Page 99 of Hold on Tight

“How does it start?”

“ ‘My daddy lost his leg in the war.’ ”

He made a sound, a sharp exhalation, and she touched his cheek. “Is that okay?”

“Yes. God, yes.”

He touched his thumb to the paper, smoothing over the place where Mira had drawn his hand on Sam’s hair. “This is amazing.”

“Thank you.”

“You said you know how it ends?”

“I think I do. I hope I do.”

“Yeah?” he asked, laying the paintings on the coffee table and reaching for her hands, pulling her down on the couch next to him. He touched her hair reverently, as if it were some semiprecious substance instead of ordinary, sometimes flyaway, blond hair. He looked at her and she leaned into him, into his strength, his heat, and rested her head on his shoulder.

“ ‘And then my Daddy came home to live with us.’ ”

“That’s a good ending.”

“I thought so.”

Epilogue

Mira watched with lascivious pleasure as Jake slipped into his wet suit. She knew he’d gone to great lengths to make sure the suit fit as tightly as comfort allowed—to boost his speed—and his taut, well-muscled torso gleamed with the lube he’d used to ensure the suit would come off easily after the swim.

The crowd was cheering like crazy. The Seattle and Bainbridge papers and social media had somehow gotten wind of Jake’s intention to compete, and a larger-than-usual audience had turned out to cheer him on. While he was strapping on his swim leg and changing clothes, people kept approaching him to congratulate him and thank him and tell him how inspiring he was.

Even her father. Mira had to give him credit; from the moment his flight landed, he’d gone out of his way to be considerate to Jake. And Jake, for his part, while not ready to embrace her father as his new best friend, had settled on a tone somewhere between civil and warily friendly. Of course, Sam had helped forge the tentative truce between the men, because he was oblivious to any lingering tension and wanted his dadandhis granddad to doeverything with him all the time.

“He’s quite an attentive father,” her own father murmured to her at one point, and she decided that was as close as he was going to come to an endorsement, at least for the time being. And the great thing was? She didn’t need more.

She knew Jake wasn’t sure how he felt about all the people clamoring to wish him well and to ask him about his training. He didn’t feel like a hero, not a war hero and not anyone’s role model. She knew he believed that he had a lot to offer, a lot to tell people, good ideas to share, but that he wasn’t crazy about the idea of people viewing him as someone special. Someone to emulate or hold up as an example or point out to their kids.

“I understand,” she’d told him, last night after they’d had bone-melting pre-race sex. Since the research was split on whether sex before a race improved or inhibited performance, they’d decided to err on the side of orgasm. Afterward, limbs intertwined, he’d brought up how uneasy the media attention made him, how uncomfortable it made him that people had turned his competing in the triathlon into a warm-and-fuzzy public interest story. “But I think you have to accept that no matter how you see yourself, there will be some people who choose to look to you as a hero or a role model. You don’t have celebrity status, but you do have a certain public face, and doing things like competing in triathlons is going to mean you have to accept that responsibility.”

The black neoprene emphasized the breadth of Jake’s chest and the narrowness of his hips, and Mira’s stepmother, who was standing beside her holding Sam’s hand, said, “He’s a fine specimen, honey.”

“Amen tothat,” Opal said from Mira’s other side. “Does he have any Ranger friends he can introduce me to?”

Mira laughed. “I’ll ask him. Heisa fine specimen, isn’t he?”

“What’s a specimen, Mommy?”

“Your father is very handsome. That’s what Grammy means.”

“Specimen means ‘handsome’?”

“In this case, specimen means ‘example.’ ”

“Why can’tIrun the race?”

“No kids,” Mira said. “We’ll find a race you can do with Daddy next summer.”

“Will you do it, too?” Sam asked.

“Sure!” Mira said. “As long as it’s after the wedding. I don’t know if I’ll have time to work, plan a wedding, write two books,andtrain for a triathlon.”

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