Page 90 of Hold on Tight

And here Sam was, sitting beside him, having plotted an escape, a downtown bus trip, and—unless Jake was reading this whole thing wrong—essentially, an intervention.

Why had Jake ever thought, even for a moment, that he hadanythingto teach this kid about being brave?

As if Sam could read his mind, he said, “You told me that being brave was doing what you wanted or needed to do even if you were afraid.”

Jake’s throat was tight, his heart wide open with love for Sam. “Yes. I did.”

But the thing was, aside from that single pithy reduction, which only put into words what Sam already embodied in the world, everything Sam knew about resilience, about being brave, he’d learned at his mother’s knee.

She’d carried him and given birth to him, she’d raised him into the man he was becoming, the man he alreadywas, and she’d done it without Jake. She’d made a decision relatively early on—she’d told him so herself—that she didn’t need or want his help. And then, when it turned out that Aaron’s partnership came at too high a price, she’d walked away from that, too. She’d driven three thousand miles, unloaded her possessions into a new house, started a new job, and then, when she stumbled straight into what had to be the most terrifying thing of all, confessing tohimwhat he’d missed, she hadn’t hesitated for one single second. Right there and then in the physical therapist’s office, knowing almost nothing about who he was or how thoroughly he could upend her life, she’d done the right thing.

And then she’d slid down this slope with him, even though she’d been down it once before. Even though she knew where it had ended last time. Even though she knew the exact and particular ways he was driven and broken, the exact ways he could leave and break her.

Thatwas brave.

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s okay to be scared,” Sam said. “What are you scared of?”

A list was forming in Jake’s mind. Of the things he needed to do. The people he needed to see—the ones he owed something to that he might finally deliver on, the ones he owed nothing to but might still disappoint. The ones he still hadn’t met that he might have something real, something big, to give something of himself to.

“I have some things I have to do,” Jake said.

“What things?” Sam asked.

“Grown-up things,” Jake said.

“Scary things?”

“I thought they were. But now I think I can handle them.”

In his pocket, his phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket. Mira, calling.

“Hey.”

“What thehell?”

“He’s totally fine. He ran away from his sitter and took the bus here.” He decided not to tell her the sitter had been sleeping. Mira could figure it out. Handle it. God, she could handle anything. She could take life by the balls ten times over, and she pretty much had. Pregnant at eighteen, raising a kid on her own, fleeing her father to make something of herself. And meanwhile he was … Jesus, what?

Running away.

Mira was shrieking her outrage at the other end of the phone, and he handed the phone to Sam, because, after all, it was Sam’s outrage to absorb. He watched Sam’s face go through the same stages his would have gone through—guilt, contrition, apology, and then, when the diatribe went on several beats longer than was strictly necessary to make its point, irritation. He took the phone back. “Mira?”

“I’m going to send the sitter to pick him up,” she said.

“You don’t have to,” Jake said. “He can hang out here for a while. We can go get cupcakes.”

“Make sure—”

“I’ll make sure they’re allergen-free.”

“I’ll tell the sitter to get him around three. Does that work?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. There was so much more he wanted to say to her, so much more he wanted to ask.Sam says you’re not going to marry Aaron—is that true? I know you’ve already given me a second chance, but how about one more?

I love you.

But he’d told Sam he had things to do, and he’d meant it. Before he could ask for another chance, he had to deserve it.

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