Me and the Devil

38.

The gunshot splits the air, sharp, jagged, final.  For a heartbeat, there is nothing but silence. Not even an echo. Just the soundless, breathless suspension of a world knocked out of rhythm.

Sheriff Peterkin staggers, her body jerking forward in slow, unnatural motion. Her fingers twitch once, twice then slacken. The gun slips from her hand and hits the tarmac with a hollow clatter. Her knees buckle. And then she is on the ground, a dark stain spreading like an accusation across her uniform. Her body curls in on itself, still and wrong.

No one moves.

The night presses down on us, thick and smothering. Even the plane behind us, still rumbling with idle power, sounds distant now. Muted. Like the world had sunk.

And then Rafe steps into the light.

His silhouette carves out of shadow, the gun hanging limp in his hand. Smoke still curls into the humid air like a ghost refusing to leave. His lips part.  His breath hitches. His entire body trembling, strung too tight, as if even he can’t tell if the trigger pull was real or imagined.

My heart seizes in my chest. Everything tilts.

Ward stands frozen on the tarmac, mouth slack, face pale. His eyes dart back and forth between the blood, between Rafe, between the consequence as if trying to piece the moment back together in a different order. As if that could undo it.

Sarah doesn’t speak. Her eyes are huge, glossy, brimming, locked on Peterkin. Her arms hang useless at her sides, her whole body stunned into stillness. She looks like she forgot how to breathe.

And John B is the first to break.

He drops beside Peterkin, hands pressing to the wound in a desperate, useless effort to stop the bleeding.  His face is pale, furious. When he looks up, his eyes are wild and they land on Rafe.

And Rafe – God, Rafe – he’s already unraveling.

He raises the gun again, points it toward John B, his hand shaking but his wild eyes look at Ward. “I saved you, Dad,” he chokes out, voice splintering like glass. “I saved you.”

Something inside me snaps, loud and brutal. The weight of what just happened doesn’t settle so much as it detonates, and I move before I can think.

Crossing the tarmac in a rush of instinct and something deeper, my hand closes around the gun in Rafe’s grip. It’s still hot, warm with the memory of the bullet and I swear I can feel it thrum against my palm like it remembers what it’s done.

Ward’s head jerks toward me, his expression knowing, frozen in disbelief. Sarah’s gasp cuts through the air, fragile and high-pitched, like the sound of something breaking. John B looks at me like I just ripped the ground out from under us all.

Rafe’s still staring. His face is torn open with something ugly, something sharp. But beneath the chaos in his eyes, dilated and wild, there’s a flicker of something darker. Not fear. Not gratitude.

Mistrust.

“You’re mad at me,” he whispers, voice broken. “You think I’m a monster.”

His breath catches. His gaze flicks to the gun in my hand, like he thinks I’ll use it next. On him.

My heart lurches. “No – Rafe, that’s not –”

But he’s already pulling away, recoiling like I burned him. “You said you were done,” he mutters, mostly to himself, eyes darting. “And then you show up, and now this? You think I’m a fuck-up. You think I deserve this.”

“I did this for you,” I say, louder now, but it doesn’t reach him. Not really. His head is already somewhere else, spinning out, convinced I turned on him.

It hits me then – he doesn’t see what I did as protection. Not love. Not sacrifice. Just punishment.

John B stands slowly, his hands red with blood, his eyes locked on mine. “Why?” he whispers, voice breaking as if the word is too big to say aloud, but he has to ask it. He needs to hear me say it.

I can’t answer him. The words are too heavy, lodged in my throat. Instead, I look away, down at the blood-streaked pavement beneath Peterkin’s motionless body, at the life slipping away.

Sarah steps forward, her voice barely more than a tremor. “You love him.” It’s not a question. It’s a statement, one I don’t have to deny.

I swallow, but no words come. My throat burns, tight with everything I can’t say.

Rafe’s still staring. His face is torn, but there’s something else there now a flicker of something softer, messier, something that looks too much like heartbreak for him to ever have been prepared for.

“Go,” I whisper to Rafe as I hear sirens approaching. It feels like slicing myself open and offering him what’s left. Like peeling my skin back and handing it to him.

John B hears the sirens too, and without another word, he turns, running. Sarah’s already kneeling beside Peterkin, sobbing an apology that won't ever make things right.

Ward doesn’t hesitate. He grabs Sarah by the arm and hauls her toward Rafe, shoving her into his grasp. “Take your sister home,” Ward says sternly. Rafe stumbles back, catching her weight. She’s crying, shaking, trying to resist. But she follows when he does. Because there’s nothing else to do now.

Then Ward turns to me, his eyes steady and full of that knowing look. “You better go with them,” he says softly but with a force that keeps me from questioning him. There’s protection in his words, a silent promise that he’ll keep me safe, just as I kept Rafe safe tonight.

And without a word, I follow. I climb into the jeep behind Rafe, who doesn’t speak. The engine hums to life, and I know in my bones that this is the choice I’ve made. And the girl I used to be would never have made this choice.

But I did.