“I’d be saying the same thing,” he broke in. “Seriously, this isn’t about me being in love with you. It’s just too risky, for not enough return. That place is full of angels – if they saw that you were here in the city, it could jeopardize everything.”

I sighed – when he put it like that, I could see his point. After a pause, I bent over and kissed his mouth upside down; he tilted his chin up to make it linger. Our lips left each other slowly. “Okay,” I said. “You’re the boss.”

“Yeah, I must have been really bad in a past life or something.” He smiled, his eyes still in pain. Reaching up, he touched a strand of my hair. “Don’t leave, okay?”

“Shh. I’m not going anywhere.” I kept stroking his forehead, trailing my fingers across it. His muscular shoulders gradually relaxed, his eyes closing again. His breathing slowed, became more regular.

I could hear the TV on in the other room, the sound of voices. None of it mattered to me. I stayed there until long after Alex had fallen asleep – gently caressing the brow of the boy I loved, trying to keep his pain at bay.

The other AKs kept improving with their moving targets, until Alex started doing combat variations with them – making them run across the room, drop into a roll and then shoot, that kind of thing. Their averages plummeted again, but I saw that this time it didn’t take long for their scores to start climbing back up. They were getting there. Sam was the best shot by far; he’d obviously taken Alex’s demonstration with his pistol that day as a personal challenge. At first, Wesley had been as awkward with guns as he was around people, but now he wasn’t far behind Sam, and Trish was pretty much on a level with him – she seemed to aim and shoot in a single motion, hardly even thinking. I don’t know why that surprised me, except Trish was so nice that you didn’t tend to think of her and guns in the same sentence. Brendan and Liz weren’t doing badly, either – they were both consistent enough to be dependable, at least.

Unlike me. Though I’d gotten pretty good at shooting a stationary target, I still hadn’t reached a ninety per cent success rate; I couldn’t get over the habit of flinching each time I pulled the trigger. I really didn’t think I was ever going to get used to this – the cold weight of the weapon, the acrid smell of gunpowder.