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I don’t hear the rest of it. I have him back in my hands. I know the table goes. I know I get him, because afterward I can feel it up through both wrists. I know somebody’s arm comes around my throat from behind and I get out of it. I know Mathers yells something and then stops yelling.

Everything goes black, and then it’s Rafe. Rafe with both arms around my chest from behind and his feet planted, walking me backward, saying my name over and over in my ear, and Koda in front of me with a hand flat on my chest and his whole weight in it, shouting, the two of them getting me across a kitchen and through a doorway and out a door I don’t remember opening.

Cold air. Steps. I’m on the front walk, and I’m still going.

“Nash!”

“You’re outside. You’re outside, we’re going home—”

“Nash!” Rafe shouts.

I get an arm free and most of the way turned toward the house before he gets me again, and he’s stronger than I thought he’d be. He drives me three steps back toward the street. “Look at me. You’re done. It’s done, it’s over, you won—”

I can’t get a breath. His arms are around my chest, and my back is on fire in a line, and every time I try to breathe all the way in, there’s a stick coming down in a driveway under a streetlight.

Koda is off to my left, pacing with his phone at his ear.

Rafe finally lets me go, and I pace to get out of his reach, and it doesn’t work. Twice I nearly get past him. The second time, he shoves me into the side of a parked car and holds me there with his forearm. “Hit me if you have to. But you’re not going back in that house.”

I don’t say anything.

“Hit me, Kennebeck,” Rafe shouts.

I don’t hit him.

The front door opens and closes a few times, guys coming out onto the porch to watch. Somebody’s laughing. Somebody says something about the cops, and somebody else says shut up, and the door closes again.

My hands won’t stop shaking.

“Breathe,” Rafe says.

At some point, Greeley comes out and sits down on the top step with a dish towel pressed to his eyebrow and a jacket on. He looks completely calm, elbows on his knees, like a guy watching his kid’s game from the bleachers. “Kennebeck.”

“Shut the fuck up, Greeley,” Rafe says.

“I’m not calling anybody,” Greeley says. “Just so we’re clear. Not the cops, not Berwyn. I don’t want any of that.”

I look at him.

“Six guys saw you come at me. Somebody’s got it on their phone.” He dabs at his eyebrow and looks at the towel. “So we both know how that goes.”

“Say what you want.”

“October’s coming,” Greeley says. “When Dannebrog reads the lines, you tell him you want third. You ask for it yourself. Nobody has to know why. You don’t feel ready. Dannebrog’ll respect it. Berwyn’ll respect it.” He tips his head. “And this never happened. Not the kitchen, not the video, not whatever the fuck is wrong with you.”

Rafe goes very still against my back.

“You planned this,” I say.

“I invited you to my house.”

“You put a stick across my back.”

“That’s not what happened,” Greeley says, without any heat at all, the way you’d correct somebody about the time.

Behind him, in the doorway, Mathers stands with his arms crossed, looking at the floor of the porch.

Footsteps come up the driveway. Rafe turns first, and his arms loosen an inch. It’s Paige in a coat over leggings with her hood up, and the blonde.