"Jules, c'mon, what are you waiting for?"

Juliet gave Shawn an uncertain glance.

Shawn had driven her—she was still getting used to his Norton, trying to decide if the chills it gave her were from excitement or mortal fear—an hour from her apartment to somewhere on the outskirts of town. He'd pulled over to the side of the deserted road and parked, practically hopping off the bike with anticipation to show her whatever it was he brought her here to see. To one side of the road was a clear stretch of grass. To the other was a slightly wooded area, with trees lining the road, the setting sun shining lazily through the scattered branches.

Shawn had headed straight into the hollow forest, but Juliet stopped short.

When Shawn noticed she was no longer following him, he waved her toward him like one would a puppy. When she still didn't follow, Shawn cocked his head in confusion.

Juliet pointed to the sign in front of her. "It says 'No Trespassing'," she said, feeling the cop in her rise to the surface. "Shawn, I don't think we're supposed to be here."

The old wooden sign had fading black ink. It looked years old. The wood has splintered and eroded but the words were clear.

Shawn' confusion morphed into amusement. With an amused laugh, Shawn said, "Of course we're allowed to be here, silly." He grinned. "I put that sign there."

Juliet's jaw dropped.

It looked so real.

"Shawn—?" she began, even more bewildered now than she had been.

But Shawn had already turned and headed through the trees.

"C'mon, Jules!" he called.

With a sigh for whatever it was she was walking into, Juliet did, feeling a slightly cool breeze shift the hair around her face as she followed him. She rubbed her bare arms and walked past the sign, following Shawn down the sloping land, glad she'd swapped her heels for sneakers before she left her apartment.

Shawn was waiting for her not too far away. He was leaning against a tree, a thin twig in his mouth like a toothpick. He raised an eyebrow at her in a seductive manner. "Sexy, right?"

Juliet hummed a laugh, walking up to him, pressing her hand to his chest, pushing him against the tree. The look disappeared from Shawn's face in surprise. Juliet took the twig out of his mouth and traced it lightly down his cheek. She leaned close to him, raising her eyes to his, her lips close to his skin, and whispered, "I'm better."

"Not going to argue with that," whispered Shawn, his eyes alight, and she somehow knew she'd never grow tired of the way he looked at her.

Rays of orange and yellow shadowed around them. It was a beautiful sunset and the end of a gorgeous day. "Okay, Shawn, you told me you wanted to show me something," she said. "What is it?"

An almost childlike excitement jumped into Shawn's eyes and he pushed off the tree and took Juliet's hand in his. "This way."

Shawn bounded through the trees, and Juliet let him tug her through the forest, her interest piqued. After only a few minutes of walking, Shawn pulling Juliet along behind him, the trees thinned and opened up.

Juliet gasped.

They were standing on almost cliff-like ground. The ground came to a stop a few yards from where Juliet stood, and dropped off into one of the most incredible views she'd ever seen.

The ocean was spread out in front of her. The sun was setting directly before her, shining deeply, reflecting the rich colors over the calm waves of the water. There were no boats, people, landmarks, anything in sight. Just water for as far as she could see.

Juliet shook her head, awed. "Shawn…" she whispered. "Shawn, this is beautiful." She tore her gaze from the horizon and looked at him.

The sunset shadowed part of his face, giving him a soft look. He'd been following her gaze, staring out toward the horizon, but he looked at her and smiled.

Juliet shook her head, saying, "How did you find this place?"

It felt so rare to see something so untouched by people, as if the entire area had been left undiscovered. The road that brought them here and the forest that hid this place were less than picturesque.

Perhaps there were simply some things that weren't what they seemed, hidden behind an exterior that would fool most into believing they were nothing more than what they hid behind.

Shawn looked back toward the horizon. "A long time ago," he said, though not quite answering her question.

He strode up to the very edge of the cliff, and Juliet's breath caught.

"Shawn, be careful—!" she said quickly, but he just winked, and jumped off the edge.

"Shawn!" gasped Juliet, running up to the edge.

She looked down, terrified, but Shawn was standing five feet beneath her, laughing. The beach wasn't far beneath the ground she was standing on.

Juliet glared at Shawn as he pulled himself back onto the little ledge and perched himself on the edge, his legs dangling over the ground below. He laughed at her expression. "Oh, come on, Jules, I was only kidding."

Unable to hold onto it, the glare slipped from Juliet's face and she sighed, sitting next to Shawn, close enough that their shoulders touched.

Even after all the weeks they've been together, being so close to him was enough to skip her heart.

Another breeze shifted the air, sifting through her hair and ruffling Shawn's. Juliet shivered at the coolness, and Shawn felt it.

"Aw, babe," he said, concern clouding in his eyes. He quickly shrugged out of his hoodie and draped it around her shoulders. She smiled as the warmth hit her bare skin. "Better?" he asked, and Juliet smiled. The jacket smelled like him. She pulled it tight around her.

"Almost," she said, and Shawn leaned close to her and kissed her on the cheek.

"Now, better?" he asked, voice as soft as the warmth of his hoodie.

"Much." She smiled.

Shawn straightened and they both turned back toward the sun. Juliet shook her head, feeling as if she were looking at a painting. "God, Shawn... Honestly, how did you find this place?"

"By accident," he said with a shrug. "I found it when I was fifteen. I used to sneak out of my dad's house a lot. I always went at night, right after he fell asleep. I'd climb through my window and get on my bike—bicycle-bike, didn't have the Norton yet—" he clarified, "and just take off. Of course, my dad was a cop, so he figured it out soon enough." Another sigh. But with a touch of his own brand of mischief, "I'd always come home with a sno cone from 7/11 just to throw him off." Shawn laughed softly, and his hand found Juliet's. He intertwined his fingers with hers. "I fell off my bike one night up there," said Shawn, gesturing to where he parked the Norton. "And… voila." he said, gesturing to the sun.

"So, you come here a lot?" asked Juliet, surprised to see Shawn so… sober. She'd known him to be a romantic, something that had surprised her when they first started dating. But this was different.

It felt like a part of him she'd never seen before.

Shawn shrugged, and again, it was weird to see him without humor or musing. "Less now than I used to." Juliet watched another breeze ruffle Shawn's hair. He kept his gaze fixed on the horizon and said distantly, "I come here to… clear my head."

Juliet cocked her head. "From cases?" she asked.

Shawn hesitated. "Not exactly. I…" he hesitated again, seeming to have trouble choosing his words. Juliet hardly ever saw Shawn struggle with words. But, eventually, he seemed to find them. "Well," he said slowly, "my... psychic brain gets a little haywire sometimes."

Juliet blinked.

Shawn had never talked about his psychic abilities with her before.

Sure, he'd mentioned feeling vibrations from cases and visions of victims and criminals, but she'd never heard him actually talk about how it works. She remembered the last time she'd asked, but he'd simply brushed it off with a joke, and she figured it wasn't something he either could describe or liked describing.

"What do you mean?" she asked gently.

Shawn must have realized that he was starting this conversation, and he hesitated again, giving her a sheepish expression. "It's… it's nothing," he said, with that smile that seemed more like the Shawn she was used to seeing. He continued backtracking, rubbing the back of his neck as he said,"It's… complicated."

Juliet tilted her head. He wasn't getting out of this that easily. "Try me."

Shawn dropped his gaze to their intertwined fingers. He paused for a while, then raised his head, and said, "I get a lot of… vibrations. Feelings. Sometimes more than one at a time." Shawn shook his head. "Half of them don't even mean anything to me. It's just enough to give me a headache." He looked back at the water, watching the calm waves. "Sometimes it's just nice to be alone, you know? Where I'm not around anything that could trigger a vision."

"Oh." said Juliet.

Definitely not a Shawn she was used to.

With Shawn being so animated with his visions for the SBPD, she never would have thought there were downsides to his ability.

Turns out she knew a lot less about her boyfriend than she thought.

Shawn gave her a smile, as if reading her mind.

Which, Juliet realized, could very well have been the case.

"Don't worry, Jules," he said quickly, like he regretted saying anything. "I didn't even want to mention that. I just wanted to show you this place. I thought you'd like it." He gave her a hopeful little smile that melted her just a little bit.

Juliet smiled looking at the sun. "Shawn," she asked suddenly. "What do these… feelings… feel like?"

Shawn was quiet for a moment. He was quiet long enough for Juliet to turn away from the ocean to look at him, wondering if she'd pushed too far.

He was looking at her, his hand to his head in his trademark I'm-having-a-vision pose.

Her heart skipped, as it always did when she witnessed his gift.

"That's… That's funny that you mention that," he said in a strained voice, one that Juliet had been accustomed to while listening to him relay his visions. Shawn released his hand with a soft grunt of effort. "Well, that's strange."

Juliet's heart picked up a little more. She never ceased to be amazed with Shawn's ability. "What is it?" she asked eagerly.

His eyebrows creased. "I'm sensing…" he said, giving her a quizzical look. "That you really want to kiss me right now."

Juliet gave Shawn a mock-glare, almost positive that he just made that up to get her to kiss him.

But she couldn't help thinking how damned right he was.

"Ha ha," she said. "Very funny."

"Well, am I wrong?" asked Shawn, eyebrow raising.

Juliet met his eyes, trying to fight the fact that he was right, but already feeling herself leaning toward him until their lips were inches apart.

"I'll let you know," whispered Juliet, feeling Shawn's hand gently brush the hair away from her face, and his arm wrap around her waist. Juliet met his lips and kissed him, letting herself melt into the warmth of his skin and the passion in his kiss.

Juliet woke slowly.

The dream had left a slight smile at her lips, and for a moment, she was lost in the past, in one of the warmest moments of her life.

But as she woke more, and the sounds of a heart monitor beeping a little too slowly filtered in, she was torn from the memory and brought sharply back to reality.

Her eyes shot open, and she winced, met immediately with discomfort in a million places.

Sleeping crumpled up on a hard plastic chair could never be a comfortable feat.

She stiffly worked to adjust herself back to a regular position, hissing a little at the ache in her neck, but ignoring it, not having intended to fall asleep.

The last thing she remembered was sitting at his bedside with Gus and Henry. She'd only meant to close her eyes for a moment.

Henry was still sitting in the chair on the other side of the bed, though he was also asleep. Gus' chair was empty, and for a moment, Juliet wondered where he'd gone.

It was dim in the room, only lit by a small lamp on a table somewhere behind her. The cool air made her shiver, and she felt the ghost of Shawn's hoodie wrap around her, though it only served to make her feel more cold.

Shawn.

At the thought of him, her eyes immediately snapped to the bed.

She felt herself relax slightly, seeing him there, alive, his chest rising, the monitor by his head continuing to play the rhythm to his life.

Shawn lay on the bed, eyes shut, his chest slowly rising and falling, but there was a hitched quality to the rhythm, as if even in unconsciousness, it hurt to breathe.

His right arm lay in a sling across his chest, slightly shifting with his every breath.

Seeing him without the mess of blood and dirt should have made him look better, but somehow, he only looked worse than when she had found him in that forest.

There was a thick bandage at his temple where the gash had been—the skull fracture, she remembered, an icy chill sweeping down her spine—and even beneath it was dark, blackish-blue bruising.

The bruises on him were darker now, having set in like untreated stains. Bruises that were too clearly from being hit with a gun stood out on his cheek, heavy and painful-looking. Cuts from broken glass and branches scraped his face and arms.

Shawn's blankets were pulled up to his chest, but the doctor's words kept flashing through her mind, broken ribs, fractured shoulder, twisted knee—

Her eyes, though should have run dry by now, pricked hotly at her.

He'd been so hurt.

He was so hurt.

Her gaze traveled across the bruises on his face, the doctor's list of Shawn's suffering echoing over and over in her mind.

She had seen Shawn in the forest.

He'd been in agony.

Agony.

He was in agony simply having been lying on the ground, completely still.

Even helping him sit up was like she'd been lighting him on fire.

Shawn had barely been able to sit up on his own, the concussion and the pain preventing him from even seeing straight.

Even when she had been helping him, he barely made it to his feet, and couldn't even rise to his full height.

She could still remember it like a nightmare, feeling his weakness, catching him from falling, only managing to cause him more pain, and god was that a metaphor?

Even with her help, he couldn't even stand.

So...

How the hell did he get to her?

And how did he do it alone?

She couldn't fathom it.

She had heard the sound he made when that bastard had grabbed her, when he'd kicked Shawn back to the ground.

The sound that tore out of him didn't even sound human.

She'd been dragged away, fighting the hold on her, tears burning her eyes, desperate to get back to Shawn, who was just short of writhing, broken sounds slipping out of him that shattered her heart into pieces.

How could he possibly have gotten himself up?

And it wasn't only that.

To have gotten to her, he'd had to have gotten up, and walked.

Even more, he'd had to know how to find her.

He'd gotten through that forest, somehow, by himself, with four broken ribs, broken shoulder a fractured skull and concussion, and a twisted knee.

How the hell did he find the strength when he'd already had none left?

But he hadn't just gotten to her, either.

He'd gone through hell to get to her, and he took a bullet to save her.

He sacrificed his life for her.

Another tear slid down her cheek.

"Are you telling me this was all a lie?"

It had felt like it, this past week.

God, it felt like she'd been played, been nothing but a joke to him.

It felt like all the times her father promised to come home for her and didn't.

It felt like staring her brother in the eye as he betrayed his country, betrayed her.

It felt like she'd fallen for yet another lie from yet another person she loved.

Another person she had been so afraid to love in the first place, so afraid to let herself believe in love again at all.

But for as much of a lie as it's felt all week, all she could think about now was everything that hadn't been a lie.

Because, clearly, his love for her never was.

And maybe that's what scared her the most.

She didn't trust easy, and she blamed her father for that.

The one person she trusted the most in the world had been her brother.

And yet, he'd lied to her, too.

Was she that gullible?

What kind of a detective was she?

The urge to slam the door on trust, to lock herself away behind walls of steel like she has for so much of her life rose within her and felt so intoxicating to follow it.

Shawn had lied to her for five years, straight to her face.

And the worst part?

He did it so easily.

Why does she always fall in love with the best liars?

From day one, she'd never doubted Shawn's psychic abilities. Juliet wasn't sure if Lassiter had ever been on board with the idea that Shawn was actually psychic, and she was sure Vick was at least on the fence.

Juliet had never given much thought to psychics, to supernatural abilities, but with the things Shawn seemed to know out of thin air? Things that their best detectives couldn't find even after searching for weeks, months, years?

It, to her, was astounding.

And had to be some sort of supernatural gift.

"Oh, my god, I feel so foolish."

Her own words echoed through her mind, and she dropped her face to her hands, unable to shake the feeling of stupidity.

Shawn had paraded around his visions for years and Juliet felt so, utterly stupid for believing them. She was a detective for goodness sake, and she couldn't even catch one of the hundreds of lies Shawn's told over the years.

But foolishness was one thing.

Fear was another.

The fact that he was so damned good at it was the worst of it.

He could tell her any number of lies and she'd probably believe him.

How was she supposed to trust him after this?

How was she supposed to trust anyone after this?

Juliet's eyes dropped to the bandages over Shawn's shoulder, showing from underneath his hospital gown.

He hadn't just been shot.

He'd taken that bullet for her.

He'd saved her life, and sacrificed his to do it.

And she's sitting here, telling herself that she can't trust him.

Juliet dropped her face back to her hands, feeling a headache pulse behind her eyes, her conflicting emotions too much to handle.

She couldn't deal with it.

She didn't know how.

All she knew was the one person who could make her feel better was lying two feet away from her, and it felt like two million.

Hearing the door creak open to Shawn's room, Juliet lifted her head from her hands.

Gus walked through the doorway, holding two coffees in his hands. He gave her a concerned glance when he saw her. "Juliet, everything okay?" he asked quickly.

Juliet straightened, rubbing her eyes again. "Yeah, I just... woke up." She looked around the room, forgetting that she hadn't even looked for a clock. The sky was still dark outside. "What time is it?" she asked.

"Almost five in the morning." Gus shut the door carefully with his foot, balancing the coffees in his hands. "Lassiter went back to the station around one o'clock to finish interrogating that… bad guy," said Gus quietly, turning back to Juliet. "You fell asleep around twelve-thirty." Sheepishly, he added, "We didn't want to wake you."

Juliet nodded absently, and Gus handed her a cup of the steaming coffee. She took it gratefully. She had barely eaten the day before.

"Thanks," she said softly, taking a sip. It was a little bitter for her taste, but she wasn't about to be picky.

Gus took a seat in the empty chair beside Juliet, his gaze falling to Shawn's still form. Pain clouded Gus' eyes. "It's hard to see him like this." But, his eyes traveling over to her, he added, "It's not easy for you, either, is it?"

Juliet didn't say anything, but her eyes, falling to Shawn, said plenty.

"I just..." she trailed off.

Gus looked at her, his brows kneaded.

"I just feel so... guilty," she whispered, eyes prickling with heat again. "Gus, he took a bullet for me," she said, and she saw him flinch the smallest bit, his own concerned gaze finding Shawn's shoulder before her gaze again. "I'm sitting here thinking I can't trust him, and he took a bullet for me." She sniffed, a sob threatening to break free from her chest. Gus' brows kneaded with sympathy, but also a touch of fear, his gaze finding the bandage over Shawn's shoulder.

Juliet held her face in her hands. "I just don't know, Gus." she said, shaking her head. "I don't know what to think."

"Do you still love him?"

The leap her heart made in her chest answered the question for her.

"I do," she said softly, her eyes tracing Shawn's features as he breathed quietly, yet still unevenly, beside the two of them. She still felt the relief in just knowing he was here, alive, all right.

She did still love him.

It was just...

She apparently didn't really know him.

"It's just…" she began unsteadily. "I've only ever known Shawn-the-psychic, you know?" she said, looking at Gus. "I feel like I don't know who he is anymore."

"He's still the same Shawn, Jules." He set his coffee down on the table. "He's a bonehead. You knew that already." he said with a smile.

Juliet tried to reciprocate his smile, but it didn't come.

"If it helps..."

Juliet looked at him. Gus looked again from Shawn to her. "He almost told you," he said. "A lot of times. And... he didn't, because..." He looked at her. "More than he was afraid of any backlash from the SBPD," he said, "he was afraid of losing you."

Juliet's brows lifted.

"You're not going to tell the Chief about...?"

"Is that all you care about?"

Juliet remembered Shawn's comment during the Elin case.

That felt like the proof that Shawn simply hadn't told her to preserve his job.

He hadn't told her because he'd been afraid to lose her?

But already, she knew it was true.

He'd jumped in front of a bullet for her.

He'd nearly died for her.

And—

"You touch her, I'll kill you."

Shawn's voice, angry and scared, suddenly echoed through her mind. She could feel the ghost of his shaking fingers still at her back, tethering her to him as hard as he could.

Still, even in all of the pain he was in, he was trying to protect her.

Juliet's eyes found him again, her brows crinkling.

His love for her wasn't a lie.

All of the evidence pointed to it.

Juliet sighed, conflicting emotions still raging, and for once she wished the richest things did come easily.