He was, by then, my brother in every way that mattered, and the man who held my sister’s whole heart, and I was not going to let him fall.

“Gabriel, look at me,” I said, firmly, the way you speak to someone who is slipping away inside their own panic.

“Right now.

Look at me.

Gemma chose you, out of everyone in the whole world, because you are the person who makes her feel completely safe.

She needs you to be that for her right now, even from out here.

You need to give her that exact strength.” He turned his face to me then, and his eyes, bloodshot and wet, held something I had never seen in them before, a strange dark weight, a thing that looked almost like fear but was somehow larger than fear, and it stopped the words in my throat.