Page 84 of Hold on Tight

You’ll need my help paying for college, one way or another.

I don’t see how you can afford to support yourself and this baby without my help, Mira.

I knew Aaron would be good for you, Mira. He’s a steady guy. He’ll be there for you when you need him.

She let them in at moments of weakness. When she was tired, so tired, and defeated. When she was back at square one, when she had no choices, when she had to do whatever was most expedient.

“Sam,” Mira said, “go inside and get into your pajamas and brush your teeth.”

“Youalwayssay that when things are getting interesting,” Sam said.

“Oh, Sam,” Mira said, and felt a rush of pure love for him. “Come here.” And she threw both her arms around him and hugged him, hard, breathing in the seaweed-and-salt scent of his hair, the little-boy-in-the-sun smell of his skin. “You are such a good boy. Now. Go.”

Sam went.

“He’s gotten taller in the last two months. He looks great. I heard he had a spill.”

“He healed fast. A few physical therapy visits and good as new.”

“I miss him. I miss you.”

“Aaron, don’t.”

“Just—don’t say no. Not yet. Just—let me watch Sam for you for a few days, okay? Give it a few days; think about it a little bit.”

She couldn’t help herself; she looked up the street in the direction Jake had gone.

“Were things serious with him?”

He’d used the past tense, and she hated that. But it was the dirty rotten truth of it, wasn’t it? It was over, and more to the point, it had never begun.

“No,” she said. And it didn’t, mostly, feel like a lie. “Okay. I do need a sitter for tomorrow.”Assuming I still have a job. She hadn’t gotten an email from her boss or anything, despite Haley’s threats.

“And you’ll think about it?”

“I won’t saynoright this second.”

“That’s all I can ask.”

But she couldn’t help herself; she looked up the street one more time. Then she shook her head. He’d never claimed her, never promised her anything. As he’d said, he’d never lied to her.

If there had been any lying, she’d done it to herself.

Chapter 26

The first few days after he walked away from her, he ran every day. He ran until it hurt, until the pain jamming up into his residual thigh¸ his hip, and his spine was like a column of fire that went almost all the way into his brain. He ran because the effort and the physical pain blotted out all the memories. Of the panic on Mike’s face when he’d thought Jake was going to rat him out, and the relief on it when Jake had told him he’d keep his secret. And the blank, bowel-loosening paralysis as Mike had clutched the steering wheel and failed to put the pedal to the metal, the thing that would have saved his life and Jake’s leg.

Of the look on Mira’s face when she’d recognized him in the physical therapist’s office:No!AndYes!As if she could speak the words that were in his heart, too.

Of the feel of Mira under him, on the ill-fated couch, on the firm surface of her mattress, her eyes rolling back in her head in a kind of mindless pleasure he didn’t think he’d ever delivered to anyone else in his life. Of her soft welcome on the beach, a contrast to the way his jeans bound his legs, the way the log scraped his ass, a thousand discomforts rendered nonexistent by the sheer, unmuted thrill of the clutch and caress of her.

Of Sam’s delight at having two parents play Monopoly with him. Of Jake’s mother’s joy at seeing Sam’s face. At his siblings’ anger turning to bemusement turning to revelatory love, because it was impossible to know Sam and not love him.

That must have been Mira’s genes in him.

He ran until the pain had shape and rhythm and even a sound in his head, like a throaty hiss.

Three nights ago, after he’d gotten back downtown from Mira’s house after walking out on Aaron’s proposal, he’d bought a fifth of Gentleman Jack at Downtown Spirits and sat it in front of him on the table. He’d taken out all three of his intact highball glasses—he’d broken one the first week after he’d bought them, tripping over his prosthetic self. He’d arrayed the three glasses in front of him and poured two fingers of whiskey into each. Measuring out the hours.