Page 24 of Hold on Tight

He hadn’t run since.

He wanted to say no to Sam.I don’t run. Running is hard for me. I’m slow. You’d beat me.

I’m afraid to fall.

Not words he wanted to model for a seven-year-old boy.I won’t even try. Things that are hard aren’t worth working at. I’ve quit trying to get better. I’ve given up on myself.

I’m afraid.

Sam had it hard enough with a mom who was asking him to hold back for his own health and safety. He didn’t need other voices in his head working against him. The least Jake could do was to do no harm.

“Sure,” Jake said.

They stood together on the imaginary starting line suggested by the red mailbox. Sam got back into his runner’s crouch. Jake thought about what he knew about his prosthesis. It was an all-purpose leg, meant at best to allow for a casual jog around the neighborhood. It wasn’t a sprinter’s leg, but it would let him run. He justhadn’tbefore. There hadn’t been anyreasonto. There hadn’t been any reason to do anything, and he’d been used to reasons being supplied to him for so long, he’d forgotten that sometimes in life, you had to make them up yourself.

Just because.

Or more accurately, as Sam gazed at him expectantly,Because it’ll make his day.

“Ready, set, go,” he said, and Sam took off.

He’d meant to take it easy, but when he pushed off, he stumbled and he had to hop and skip a few paces hard to get his balance back. Then it was easier to keep going than to stop.

Today felt so different from that day on the track. Maybe because of how much he’d been walking, maybe because of the work he’d done in physical therapy on the treadmill. He had to use far more of his brain than he wanted in deliberate decisions—right leg, left leg. Knee up. Push off. Push, push, push. It was more like skipping than running.

But there was a rhythm, an alternating thwack of artificial and natural limbs against pavement. Not the feel of two good legs, earth moving away beneath his feet in a steady, even pulse, but something you could cling to, something you could almost lose yourself in—step-step, step-step. More like jazz than rock, but still.

He could feel Sam beside him, could feel the pavement under his real foot. His residual leg ached, but bearably.

Air rushed past his ears, and he felt—

He felt good. Strong.

He pulled ahead of Sam, lurching but moving fast on two legs, and beat him.

“Mom lets me win,” Sam said.

Jake was panting. Sweaty. His heart pounded, because despite all the work they’d done to get him on an exercise regimen, he hadn’t been able to motivate himself to walk or swim regularly. There had been noreasonto.

Sam was pissed, struggling hard to keep the tears back.Damn, he was a competitive little guy. He’d wanted to win, and he’d wanted it bad.

Jake liked that in a man.

“Well,” Jake said. “First lesson. I’m not Mom.”

Chapter 7

“What kind of pizza do you guys want?”

Mira was stuck in traffic on 15th Avenue, talking on her hands-free to Sam. Sometime on the drive, Mira had made the snap decision that she was going to invite Jake to join them for dinner, even though earlier that morning, she’d been pretty sure she’d find a way not to. But she’d had a beast of a day. Her boss had told her, kindly but firmly, that she was out of second chances. She’d battled a programming language she barely knew, a twisted syntax that had pried its way into the smallest reaches of her mind. And right now, it just seemed easier to slap some pizza on the table than to do the active work of getting rid of Jake, since Sam inevitably wanted his friends and babysitters to stay as long as possible and would kick up a stink to get Jake invited to dinner.

Or that’s what she was telling herself. Deciding to ask him to stay for pizza had nothing to do with the way he’d looked at her this morning, or the stirred-up, liquid feeling it had produced in the pit of her belly. It had nothing to do with the impulse she’d almost indulged, to draw her hand across his shoulders, just to see if they still felt as hard and alive with muscle as she remembered.

She’d texted him a few times to check in on them, and she’d gotten an inappropriate thrill out of it. Not the way she normally felt when keeping tabs on a new babysitter. More the way she felt when she was engaged in text flirtation. Nothing flirtatious, though, about “How are you guys doing?” or his response, “Great.” Maybe it was “Hey. I’ve got this”—his response to her fourth text—that had spiked her pulse. Made her think about the way he’d swept her off her feet and carried her up the sandy beach at the lake.

“Jake, what kind of pizza do you like?” That was Sam’s little voice, which always sounded younger than she expected on the phone.

There was a rumble of male response in the background, and then Sam said, “He wants to talk to you.”

---