Page 54 of Hold on Tight

“What if ‘probably’ is the best I can do right now?”

She smiled, such a full, generous smile that it cracked a sheet of ice right behind his ribs. “I can handle that.”

She went upstairs, feeling tugged in two. One part of her needed to be there for Sam, craved the nightly ritual, sitting at the side of his bed, running her fingers through his too-long bangs, soothing her fingers over his forehead until his blinks got longer and longer, as they had when he was a newborn.

The other part worried that Jake was a mirage. That if she let him out of her sight, he’d disappear again, as thoroughly and for as long as he had before. All day she’d waited for him to come to his grumpy asshole senses and retreat into the foxhole he’d crawled into when he’d run away from their kiss. She worried now, too, that he might flee. Vanish.

Whatever was between them had not diminished in force or intensity in eight years. And Jake’s presence in their lives made too much sense, perfect sense, so it was hard for her to imagine not exploring what was between them. If it worked, if the chemistry sustained itself, if there was something real …

Then what?

She knew it was crazy to imagine he could somehow fill the hole he’d left. That he could come home to a family he’d never claimed. Never, for that matter, been offered.

The question was, could she take what she wanted from him without falling into some half-dead fantasy she desperately needed to renounce?

Her brain whispered caution, but her body bellowed,You need this. Drowned out common sense, and she knew, sheknew, she’d let it. When the moment came back. If it came back.

“Mommy, is Jake still here?”

He lay in bed with his covers pulled up to his nose, only those blue-gray eyes—Jake’s eyes—peeking out.

She sat on the edge of his bed and smoothed his hair back. “I think so.”

“Is he going to sleep over?”

She hesitated.

“Probably not,” she hazarded. “I don’t know him very well. You have to be good friends with someone to have a sleepover.”

Sex ed for seven-year-olds.

“But you were good friends with Aaron and Aaron never slept over.”

She touched his cheek, smooth and soft. “Oh, Sam.” She kissed his nose, then his forehead. Both cheeks. The feel of his cheek on her lips still had the power to make her teary. She wondered if that would ever change. Someday that cheek would be rough and stubbled. Would she still be able to recapture the feeling of kissing her baby? Would she still remember the satiny sensation of his face under the pad of her thumb?

Time went fast. Eight years ago she’d been a teenager, choked with the feeling of the world wanting to get inside her. Determined to shake off parental control. Eight years from now, Sam would be a teenager, bent on making the same kind of trouble.

“Just because a thing is true in one direction doesn’t mean it’s true in the other. You should always be good friends with someone before you have a sleepover, but that doesn’t mean that because you’re good friends with them you have to have a sleepover.”

“But you didn’t answer why Aaron didn’t.”

Smart boy. Damn.

“Grammy and Grampy weren’t the biggest fans of sleepover parties,” she told him. Even though toward the end there, her father probably would have begged for her to have Aaron sleep over if it would make her stay. If it would somehow convince her to marry him and settle permanently in Fort Myers.

Sam wrinkled his nose, as if piecing together the adult lessons he’d learned. “CouldIhave Jake for a sleepover? Because he’s my good friend. He came and helped me out today.”

She laughed, but this line of conversation made her nervous. The excitement, the sizzle, of being with Jake had worn off, leaving her with damp, cooling panties and a mother’s anxiety. This situation was a dangling piano, waiting to fall. Jake had been totally up front with her from the beginning. He’d told her he was damaged, fearful. He had told her he was bad for her. Bad for Sam. He’d told her he wanted to go back to the fight if he could, told her flat out that he might not stick around. What kind of idiot wouldn’t listen to those warning signs?

What kind of mother wouldn’t listen to them?

“Sam, Jake is just a babysitter right now. Okay? Babysitters come and go. Like do you remember Maura, who watched you a couple of times? It was fun playing with her, but then she had to stop coming. It might be like that with Jake. He might come a few times, then we might get a different babysitter.”

She tried to think about how that would translate for her.He might get laid and move on.

She didn’t like that. Not at all.

Maybe it would be better if he was gone when she went downstairs.

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