Page 49 of Hold on Tight

He almost said it. He almost said, “I’m your dad, Sam.”

But Sam had had enough for one day. He didn’t want to break the boy’s little brain. Or have Mira walk into the middle of a shitstorm.

“I’m really hungry,” Sam said. “I didn’t have lunch.”

Oh, Jesus. It was almost three now. The kid had been locked in a bathroom for an hour, starving. “I’ll make you some lunch.”

Sam wrapped his arms around Jake’s neck and squeezed. “Is my mom coming soon?”

“She’s on her way.”

“I’m glad you came. I’m less scared with you here.”

The irony of this struck Jake, suddenly. Because he was ten times more scared because Sam was in the world than he’d been before he’d known. Because shit like this happened, because there were madmen and unexpected dangers, because sometimes no one got there in time. Because there were terrorists and acts of destruction, and that was before you took into account things like the Cascadia, the mammoth earthquake that would someday, without warning, split the earth nearly under Sam’s house.

He’d heard guys talk about having a wife and kids at home, and he knew they were more fearful for it. It was one thing to know you might die, and another thing to know you were stranding the people you loved, the ones who counted on you. That was part of why he had never wanted a family.

He wondered how much that had entered into Mike’s freak-out. Mike had a wife and kids at home, and maybe he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about them when he was supposed to be fighting. Maybe that was what he’d been thinking about that day in the truck when he hadn’t slammed his foot down on the gas in response to Jake’s command, when he’d stared, frozen in space. When he’d delivered them all like sitting ducks into the maw of that explosion.

He led Sam downstairs to the kitchen and got out some bread and cheese to make him a grilled cheese sandwich. Sam sat at the table, swinging his legs and watching. He was hiccuping only occasionally now, and he hummed a little, something he did, Jake had noticed, when he was happy. Man, kids were resilient. He wondered how traumatized Sam would be by what had happened today. He wondered what he’d remember most vividly, whether he’d imprinted the inside of the bathroom the way Jake had imprinted the inside of that goddamned truck. The reptile brain thinking,This is my tomb, before the higher-order mind could even register,Danger.

He heard Mira’s car outside, and part of him wanted to flee. Because he didn’t think he could deal with how big her emotions were going to be.

Because he didn’t want to see her face—the worry, the suffering. The loveliness. He didn’twantto want to wrap her up. He didn’twantto want to comfort, succor, soothe. He didn’t want the ache in his chest or his balls.

She came into the kitchen and flung her arms around Sam. Jake personally would have played it a little lower key, given that Sam had recovered from his ordeal and was distracted. But Sam didn’t seem to mind. He buried his face in Mira’s chest and said, “Mom.”

Just that. Like it was its own mantra.

Jake hadn’t had much of that in his life as a kid. But his mom had woken up in the last five years and been there for him. Care packages in the army, letters, emails, and then—so many days, such a long vigil beside his bed in the hospital.

Stay alive. That’smyrequest.

For the first time, Jake registered fully that for his mother, his prosthetic leg was not the end of everything. It was the visible manifestation of the greatest blessing, an amazing escape.

And sometime in the last few weeks, sometime between when he’d felt the wind rush past his face as he ran with Sam and now, it had ceased to be the end of everything for him, too.

He made himself look at Mira’s face. At her relief, at her unveiled, unabashed love.

She was examining Sam now, scrutinizing his face, touching his arms and legs. “Everything okay? Sam, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Sam had clearly decided he was going to play the tough guy now, Jake observed with some amusement. He’d done all his crying in Jake’s lap, and now he was going to pretend to be all man for his mother. Jake couldn’t blame him. He probably would have done the same thing as an almost-eight-year-old, not that his mom had been much for Band-Aids and wiping away tears.

In fact, that’s what he’d do in a minute when Mira turned her attention to him to ask what had happened. He’d be all male nonchalance too.

“Did the police want to talk to me?” She tipped her face up to look at him. Cheeks pink, mouth red, skin porcelain. He could see down her blouse, and he made himself not look.

“Yeah,” he said. “They want your statement. I told Cindy to go home. I told her you’d call her if you wanted her to come back.”

She sighed. “Crap. I can’t believe I have to look for yet another sitter. This is absurd.”

“You don’t need another sitter. You have me.”

A look crossed her face that might have been relief. Then she shook her head. “I don’t need you.”

He felt a surge of desire for her. Because she wasn’t afraid of anything. Because she gave as good as she got.

Because the curve of her breasts inside that silky shirt was like a promise and a dare.

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