“Yeah,” I said, swallowing. “We are.”
“Good.”
“Jess,” I called as they rose from their seat, one hand braced on the table. “I’m sorry. That was a shitty move. I shouldn’t have—”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” they cut me off.
I watched as they followed Finn, taking the stairs a lot slower than he had.
“They’ll get over it,” Dylan said.
I turned to look at him.
“We went to the bonus room first, but we could still hear you, so we brought Finn downstairs.” His fingers tapped in a rhythm on the table. “It wasn’t your fault—”
“Dylan,” Curtis called in warning. He’d turned from the counter to face us.
“It’s okay,” I told him, keeping my eyes on Dylan.
“Those guys,” he said thickly. “When they were searchin’ for Finn, they were talkin’.”
Curtis moved toward us.
“They said that the guy who’d sent them—Finn’s grandpa?”
I nodded.
“They said he told them he didn’t want any collateral damage. They said they were fucked.”
It felt as if I were being slowly suffocated.
“The way I figure it,” Dylan said, clearing his throat. He started again. “The way I figure it, those guys were actin’ on their own. The way I figure it, there’s no way you could’ve known. You didn’t think that guy would hurt us, and you were right, and you were right when you thought he’d try to take Finn. So it’s not on you.”
“I appreciate that, Dyl,” I replied softly.
“And I think,” he said, swallowing, his voice reed thin as he looked down at the table. “I think if we woulda just let them take him, they wouldn’t have hurt us.”
My lip started to quiver as Curtis’s hand wrapped around the back of my neck.
“Jesse and I weren’t gonna let that happen,” he said, looking up at me again.
“Buddy,” I whispered.
“So it’s not on you,” he repeated, his voice thick with tears.
“Come here, son,” Curtis said, moving toward him.
“I’d do it again,” Dylan said firmly. “I-I wasn’t gonna let them take Finn. If those guys got him? He’s just a little boy. If they got him—”
Dylan’s chair screeched as Curtis pulled it away from the table. He pulled Dylan to his feet and wrapped him in his arms as Dylan began to sob.
“Worth it,” Jesse said from behind me.
I turned to find them with tears dripping down their cheeks.
“Come here, kid,” I said, carefully pulling them against my chest.
“We’re better together,” Jesse murmured in my ear. “I’m not going anywhere.”
