Could it only go up from there? Maybe. I wanted to believe so. Jesse seemed to think so. But there was that nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me to be cautious and don't get my hopes up. I suppose I had a legitimate reason to be skeptical about the future looking bright, given my relationship history. Truth be told, I was utterly terrified that my relationship with Jesse would be all rainbows and sunshine and then eventually crumble to dust the same way it had with Brad. Granted, I didn't think Jesse would ever cheat on me, but I was still scared of taking the plunge and getting my heart broken again.

I rolled over in bed to check the time on my nightstand. It was a little after five, the slightest elements of dawn just barely beginning to show in the clouds outside my window. Jesse and I had talked for at least an hour until we fell asleep.

I sat up and looked at the man lying beside me in my bed. Even asleep, he was the handsomest man I'd ever seen. And he looked happy, like he was having wonderful dreams. It made me feel good just to see him like that.

Maybe this will work out, I thought to myself. Maybe he is the one.

Realizing I was extremely thirsty, I hopped out of bed, locating Jesse's button up on the floor and throwing it around my naked body. I threw on some sweatpants and slipped out of the room, trying to be quiet so I wouldn't wake him up, and headed toward the kitchen. A breeze swept over me and gave me a chill, but I assumed it was the air conditioner kicking on and opened the fridge to fetch a water bottle, quickly downing half of the pint until I heard an unusual creak in the floor. The sound came from the living room.

"Jesse?" I called, thinking I'd accidentally awakened him and he'd come in to check on me, but there was no response.

"Jesse, it's not funny."

The tiny hairs on the back of my neck were starting to rise with the uncomfortable silence. Something didn't feel right. A glance to the window in the living room proved where the breeze had come from. The window to the fire escape was open, and I knew for a fact that it had been shut when we'd gone to bed.

I went to reach for a kitchen knife when I heard him.

"Don't try it."

It was Brad's voice. He'd found me.

I grabbed the knife anyway and spun around, lunging at him with it, but he quickly overpowered me and the weapon clattered to the floor.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to bring a knife to a gunfight?" He whispered in my ear, forcing me against the pantry door where I couldn't get away.

That's when I saw it in the dim glow of the nightlight. He held a shiny black .45 ACP – and the barrel was aimed right at me.

"What do you want, Brad?" I forced myself to ask in the bravest voice I could muster, but I knew he could pick out the quiver in my words.

He scoffed, grabbing my chin and forcing me to look at him. "What do you think I want? I want revenge."

I frowned, racking my brain to think of what the hell he could possibly want revenge for, but I came up blank.

"For what?"

His grip on my chin tightened and I could feel his fingernails digging into my jaw. "For what? What do you mean 'for what?' You know exactly what you did to me. Don't play stupid with me, because it won't end well for you."

"Brad, I'm serious. I don't know what you're pissed about."

I really didn't. I was desperately searching my mind for what on earth he was talking about and I couldn't come up with a damn thing.

He quickly reacted with a harsh slap to my face, leaving my cheek stinging and a heat rushing to the skin. I put my hands up to shield myself from another blow when he stepped back and leaned his back against the counter.

"You really don't know." It was a statement, not a question.

He was starting to realize I was being serious, that I really didn't know what he was angry about.

Rubbing my bruising cheek, I answered him in a calm voice, hoping it would soothe the situation. "No. I don't."

For a moment, I thought about screaming for Jesse's help, but Jesse had no idea what was going on and Brad had a gun. I wasn't going to be the reason my current boyfriend got shot by my ex-boyfriend.

"Brad, why don't you just put the gun down and let's talk about this."

His eyes met mine with a furious stare that told me there would be no reasoning with him.

"You think I came here to talk, Vanessa?" he spat. "I came here to finish this."

"Finish what? We've been broken up for years, Brad! There's nothing more to finish. It's been finished."

"No, it hasn't!" He raised his voice loud enough that if Jesse was a light sleeper, he probably heard something.

The last thing I wanted was for Jesse to walk in on Brad with a gun.

"Don't you get it, Vanessa? You're the reason for everything in my life that's gone to shit. You left me, and ever since then, my professional reputation has been tarnished, thanks to you."

I shook my head, trying to comprehend what he was saying. "I don't understand. What did I do?"

Brad rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, his finger still too close to the trigger. "You and your slutty little friend – what's her name? Hannah? – You bitches spread these rumors about me being a stalker and abusive and all this shit. I'm sure it was your plan all along to get revenge on me for cheating by ruining my business reputation so my career would sink. Well, your lies took their toll and now I'm here to even up the score."

Haley and I had never spread rumors about Brad, nor had we ever devised any plans to ruin his reputation. Sure, we'd told a few of our friends and family members about him following me to Minnesota and all the hell he'd put both of us through there, but we'd never tried to sink his career or get any kind of revenge for him cheating on me. That had to be all in his head.

"Brad, we never spread any rumors," I told him in the calmest voice I could. "I never wanted revenge. Our relationship was over. All I wanted was out. Nothing more."

He scoffed again, shaking his head. "You expect me to believe that, don't you?"

"It's the truth!"

"If it's so true, then why does every single person I work with seem to know about what happened with our relationship? Huh? Why does everyone know about me cheating and about me following you? Who told them? 'Cause I sure didn't!"

He started angrily pacing back and forth in the kitchen, an obviously tight grip on the pistol. It took me a few seconds to realize he was admitting to stalking me – the charge that never would stick because his dad had some asshole friend in a high place. He'd denied everything back then, but now it sounded like he was perfectly fine talking about his misdeeds – like he didn't see what the problem was – like I was supposed to be okay with being stalked or with the fact that here he was again, breaking into my apartment and threatening me with a gun. I guess it all seemed fine to him.

"I don't know, Brad. I really have no idea how your colleagues found out. I never talked to them," I told him honestly, the shake in my voice finally starting to wear off. "I swear, I didn't want revenge. I just wanted then what I want now – to be left alone."

A shadow across the wall in the hallway told me someone else was in the apartment with us. I hadn't heard a peep from Jesse, and I was praying it wasn't him wandering sleepily into the kitchen to find me. Haley was still out with her doctor boyfriend. Had Brad brought along a cohort to help him finish the job?

"Left alone?" Brad laughed in a menacing voice. "You want to be left alone. That's hilarious, Vanessa, that you'd actually think I could let this conversation happen and then just walk away. I know you're going to go to the cops as soon as I leave. That's why I have to end this now."

He raised his arm and aimed his pistol at me, an evil smirk stretching across his face. "Goodbye, Vanessa."

I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for a miracle. I couldn't outrun a bullet, but maybe I could duck just in time. So, I made up my mind that that's what I was going to do – duck immediately, which would probably still be too late, but I had no recourse.

I threw my body to the floor when the shot rang out, a deafening crack in the silence that left my ears ringing so loud, I couldn't hear anything else. But I could feel, and to my surprise, I didn't feel any pain. Had he missed? Had I actually managed to duck in time?

I felt a shockwave in the floor, like something heavy had fallen. There were muffled voices, my ears still ringing too loudly to make out words. Despite being terrified of what I might discover, I forced myself to open my eyes as I dragged myself across the floor, away from Brad.

Rolling onto my back, I looked at the spot where I'd stood a moment ago. There was Brad, lying on the floor in an unnatural heap. His gun had slid across the floor a few feet from me, and I quickly grabbed it, pointing it at him in case he started to get up. That's when I realized what had happened.

There stood Jesse, fireplace poker in hand, standing over Brad's body.

"Is he... dead?" I swallowed, my eyes widening in horror.

Before he could answer, the front door flew open and a whole team of police came racing in, guns drawn. Jesse dropped the poker and I carefully laid down Brad's gun, both of us holding our hands up as the officers began to dissect the scene.

"Vanessa!" I heard Haley scream from the entryway. "Vanessa!"

She shrieked when she rounded the corner into the kitchen and saw me sitting on the floor, surrounded by police.

"Oh my god!" she hollered, rushing to my side and wrapping her arms around me. "Are you hurt? Are you okay? Oh my god! Oh my god! Is he dead?"

"Haley! Haley! Breathe!" I placed my hands on her shoulders. "Calm down."

Paramedics swooped in, gathering up Brad's body and placing him on a stretcher. I heard one of them say he still had a pulse and within seconds they were out the door, taking him to the nearest hospital.

Part of me was relieved that he wasn't dead, because I never wished death on him, but another part of me was disappointed that if he went to the hospital and survived, he'd always be in the back of my mind, lingering and waiting. I had to come to terms with it: I'd never be totally rid of Brad until he was dead.

"Ma'am, can you tell me what happened?" a detective approached me, the concern in her eyes sincere.

Haley wrapped her arms protectively around me as I tried to wrap my mind around what was going on and explain it to the detective. It all seemed so surreal as I said what happened, like I was reading a movie script. I couldn't believe the words that were coming out of my mouth, but there was the evidence in front of my face. My kitchen was a crime scene. An attempted murder scene. Brad had really tried to kill me. I couldn't believe what had just transpired. I wanted so bad for it to all be a terrible nightmare from having too many glasses of champagne at Kate and Alex's wedding.

The detective I'd told my story to gave me a reassuring pat on the back with sorry eyes and told me she was glad I was safe. She offered to have paramedics come check me out, but I was still too in shock to even want to deal with someone pointing a flashlight in my eyes and checking my blood pressure. Hell, my blood pressure would probably break their machine with how wildly my heart was still pounding.

"Did something happen with you and your handsome doctor?" I asked Haley, trying to focus my mind elsewhere when I realized how odd it was that she'd come home at the crack of dawn.

She smiled softly and hugged me tighter. "He's not a doctor, Vanessa. He's an undercover detective who pretended to date me to get closer to the situation with Brad. I let him set up microphones throughout the apartment so that if Brad showed up, the police would have everything recorded."

"Speak of the devil," I said as the doctor-now-detective walked up, phone and clipboard in hand, wearing his N.Y.P.D. windbreaker. "You sure had me fooled."

He cracked a grin and nodded. "I'm sorry I mislead you, Miss Hamilton. My department got word that your ex would be in New York and we decided to set up an operation to nail him. He's been implicated by his own father in a slew of bribery, corruption, and harassment crimes involving local and federal government officials going back at least four years. L.A.P.D. arrested the father last month and he sang like a canary. Anyway, we appreciate your help in this case and again, I'm sorry for misleading you."

"It's... it's fine," I stuttered, now even more in shock. "I understand."

He gave a polite smile and turned to Haley. "How 'bout that date? For real this time."

She grinned so wide, it had to make her cheeks hurt. "I would love that."

"Great. I'll call soon."

When the dust settled and the crime scene investigators had finally finished up taking photos and statements and bagging weapons for evidence, I wandered back into my bedroom to break away from the craziness and breathe for a little while in silence.

Jesse Reese saved my life read my official statement to the police. I must've said that forty times to them. And it was true. The shadow on the wall had been Jesse creeping down the hall, fireplace poker in hand, and the only reason Brad's bullet hadn't hit me was because Jesse had hit him in the back of the head with the tool just as he'd pulled the trigger, obscuring his aim.

It was in that moment that I realized I would never feel for another man the way I felt about Jesse Reese. He was everything I wanted for the rest of my life and I was ready to throw caution to the wind and commit everything to being with him.

I was sitting in bed, the covers wrapped up in a big blob around me, when the door eased open. Jesse leaned against the door frame, a smile on his face, despite the sadness in his eyes.

"I know better than to ask how you're feeling when you can't force yourself to put a sentence together," he said softly, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "So, instead I'll ask if you'd like me to go grab breakfast down the street and bring it back to you."

He was so sweet. He knew I wasn't in the mental state to talk about what had transpired this morning, and instead of pestering me to discuss it or cry it out, he was offering to bring me breakfast in bed.

"I'm the luckiest woman in Manhattan right now."

The strange look he gave me, followed by a cheesy grin, made me want to burst out laughing.

"Maybe I'm not keeping up with the times, but I don't think too many people have that response to takeout breakfast after evading murder," Jesse chuckled, coming over to sit beside me on the bed.

I leaned in to kiss him slowly and deeply, savoring every touch and scent and sound, as if it was the last time I'd ever get to hold him and be close to him that way. I wanted to spend the rest of my days savoring every moment together. No more insecurities. No more what-ifs. I loved him. I really, really loved him.

"Breakfast sounds amazing," I whispered against his lips, kissing him again. "I love you, Jesse. I love you so much."

"I love you, too," Jesse smiled, pecking my lips once more. "By the way, I have some news."

"Oh? Good, I hope. Lord knows I could really use some good news for a change."

His grin widened and he ran his fingers through my tangled bedhead. "Amazing, actually, and it's all thanks to you. Eliza Morgan from Morgan Taffey called me a little bit ago. Her company has agreed to raise their offer by another third, and she said they were so impressed with the pitch you gave them; they want to fund Advantage Republic's expansion to Chicago and Denver."

"Oh my god!" I screeched and threw my arms around him. "That's incredible, Jesse!"

"You are incredible. This would not have happened without you. You saved this entire company and everyone's jobs."

Despite everything that had happened, despite all the mishaps and hardships and every bump in the road in between, I was happy. Genuinely happy. For Jesse. For Haley. For everyone at Advantage Republic. But most of all, I was finally happy for myself.

And just like that, three years since a fateful New Year's Eve flight, I felt like I'd known him my whole life – like we were childhood best friends – and now, I was confident I'd found my soulmate.

And yes, it could only go up from there.