I remember how covered in blood Rhys was. All over his shirt, his jeans, caked on his neck, his hands. I didn’t even think about it then, but it must have belonged to his mother, his father. For seven days, he wore their deaths and he never said a word to any of us about it. I feel so bad for him and I don’t know how to tell him, so I reach for his hand and hold it as hard as I can, crushing his fingers in mine. It’s a futile attempt to redirect his pain. He lets me hurt him for a few minutes before gently pulling away.

“It was so easy,” he says. “Just physically … doing that. When it was over, I thought … people … we aren’t made of anything. That’s how easy it was.”

“I’m sorry, Rhys,” I say.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. It’s horrible. It’s—”

“No,” he says. “It’s fine.”

“Why?” I don’t understand. I want to understand. “Rhys, why—”

“Because I’m here because they’re not,” he says. “So I have to make it mean something.” I don’t say anything and he shakes a little, like he’s trying to get the nightmare off him, like that’s possible. “Are you coming to Rayford?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Grace wants me to go with her.”

“Grace is coming with us.”

“I mean when we get to Rayford. She wants me to stay with her and Trace. After.”

Rhys nods slowly. “I’m sure that invitation doesn’t extend to me or Cary…”

“It doesn’t.”

“Are you going to do it? Are you going to stay with her?” he asks, and I don’t answer him because I don’t want to answer him. I think he’s putting me between them but I’m not sure. Nothing like this has ever happened before. “What if I wanted you to stay with me and Cary.” I don’t say anything. “Sloane, are you going to stay at all?”

What he really means: am I going to leave. Am I going to finish the plan I came here with, the one I wrote down and carried with me, but have failed to see through again and again.

I open my mouth and then I close it as quickly.

“Tell me what happens next,” he says. “Just tell me.”

“I don’t know.”

“You won’t stay for Grace and you won’t stay for me,” he says. “You wouldn’t even stay for yourself. Just Lily, right?”

“Rhys—”

“Who left you,” he says like I don’t know this or that he knows it better than I do but he could never know it better than I do. I’m starting to wish I’d never come out here. And then he says, “She wasn’t the one who was trapped.” He lets this pronouncement hang between us like somehow it’s going to give way to some sort of personal epiphany or an undoing. Like I’ll become light with that knowledge, like I never knew it before. He tries again. “If you’re staying, I want you to stay with me.” I want so badly to ask him why, why he thinks he needs me, but he continues. “If you’re not staying … if you’re going to go through with it, wait until we’re out of your way. I couldn’t stand to see it.”