Page 364 of Wicked Brutal

A sob tears out of me. I turn, and Ryan is already there. He stops himself before he crashes into me and catches my face instead, careful, because everyone is always so careful with me now.

“You got him.” He’s crying. Actually crying.

“I got him.”

“You fucking got him.” I laugh through my tears. He kisses my forehead, my cheek, my mouth. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Walter reaches us next. I throw my arms around him. “Mom picked you.” That breaks him. His arms close around me. “You didn’t know.”

“No.” His voice cracks. “God, Ally. If I’d known… I would’ve taken you both. From the second she asked.”

Cassandra wraps around us, crying too hard to speak. “She trusted us,” she manages. “All those times… she was sending him somewhere safe.”

“And he was,” I whisper.

Cassandra pulls me against her. “He always will be.”

Arthur is quietly gathering his papers. I look at him. “No.”

He freezes. Darla laughs. “You’re coming over here.”

“I have done my job.”

“You got me my brother.”

“You got your brother.” That stops me. He looks at me. “I gave the judge evidence.” His voice softens. “You raised Tobias.”

My eyes fill again. Fuck him. I reach for him anyway, and he sighs like it’s a terrible burden and lets me, his arms closing around me a second later. “You did good, kid.”

“Thank you.”

When I let him go, Ryan is waiting. He always is. His hands settle carefully at my waist. I look down at the signed order in my hands. Alison O’Toole. Tobias O’Toole. My mother’s children. Still together. Just like she asked.

Ryan tips my chin up. His eyes are red, his smile wrecked. “You got him.”

Not we. Not his parents. Not Arthur. Me. I press the order to my chest.

“I got him.” And this time when I cry, it isn’t because something was taken from me. It’s because, for once, they couldn’t take him.

The front door isn’t even shut behind us before I hear screaming. “GET HER!”

I freeze on the porch.

Ryan nearly walks into my back. “What the fuck?”

Behind him, Walter stops halfway up the steps. Cassandra looks toward the house. A second scream comes from inside — this one’s Penny.

“XANDER, I SWEAR TO GOD—“

“YOU CAN’T ESCAPE THE FROG KING!”

Walter sighs. “I don’t even want to know.”

The front door flies open and Penny comes sprinting through it — actually sprinting, hair half out of whatever she did with it this morning, laughing so hard she can barely breathe.

“Help me!”