And in place of all of it, there was simply gratitude, a gratitude so large I did not have room for it, gratitude to the man who had taken the thing I loved most in the world and kept it safe when the people who should have kept it safe had tried to throw it away.

I had spent years, on and off, quietly resenting Gabriel for marrying my sister.

I would spend the rest of my life thanking whatever force in the universe had arranged for a boy who never flinched to live down the street from us, and to be there, at seventeen, when my sister’s whole future hung in the balance and someone had to be good enough and brave enough to catch it.”

A friendly nurse appeared in the surgical doorway with a warm, tired smile.