It was too late, much too late, to protect himself from her. From now on, for the rest of his life, there would be no hiding from the things she made him feel.

A siren’s blare started small and grew in volume.

“You can look forward to a few days off of school for this,” Sebastian told Dylan. “This is a tough way to cut class. But congratulations. You managed it.”

Dylan tried to smile. The straw made a gurgle and Sebastian adjusted the angle of it so Dylan would continue to receive plenty of clean air.

The paramedics arrived. Sebastian gave swift instructions. They brought over tape and Sebastian used it to secure the straw so that there was no leakage around it and no possibility of dislodging it.

He helped the paramedics move Dylan onto the stretcher. Blood smeared bright against the boy’s sweatshirt.

Once they’d secured Dylan inside the ambulance, he helped Leah into the back of the vehicle.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’ll follow behind.”

But she was already looking back at her brother.

Leah had spent the last ten years worrying about the dangers that might devour Dylan. Today, one of them had devoured him, in part, because of her and the things Dylan had overheard her saying to Sebastian.

The ambulance ride ended at their local hospital’s emergency room. Doctors, nurses, white walls. Dylan, at the center of it all, the only entity she could see in sharp focus.

They replaced the temporary straw with a much more sophisticated tracheostomy tube. Dylan’s vital signs stabilized. The staff informed Leah that they’d treat Dylan here until surgery could be arranged—which would likely take a day or two.

No doubt the surgery and recovery would be difficult, and Dylan might face a degree of lasting damage to his vocal cords. But all Leah could think, sitting beside his bed in the room they’d been assigned, was that the consequence of his injury could have been much, much worse.

Without a doubt, he would have suffocated, if not for Sebastian.

Sebastian hadn’t sought out her attention once. However, she’d been aware of his presence ever since the accident. Two different times, when she’d looked up to find him so that he could answer a medical question, he’d been there. Because of him, she knew not to allow Dylan to be passed off to the nearest surgeon but to insist instead that only the best larynx surgeon in Georgia would do. She’d heard him sharing his opinions with the people who worked here—also known as bossing people around. At one point, she’d discovered a bottled water in her hand. At another point, a cup of tea. She didn’t know how they’d gotten there, only that Sebastian had provided them.