I was floating, floating. All the way up in the air. I thought I could see myself from above and for a moment everything was good. Right.

Then I came crashing down and woke up with a jolt.

It took me a while to actually process what was going on all around me. The walls made no sense. They seemed to undulate with flashes of light. I turned and the pillow smelled strange. Or maybe I smelled strange. There was definitely a weird taste in my mouth, kind of metallic. I groaned and that was the first sound of many that followed. Steps. Or at least they sounded close to steps. Voices? What were they saying?

The first thing I distinguished was my name. I blinked my eyes, trying to get the images to sharpen and focus. Maybe I needed to rub the wool away from them, but my arms were so heavy that I didn't think I was able to lift them.

I tried to ask what was going on and was surprised when what came out sounded an awful lot like baby gibberish. It made me start giggling, and that was when I felt the pain.

"Ow," was the first coherent thing that came out of me.

Someone was shushing me. I felt a stroke on my forehead. It was nice, and I leaned into it.

After a while I woke up again, this time with less of a struggle. The pain was forefront among all the sensations. I gasped as everything rushed back to me.

Holy shit. I'd been shot.

I tried to sit up to take a look at myself but quickly gave up on that idea. A pair of hands pushed me down gently.

"Shh, chiquita. Lay still, okay?"

"Papi?" I asked as I blinked my tears.

I was able to focus better now. His face appeared before me. New lines seemed to have appeared in it overnight.

"What's going on?" I looked around and realized that I was in a hospital room. There were a few machines hooked up to me and medicine was dripping next to the bed, connected to an IV line that disappeared into my skin. I panicked now. "Papá, qué pasa? Estoy bien?"

"Tranquila." As he stroked my forehead I realized it had been him earlier by my bed side, and the knowledge of that made a lot of the tension leave my body. I hadn't been alone for whatever had happened. He swallowed thickly as he looked down at me. "Todo está bien."

I stayed silent, just looking at him for the longest time. I wanted to press and ask him if he was sure, because normally when he couldn't switch to English it was because shit had gone south. But then again, I'd gone and got fucking shot, so shit had already hit the fan and sprayed me.

And then there was the other key fact in the matter, the one where I was the second family member to get shot at.

I cringed and tears sprung to my eyes a lot easier than usual.

"Dad, I'm sorry."

He shook his head once, twice. "You have nothing to be sorry about."

We heard a rustle and he shifted around to see what caused it. The door opened and there was Dean in a wheel chair, being pushed by a man in white, followed by a woman in a white robe and charts under her arm.

Dean's eyes widened and he stirred in the chair, to try to get up, I guessed, but the man pushed him down.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

He picked his jaw up the floor and gave me a weird look. "I should be the one asking that."

The conversation stopped as he was wheeled to a bed next to mine. The man helped him get up on it just as the woman approached.

"Hello Carlota, I'm Dr. Alexis Cree and I was your surgeon last night."

My head spun. "Wait, surgeon? Last night?"

Meanwhile Dean asked, "Carlota?"

We all looked at him. Under his breath my dad said coño de la madre. I agreed.

The doctor didn't notice the sudden drop in temperature. She flipped the chart open and used big words that I couldn't process. When I asked for a more mundane explanation she said that a bullet had pierced my left shoulder clear through, and I'd been lucky it had avoided anything key. She was able to retrieve the bullet in full. There had been no fragments left inside. And that she also repaired the damage pretty damn well. Her words, not mine.

"In short," she said, looking impressed. "You're very lucky. The bullet mostly grazed you and the biggest damage is just muscular."

My bottom lip started trembling uncontrollably as the gravity of what happened finally hit me.

I could've died. What was I thinking?

"What probably saved you was the fact that this young man here," and saying this she tipped her head towards Dean. "Applied pressure on your wound and stopped the bleeding pretty well until the paramedics arrived."

"What's the recovery like?" Dean asked, not acknowledging what the doctor had said.

And I remembered what I'd been thinking. Saving him. 

I was glad I did save him.

"It's hard to tell with gunshot wounds," the doctor said. "We'll be draining the wound and applying antibiotics for the next few days. Right now we need to prevent an infection. When you get discharged you'll be looking at a lot of pain and a pretty useless arm until you're able to start physiotherapy. For something like this," she said as she shrugged. "Probably a few months' recovery on the physical side of things."

Dad held my good hand and squeezed. I burrowed into the pillows with a sigh.

Yeah, mentally was going to be a whole different story.

Every person in the room was startled when I suddenly laughed.

"Oh, don't worry, doc. I was already touched in the head before this."

She chuckled. "I'm sure you were, to jump in front of a bullet like that." She sobered up after that and looked at my dad. "Speaking of, now that she's awake I can't really hold the police back from questioning her."

"Leave them to me," dad said, his businessman voice back in place. He looked down at me, hand still clasped around mine, and asked, "Will you be okay here for a while, chiquita?"

I nodded. "Yes, dad. I'm not going anywhere any time soon."

Dad leaned down and gave me a kiss on the forehead. I couldn't remember when was the last time he'd done that.

"Anything else I should do for the kids, doc?" the guy asked. I realized belatedly that he was the nurse.

"Check with the boy's doctor but Carlota should be fine."

They turned to leave and I gave them a wobbly thanks for everything. My eyes heated up just before streams of tears started trickling down the sides of my face. My chest convulsed with a sob.

I opened my eyes as the bed dipped and saw that Dean had perched himself on my good side of the bed. He grabbed my hand in his bigger and warmer one and stayed like that as I let it all out. Snot, ugly hiccups and everything. His thumb ran circles across my hand, warming me.

For a while after, the only sounds in the room were coming from the beeping machines. Dean was really serious as I met his eyes and said, "Hi."

"Carlota," was all he said. I flinched. He hummed from low in his throat. "That sounds awfully girly to me."

I couldn't believe this was how he found out. I didn't have a different picture of how it would happen, but I always knew it would happen. What I'd been right about was in how horrible I would feel about it, and in fact, did right at that moment.

I mustered all my strength to pull my hand away from him. I didn't think he'd want to be anywhere near me for what I was about to say.

"I-" I froze. I didn't know how to explain myself. All I could do was blurt out the truth, "I'm a girl."

"Yeah, I kinda heard the doctors talking about that before you woke up." Dean sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Then he flinched.

"What's wrong?" I asked in a breath. "Should I call the nurse?"

His eyes rolled and he clicked his tongue. "I have a splitting headache due to a concussion. Nothing as terrible as your lies or your bullet wound. Coincidentally I don't know which one to be more pissed about."

Unbidden the tears started again. I wished I could find some resolve to steel myself for his anger, maybe meet it with some of my own. But the issue was that I was confined to a bed, hopped up on painkillers and antibiotics because there was a bullet hole on my fucking shoulder. I was done with being tough. And all I wanted was to cry and feel sorry for myself.

He gritted his teeth. "I mean, the choice is clear. I'm absolutely raging at the fact that you put yourself in the path of the bullet meant for me. What were you thinking?"

I gasped. "What the hell? Are you asking me why I didn't let you get shot? Did you want to fucking die?"

"No." His entire expression darkened a few notches. "I asked you to stay behind me. I was trying to protect you."

I scoffed. "I can't believe you. Most people would be bending over with gratitude."

"Oh, don't get me wrong." He spread his arms around me and leaned closer, until his face was close to mine. "I'm so fucking grateful to you that I can't even be properly pissed at the fact that you're a girl, and all this time I've been questioning my sexuality. Because of you. That's been kind of a big deal for me for the past couple of months, but you know what? I don't even care."

I sucked my bottom lip. "I'm sorry."

His blue eyes narrowed in a suspicious way. "How sorry?"

"I'll, uh, make it up to you." I blinked at him. "I don't know how, but I will."

Dean started nodding. "You best believe you will."

He leaned all the way and my heart gave a leap. At the last second he veered higher and pressed his lips on my forehead.

"I can't be mad at you," he said as he pressed his forehead against mine. "It doesn't matter that I spent countless nights, lying awake in bed as I questioned myself. Wondering why I couldn't stop thinking about another guy. Dreaming of kissing you, like this."

Then he leaned and pressed his lips against mine so softly that more tears started pouring.

He pulled back and looked into my eyes. A slow smirk started spreading on his lips. "Or many other things, to be honest. None of them with much clothes on."

I gasped. "Dean!"

But I looked around and we were still alone. There was no reason for my heart to be about to explode, other than him.

He shrugged. "My fantasies were pretty explicit when you were a guy, and I did not mind a single bit. So, my only conclusion is that your lie helped me understand I may be bisexual, and that's totally fine."

I bit my lip and lifted my hand with some difficulty, but I found his chest and he helped me hold my hand against it with his.

"I'm sorry for lying to you. To everybody."

I told him why. Heat crawled up my neck and settled on my cheeks as I explained that it was all because of my desire to give as much crap to my dad as I possibly could. I acted out because I wanted him to worry about me. To look after me and think about me more than he worked.

"Well," I said with a sigh. "I guess I got my wish, after all."

Dean lifted my hand to place a kiss on my palm. "The team and I stayed with him until you woke up. I don't think we'd ever seen a man cry so much. He was so beside himself."

I sobbed out of the blue, and Dean wiped away my new tears with his hand.

"Your dad loves you, from the bottom of his heart." He paused for a moment, swallowing. "Unlike mine."

"Oh, Dean. What happened to your dad?"

He leaned forward and ran his fingers through my hair, giving me comfort even as he clearly wanted some, himself.

"He's fine. The cops took him for questioning about Gauthier's allegations."

If Peter Hyde had really done the terrible deed that Gauthier claimed, I wondered if he'd be taken to jail.

When I asked him this, Dean shook his head. "I don't know. It would serve him well, though."

I pulled his hand towards my chest and squeezed with my feeble energy.

"I'm sorry you have a shitty dad," I said.

He smiled. "I have a great mom, though."

I patted the bed next to me and he slowly, with the utmost care, eased himself on it. I burrowed into the warmth of his chest with a sigh. He took advantage of that to sneak his arm under my head and hold me closer. I didn't even care that it triggered a new flare of pain.

"What about Gauthier?" I asked, shivering as I remembered his wild eyes as he pointed the gun at me. At Dean, actually.

His body stiffened. "We don't have to worry about him, he'll definitely do time."

We stayed like that for a while and my eyelids started to grow heavy under the weight of so much.

Until I remembered one key detail.

I jerked and it caught his attention. I looked up at him and asked, "You said the team was with my dad. Do they know that I'm..."

"A girl?" he asked with raised eyebrows. Then the side smirk appeared again. "Oh yeah, the whole town knows about that already."

Oh, shit.