have been Jamie, easily.

Jamie held Eddie in the back of the ambulance, grateful they were positioned away from the car so Eddie didn't have to stare at the body any longer than was completely necessary. Eddie was grateful, too, because she knew the image was burned into her brain and she would be seeing it enough over the next few weeks, in the awful nightmares she was sure to be plagued with.

If it was anything like the brutally cold day where she'd shot that dealer in the courtyard when he pointed his gun at her head, it would stick in her mind for more than a few weeks. She used to wake up in the middle of the night, even a month later, her chest filled with fear and guilt, and the disgusting, twisted image of the dealer's blood draining onto the snowy ground. Even Jamie hadn't known the extent to which that day haunted her.

Jamie always knew exactly what Eddie needed, whether he was aware of it or not. After the courtyard shooting, Jamie had held her close as she cried, guilt nearly choking her to death. He'd said, "I'm not going anywhere," and by god, he had meant it, even though she was pretty sure he meant for that night he wasn't going anywhere.

But he was here. Now. Three years later. They were holding each other this time, but Jamie was still there with Eddie snuggled into his side.

When Danny and Baez finally arrived, Danny was frantic, looking over Jamie from head to toe despite the fact that he had already been examined. Jamie refused to let go of Eddie, so Danny and Baez stood by the back of the ambulance. It was automatically assumed that Jamie had fired the shot that killed Sorrento, and when Jamie told them what really happened, both sets of eyes went wide.

Danny clapped Eddie on the shoulder, earning a smile. "One hell of a shot, Janko," he said, his eyes wandering over to the crashed car that was now being examined by God only knows how many people. Jamie couldn't even count all the people who had arrived since the shooting, but what he knew for a fact was that he wanted to be anywhere but there.

"Thanks," Eddie muttered, being her usual self and not wanting to be given credit where it's due, even for something as amazing as saving her partner's life.

"You saved my baby brother's life, Eddie," Danny added, and Jamie could have sworn he heard a crack of emotion in his brother's voice. Eddie heard it, too, and looked up from the ground at Danny, feeling tears begin to sting behind her eyes. Sure enough, the emotion both of them detected in Danny's voice was in his face. In a manner completely unlike the tough, balls-to-the-wall Danny Reagan, he was making no effort whatsoever to hide his feelings. Baez looked shocked and as if she were about to cry herself.

Eddie had a sudden surge of courage and, before she could talk herself out of it, said, "I love him. I would do anything for him, literally." She gestured to the car holding a very dead Sorrento as she said literally and a shiver rocked her so hard that Jamie felt it and reflexively pulled her tighter into his side. "I always will do anything for him, no matter what."

Jamie was filled with emotion at Eddie's words, his eyes getting misty. In that moment – and every other moment if he's being honest – he loved her more than anything else in the world, and that both thrilled and terrified him.

As he held Eddie and watched his big brother tearing up while he tried to get himself together enough to actually do his job, Jamie's mind went back to the ring once again, and as Eddie's words, I always will do anything for him, echoed in his head, he could suddenly picture slipping that ring on her finger and moving in together and waking up together and bickering and laughing and buying a house of their own and having kids and every single other thing that people who are in love and married do. He pictured a life. A future. Everything he ever wanted.

Everything he ever wanted was sitting right next to him. She'd been there the whole time, right under his nose, and it had taken all of this for that fact to really, truly hit him. If he'd had the ring there, he would have proposed to Eddie right then. But obviously, that wasn't meant to be.

As Danny and Baez asked Jamie and Eddie a few questions and then offered to give them both a ride back to the 12th to give their statements. Jamie and Eddie quickly piled into the backseat of Danny and Baez's car, and Eddie stayed glued to Jamie's side. She was shivering, and Jamie was pretty sure it wasn't from the cold. "You alright?" he asked her, running a hand over her cheekbone again.

Eddie nodded, although she looked like she was either about to fall asleep or pass completely out. "I'm just ready to go home and sleep for the next three days. Or just sit in my apartment and stare at the wall."

Jamie, Danny, and Baez all chuckled, knowing the feeling all too well. Firing your weapon on the job was draining on its own, but when it resulted in a death, no matter who it was, it could nearly destroy you. Jamie may have been the target, but it had been on Eddie's shoulders to save him, and she had. She had annihilated the man.

For him.

As Eddie sagged into him, with her face back in her favorite spot between his neck and shoulder, Jamie's heart swelled to a size he didn't think was possible. He knew then what he had to do, what he had wanted and needed, desperately, since he met her for the first time that night in front of the precinct, with those beautiful blue eyes and the smile that still took his breath away.

Sure, maybe he hadn't entirely thought through the timing of the ring-buying and the – hopefully – engagement, considering they hadn't even dated. But it was Eddie. He had been thinking about spending forever with her for a very, very long time.

Tomorrow wasn't promised to anybody, and today had punctuated that in a harsh, brutal, traumatizing way. Jamie had told Eddie how he felt – a step in the right direction – but now, he was going to make sure she knew every day, no matter what, that he loved her more than anything or anyone.