Hannah
Tonight, the guys and Erin had a big job to do, they were taking down a couple of big time drug lords and they were going to be gone all night.

“Do I have to come?” Erin asked the guys for the hundredth time as she loaded herself up with her weapons.

“We need everyone we can use,” Zack sighed, kissing her on the forehead “Trust me, I don’t want to leave her either, but it’s our job,”

“I’ll go,” I suggested, walking into the room with Beth balancing on my hip as she drank out of her Sippy Cup “That way, if anyone gets hurt tonight, it isn’t going to be her mom,”

“Momma!” Beth squealed with delight, holding her arms out to Erin. I handed her over and she was scooped up happily by her mother.

“I don’t want to go,” Erin pouted, tears filling her eyes as her bottom lip shook. She cradled Beth and held her head to her chest and rocked from side to side and looked back to me “But I know you won’t let anything happen to her, whatever happens,”

Erin gave Beth to Jimmy who took her to the kitchen, both of them yelling something about Oreos and Erin wrapped her arms around me.

“Maybe you should take her over to Dean, let him watch her for the night,” She suggested “It isn’t your job to look after her, she isn’t your responsibility,”

“I’m her aunt, and she’s my responsibility tonight,” I smiled at her.

“You sure?” She asked.

“Positive,” Beth came running back into the room, an Oreo in both of her tiny hands and she was squealing for help as Jimmy chased her. I scooped her up in my arms and placed her on my hip “We’re gonna have lots of fun tonight, right?”

“Right!” She nodded once affirmatively.
~~~~
I ordered Beth and I a pizza, and when it arrived, I had to answer the door with half of my hair somewhat braided and makeup all over my face, that gave the eighteen year old delivery boy a good laugh. While we ate, we watched The Little Mermaid and The Lion King and Beth sang along to every song, she was adorable. After dinner we played with almost every toy she owned and when we were done we abandoned them all over the living room, and then it was bath time.

Beth didn’t want to go to bed, she wanted to wait for her mom and ‘Daddy Zacky’ to get home, so she convinced me to let her sit and watch TV with me, but I knew she would fall asleep, and we both did.

I stopped paying attention to the TV and watched the sleeping infant on my stomach. She’d fallen asleep like this about an hour ago; her thumb of her left hand was in her mouth, her right hand was gripping my hair and her head was on my chest, facing the TV and my hands were supporting her, making sure she wouldn’t fall off. I pulled the throw from the back of the sofa and draped it over us.

Her gentle breathing and the pounding of her heart was soothing to me, there was something about this little girl that put me at ease, like, she gave me some kind of hope that there was still good and innocence in the world. My eyelids suddenly felt like there were weights attached to them and I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, so I let myself drift off to sleep.
~~~~
I jolted awake and clutched Beth to my chest as she jumped awake, too. When the alarm system started going berserk.

“Stay here, Sweetie.” I whispered to Beth as I placed her on the sofa and draped the throw back over her “I’ll be right back,” I kissed the top of her head and cautiously made my way through the house to the front door.

The alarm panel at the door way flashing red and green all over the place and the front door was wide open.

“Fuck,” I whispered, slowly closing the door over and typing in the code to stop the alarms. The phone on the side table where we keep all of the keys started ringing quickly “Hello?” I answered.

“Hello, Miss. This is the local police station, we’ve been informed of your alarm system being set off, has there been a break in?”

“Uh… no,” I stuttered “I don’t think my fiancé closed the door properly a few hours ago when he went out,”

“Alright, Ma’am.” The officer said politely “Have a good night now,”

“Thank you,” I hung up the phone and put it back on the holder.

“Aunt Hannah!” Beth screamed from the living room. I ran back into the room as fast as I could, my bare feet thumping across the marble “Help!” She cried as I entered the living room.

There was a man, I recognized his face, but I couldn’t out a name to him. He was holding Beth in his arms, a gun pressed against her temple.

“Stop right there!” He yelled at me. I stopped dead in my tracks and held my hands up in front of me. I wasn’t going to be quick about this, not yet, not while that gun was against her head, he could shoot her and kill her.

“Please,” I whispered “Just put her down, she’s only a little girl and she never did anything to you,”

“That doesn’t matter,” He growled at me through gritted teeth “You people, you killed some people very important to me, so now I’m going to do the same to you,” He let out a laugh and then looked right through me “I’m going to kill your daughter,”

“She isn’t my daughter!” I said quickly “She’s my niece,”

Beth cried harder and screamed louder.

“Shut up!” He yelled at her, but she only cried louder.

“Beth, baby, it’s alright,” I said softly “Everything is going to be okay,”

“I’m going to make this long for her, maybe I won’t even kill her,” He chuckled darkly “But I’m going to make her watch things happen to you, watch you die, and scar her for the rest of her short, pathetic life,”

Before I could say anything, the gun was turned on me, lowered and a shot was fired, the bullet tore into my leg but I couldn’t tell if it came back out the other side of my thigh. I dropped to the ground, roaring in pain as tears started to roll down my face.

“Stay the fuck down!” He yelled at me. I did as he said, I lay on the ground and rolled my head to the side so that I could see under the sofa, and what caught my eye had be silently thanking Matt “Now what should I shoot next?”

“Don’t go getting all trigger happy on me now,” I laughed.

“Why the fuck not?” He asked.

“Because it’s my turn,” I stuck my hand under the sofa and ripped the gun from the tape, aimed it at him and shot him right in the head. His eyes popped wide open and he dropped to his knees, dropping Beth to the ground “Beth, roll!” I ordered, and she didn’t even think twice about it, she rolled out of the way and narrowly missed being landed on by his large, dead body.

“Aunt Hannah,” She cried, rushing over to me “What do I do?” She asked, pointing to my wound.

“Get the keys baby,” She hurried away as fast as her little legs would take her and came back with my car keys and her jacket and started putting it on as I grabbed the notepad from the end table and wrote a note to Erin, knowing that calling any cell phones would be pointless.

‘Gone to hospital, meet us there’

That was all I wrote, and I’m sure that would freak Erin out, as well as the blood on the corner from my fingers, but I needed to get to the hospital and she would be relieved when she saw that Beth was okay, she only had a bump on her head from when she fell.

I used the furniture to pull myself off of the ground with a lot of painful groans. Beth rushed out o the car and climbed in, watching
me the whole drive to the hospital, scared out of her mind no doubt, but I just played her CD and watched the road, gritting my teeth and working through the pain.
~~~~
Erin
We got back from the job at around one-thirty in the morning, and the first thing I did was go to Beth’s bedroom, just to check on her, but when I opened the door, her bed was empty, it hadn’t even been touched.

“Hannah?!” I called out as I basically ran around the house for any sign of them. I reached the living room and Zack was holding a note and Matt was on his knees on the ground, looking at something, Jimmy was checking the security cameras on his laptop and Brian and Johnny were crouched over a dead body on the floor, killed by a single bullet to the head “What is that?” I asked, stepping close to Zack, but he tried to hide it.

“Nothing, we have to go out again,” He smiled at me.

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you’re all being so weird,”

“Someone left this, I think it’s Hannah’s handwriting,” He sighed, handing over the note. The bottom left corner was covered in dried blood; her handwriting was shaky and looked rushed. As I read the words across the page, my heart started to pound faster and my stomach sank.

“We have to go!” I yelled, running out the front door again “Come on!”

“Zack and Matt rushed out the door behind me, Matt jumped in the driver’s seat and Zack got in the front with him while I sat in the back alone.

“You guys go ahead,” Jimmy said, leaning in Zack’s window “We’ll see what we can find here and clean the mess up, call us when you find out what’s going on,”
~~~~
We got to the hospital and I ran up to the desk, hysterically trying to track down Hannah and Beth.

One of the nurses who was passing by caught wind of what I was trying to say and told us that she had been with them an hour ago and told us which room they were in. I ran all the way there, Zack and Matt trying to keep up with me, and when I burst into the room, I saw Beth sound asleep in the hospital bed and Hannah was on the large chair, a blanket draped over her as she slept soundly, too. Her leg was propped up on another chair, and I sighed in relief knowing that they were both alive and Beth didn’t seem to be hurt.

“Hannah,” I whispered, walking over to her and kneeling beside her.

“Hm?” She grunted, slowly opening her eyes “Hey, you got my note,”

“I thought something horrible had happened,” I sighed, kissing her firmly on the forehead.

“Well, someone broke into the house and shot me in the leg, but that wasn’t all that horrible,” She chuckled weakly.

“He only shot you in the leg?” Matt asked, his tone surprisingly soft as he came over to Hannah as I moved over to the bed where Beth was starting to stir.

“Yeah,” She smiled at him “He wanted Beth to see me hurt and die slowly, I don’t know what he was going to do with her, but he wanted her scarred for the rest of her life, but when he shot me and I landed on the ground, I saw what you had taped under the sofa, and I got it out and shot him before he had the chance to blink,”

“That’s my girl,” He smiled, leaning down to kiss her, and much to my surprise, and Zack’s, too. She kissed him back.
~~~~
Hannah
It’s been three days since I got shot, two days since I got to come home. I haven’t been able to text Sam much, because Matt rarely leaves my side, but surprisingly I haven’t been complaining about it because it’s actually been pretty nice.

“What do you want for lunch?” Matt asked, passing me one of the ice cold beers he had just retrieved from the kitchen.

“Want me to cook something?” I asked, looking over at him as he lifted my legs, sat down and placed them back on top of him.

“Nope,” He smiled at me, taking a swig of his beer “You can barely stand for five minutes on your own, no way am I having you standing in the kitchen, I’ll go pick something up,”

“When did you get all sweet on me?” I chuckled.

“I’ve always been sweet on you,” He smiled widely, his dimples poking into his cheeks. At firs they made me think of Sam, and then I realised that these dimples were different, they were Matt’s… and I actually liked them.

I sat up and poked his dimples with my fingers, making him laugh.

“What was that for?” He asked.

“I just noticed these,” I smiled, poking them again.

“I thought they were kind of hard to miss,” He pouted.

“No,” I laughed “I noticed them before, the first time I met you they were the first thing I noticed, but now, I’m just realising that I actually really like them,”

He laughed nervously and scratched the back of his neck before looking at me again.

“Come on, woman.” He laughed “What do you want for lunch?”

“Can you go across town to that amazing Chinese place?” I asked, giving him my best puppy dog eyes “My usual,” I blinked up at him and he breathed out and shook his head.

“Alright,” I cheered and stuck my fist up in the air “Roasted duck, that horrible sauce and chicken fried rice?” I nodded “Alright, I’ll be back in about an hour,” He stood from the sofa and gently placed my legs back down on the cushioning.

He grabbed his cell off of the coffee table and went to walk by me, but I grabbed his wrist before he could get away. He stopped and quickly looked down at me.

“What?” He smiled.

I sat back up and tugged him down towards me a little bit, moving my hand from around his wrist to the back of his neck.

“I just want to… try something…” I trailed off and raised my head up to his as he continued to lean down, and our lips pressed together in a soft, chaste kiss.

“What was that for?” Matt asked once I pulled away and he reopened his eyes.

“Being so sweet,”
~~~~
I was still waiting for Matt to come back with lunch when Erin and Zack came home from the park with Beth, who was excited to be spending the night with her real dad. She gave me a kiss hello and ran up to her bedroom to get her bag that Erin had packed the night before.

“How’s she doing?” I asked Erin as she sat down in one of the chairs, smiling and shaking her head at Zack chasing Beth up the stairs.

“She’s fine,” She sighed happily “She seems so much happier here than she did before when I would go and visit her, she’s happy to be back with you and I, but she loves all of the guys, too. Even Matt seems to be taking a shine to her,”

“Matt seems different,” I laughed “Like, since Beth came here, he’s been so different, with all of us, ut especially me,”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s being nice,” I told her “I mean, he kissed me in the hospital, but for the past few days he has been… kind, caring, gentle… everything,”

“Well, that’s weird,” She frowned “But he seems good with Beth, maybe he’s good with other kids,”

I dropped my head back over the arm of the sofa.

“Please don’t mention Matt and I having kids, I’m still adjusting to the fact we’re getting married in three and a half months,” I started playing with my ring, like I seemed to do a lot “Do you think I made a mistake leaving Sam?” I asked.

“I don’t think it was a mistake at the time, you were only thinking about him, I know how much you wanted to marry him, how much you loved him, but that is the reason that you left him, you wanted him to live, survive,”

“And now?”

“Now, that you’re engaged to Matt, a man you’ve never gotten along with, a man who almost killed you… I think not marrying Sam was a huge mistake,”

Notes

Here's a little something for you guys! I hope you all like it!
How adorable is little Beth?! c :
More later!

- LMV