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The silence stretched on as the cops drove them back the way they had come. All the progress they had made, all these miles and all this suffering, the fight they’d won at the Wanderer…

Nothing. All of it had amounted to nothing.

Shay breached the silence with a quiet noise in her throat.

But Roman didn’t move. The tires continued to hum. The chains of their cuffs that were fastened to the benches continued to rattle.

“Are you okay?” she whispered. It was a stupid question—she knew he wasn’t okay. Until he had his little brother back andthey were safe from their father, he would never be okay. But she couldn’t bear to watch him suffer in silence any longer. She had to talk to him. Had to try.

It took him so long to respond that Shay was beginning to think he wouldn’t.

But then he inhaled sharply, his back shuddering as the breath clawed through him. When he finally lifted his head to stare out the back windows, and Shay saw his crumpled, tear-streaked face and his puffy red eyes, she broke, hot moisture pooling in her own.

He did not deserve this.

“No,” he confessed. The whisper cracked like thin ice.

“Is there anything that I can do?” Another stupid question. But what was she supposed to say in this situation? No words would fix this. She just wanted him to know that she was here and ready to listen if he wanted to talk.

Roman just kept staring out the window. The pain in his damp eyes, so raw and real…it was so much worse than the dead stare she was used to.

Another few minutes ticked by before Roman whispered, “I’m so sad, Shay.”

Her own tears began to fall. One down each cheek. They dripped off her jaw and rolled down her arms, the chains of her cuffs rattling as the van hit a rough patch in the road.

Neither of them said anything more. Roman continued to stare out the windows, watching as the miles between them and Angelthene piled up one tire rotation at a time.

Close. They had been so close to Witheredge. So close to the Devils.

So close to making it.

The van had four police car escorts, two in the front and two in the rear. It was the car at the very back of the line where they were keeping Paxton. Shay could only imagine what was goingthrough the head of that poor, innocent child. How frightened he must be. How alone he must feel.

“I feel like I failed him,” Roman croaked. “He’s always trusted me to keep him safe, always believed me when I said that things would one day be better for us.” His throat bobbed. A tear rolled down his nose and dripped into his lap. “I don’t know where I went wrong.”

Shay wiped her cheeks dry. “I know it’s hard not to blame yourself,” she said, the words thick and wobbling. “But this isn’t your fault.”

“One chance.” He lifted an index finger, still staring out the back windows as fresh tears rolled down his face. “This was our one chance.” He lowered his hand and formed a fist with both, cuffs clinking together. “And I fucked it up.” A pause. “The worst part is that Iknowwe would’ve made it. If we hadn’t gone to that clinic…” He shook his head, disappointed with himself. “I know we’d almost be in Angelthene by now.”

She couldn’t blame him for thinking this way. When life constantly dealt you shit hands, it was hard not to dwell on the maybes and the what-ifs. She and Anna used to talk all the time about life outside of the Riptide. What it would have been like for them, if Dad had taken them with him when he’d divorced their mother and started over in Laurel. But once you were caught in that sticky web of what-ifs, it was difficult to extricate yourself. Too many nights she had laid awake in her bedroom at the House of Blue, thinking the same sort of things Roman was thinking now. What if this, and what if that…

But there were no redos in life. Time marched forward.

Roman scrubbed his face and drew another ragged inhale.

“For what it’s worth, Roman,” Shay began, “you’ve done an incredible job with your brother. You’re the reason that boy still has his soul.”

He picked at the blood and dirt caked under his nails. “Don’t know what good it did. If I ever see him again, I’ll be looking out at him from behind bars. He still has six years before he’s legally allowed to move out, and it takes a lot less than six to break someone.” Another tear slipped down his cheek. He knuckled it away. “I’m living proof of that.”

Fresh tears pricked Shay’s eyes. She shut them.

Who had protected Roman when he was Paxton’s age—and younger? His mother? Roman had done everything he could to shelter Paxton and Travis, but…

At one point in time, he had been an only child, just him and his mother against the world. Against Donovan. And when Travis was born, it was still Roman who had taken the brunt of their father’s abuse. He’d taken Travis’s share, Shay knew. He didn’t have to say it. For too many years, he had willingly weathered his father’s storm with no promise that the skies would clear. But he hadn’t run.

Roman Devlin did not run.

The silence returned—thicker than before, with nothing to fill it but the continuous hum of the tires and the tinkling of their gods-awful chains. Shay didn’t know what else to say. There was nothing she could do to make this right, but if there were, no matter what it would cost her, she would do it. Would give anything to bring these two brothers back together. Now that Anna was gone, and she was being forced to navigate the world without her big sister by her side, she knew how much it hurt to lose a sibling. Someone you loved with your whole heart. Someone you trusted completely.