Page 95 of Hold on Tight

Her father had implied that Jake was like her mother, unable to love, but that wasn’t true. She knew it wasn’t. She saw it in how thoroughly, how much, he loved Sam. And she’d seen it every time they’d been together, every time he’d opened up and spilled himself out to her, in words or kisses or touches, rough or gentle, overflowing everything he’d ever held back in any other part of his life.

“You’re a good dad,” she said.

Sam had stopped crying. “Youarea good dad,” he said.

“Well,” Jake said. “It’s easy, because you’re a good kid.”

Then he reached over Sam and took her hand, and her body buzzed with the contact. “And you are agreatmom.”

Her heart was warily listening. Responding with a tentative opening, a curious willingness to risk itself. She wasn’t sure, though, about what he was saying, whether it was enough. Because it was one thing for him to have made a picnic, one thing for him to fully accept the mantle of fatherhood, to praise her in her maternal role. Even if he had come with an apology and a kiss—those were good things, but until she heard what he had to say, they weren’t enough. Because she was done risking Sam, done risking herself, unless he could tell her that he would never again walk away from a moment of truth between them.

She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t going to let any man take it away from her. She smiled, a secret, internal smile, and took her hand back. Gently.

“Can we still have the picnic?” Sam asked.

“Let’s see what the pediatrician says, okay?”

“If he says it’s okay?”

She looked over at Jake. “If the pediatrician says it’s okay, we can have the picnic. And the apology and the wine. I’m going to reserve judgment on the kissing, though.”

They stood side by side at the rail of the ferry to Bainbridge Island, Puget Sound rolling out beneath them, the Seattle skyline straight ahead. They were at the back of the boat, so there was no wind and no spray, only the sound of the engines and the wake fanning out behind. Sam was counting the holes in the grid under the rail, standing several yards away.

Jake felt flayed. There had been all the anxiety leading up to the picnic excursion, the shock of watching his son double over, the outrightterrorhe’d felt when he heard Sam’s labored breathing, the relief of hearing the ambulance’s siren.

The tsunami of hope he’d felt when she’d called him a good dad, and the realization that it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t all he wanted to be, wasn’t all heneeded.

What he needed was to be Mira’s family.

He had no idea if that was even a possibility she was still willing to entertain, but the fact that they were here, that she had agreed to this outing, was something. Abigsomething. He had never been confident that he could win her with a picnic, that he could woo her back with promises. He had known, when he secretly enlisted Sam’s help with the plan while Mira was at work, as he made sandwiches and packed napkins, as he took the bus to Discovery Park, that he might get sent home with his tail between his legs. And he wouldn’t blame her for it, not at all. He’d had his chance—two chances, in fact, and both times he’d let fear, not love, rule his heart.

This time, though, was different. This time, one way or another, he’d make her see. That he wanted to live, not just partway, but all the way, and that he wanted to do it with her by his side.

But just as he was about to speak, she said, “Was that all true? What Sam said? That you were going to apologize and say you wanted to spend time with—us?”

This was it. His moment to grab the bull by the horns, or life by its balls, or whatever he had to grasp on to to commit himself full force to what he wanted most in the world. “He got the gist,” he said. “What he didn’t tell you was that it’s not just that I want to spend time with the two of you. I want to spend it withyou. I want tobewith you. The way we were, before I fu—screwed it up.”

Her eyes were wary.

“You have every right to be hurt. Mad. I should have—I should have, I don’t know, shoved Aaron around and beaten my chest and slung you over my shoulder.”

Her eyes got big, wide with surprise, and she smiled. “Well, yes, possibly. Why didn’t you do that?”

“Some wrong reasons. Some right reasons. I wanted to be the kind of guy you deserved. And I knew I wasn’t.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “You were, you idiot. You are. You always have been.”

“No. Listen. I didn’t—I didn’t handle it well, Aaron’s proposal. I should have stepped in, and I should have said, ‘You can’t marry him. I want you to marry me, but you can’t marry me now—I have things to sort out.’ But I didn’t see all that yet. I was making the same mistake I always make, panicking because I felt—”

The words backed up against his throat.

“Felt too much,” he finished.

Her eyes were shiny with tears.

“I’ve never learned to trust the way I feel. I don’t know. Maybe because my role models were shitty, or maybe just because. I didn’t that night at the lake. I should have trusted the way I felt about you, talked to you about it. But I didn’t. I went against my gut, which was what I did with Mike, too. I should have—”

His voice splintered, and something in his chest, too.

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