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But I’d known how to come back.

He taught me that.

Declan.

I reached up and caught one of his wrists.

That was when he finally let his forehead dip. He didn’t quite touch mine. For a moment, he just stayed there, bent toward me, breathing.

Then his head turned slightly.

“How long?” he asked Sadie.

His hands didn’t leave my face.

“I checked the time when you got down beside her,” Sadie said. She looked at her phone. “Almost three minutes.”

“No,” I said.

Neither of them looked surprised by that.

“It was a second.”

Chief looked at me again. There was dirt ground into one of his knees. His bag lay several feet away, half open, a notebook jutting out of it.

“You weren’t answering,” he told me. His voice was trying to sound normal. It wasn’t succeeding.

“I heard you.”

Sadie pressed her lips together.

“I heard you in there,” I said, and looked toward the root.

Chief’s hand shifted with my face. “Don’t,” he said, too sharply.

I flinched.

He went still.

“Just look at me,” he said, quieter now. “For a minute. Babygirl. Please.”

I looked.

I didn’t know what else to do.

Ruckus came through the thinning crowd with the nurse. Rook stood at the edge of the path, keeping people from stopping.

Chief had me.

Nobody tried to take his place.

The nurse crouched on my other side and introduced herself even though I knew who she was. She asked my name. Whether I knew where I was. Whether anything hurt.

I answered.

Chief watched my mouth every time I spoke.

I wanted somebody to tell him he could stop looking like that.