Page 93 of Hold on Tight

Maybe she’d broken him. Maybe all the change and the uncertainty, losing two father figures in Florida and one here, had finally undone him. Maybe he was about to have some little-kid nervous breakdown, and it would be all her fault.

On the other hand, maybe he just had to pee and wasn’t telling her. You couldn’t tell with a seven-year-old.

They’d parked at the Discovery Park lot and strolled past the visitor center, where she had, in fact, pointedly asked if he needed to use the restroom before they walked out of range. He’d denied any need, and they’d ambled along the path toward the playground he liked, the one where they’d picnicked with Jake and played pinecone baseball. That seemed like an eternity ago now.

After the conversation with her father a few days ago, she’d texted Jake to try to set up a time for him to take Sam on an outing. She couldn’t change her father and she couldn’t make Jake love her, but she could doggedly go after what she needed—just as she always had, even if she hadn’t given herself credit for it.

And what she needed was to make sure Jake’s relationship with Sam was okay.

You want to take Sam this weekend?she’d texted.

I wish I could. Out of town. But—maybe soon.

She hadn’t quite realized that there were degrees of heartbreak, that something cracked could fall apart into shards, that the shards could be ground down into powder. She’d thought she’d lost what there was to lose already. But it turned out she could feel worse, because Sam’s loss amplified hers. He’d been mopey since Jake’s departure—even all the Lego-building with Aaron hadn’t seemed to snap him out of it, and when Aaron was out of earshot, Sam had told her that running races with Aaron was fun but thatdads were better, andI want a special fun day with my dad soon, Mommy, okay?

She might have to march downtown and strangle Jake with her own bare hands if this continued, because he could break her heart and stomp on the shards, but he’d sure as hell better not break Sam’s. And she didn’t believe Jake—didn’t believemaybe soon, didn’t believewish I could. What she believed was his walking away, which she could still see in her mind. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed.

Something in her calling out to him,Come back!

For now, though, she knew there was nothing she could do except go after what mattered, which was taking care of Sam.

Hence today’s trip to the park.

Sam had been all obsessive this morning, starting in before breakfast about how he wanted to go to Discovery Park and play pinecone baseball and if she didn’t want to take him could he call Jake? It had made her feel like six different kinds of crap, but she said no because she’d burned her last scrap of wounded pride in the text where she’d invited Jake to do something with Sam, and there was no way she could do it again so soon. Besides, the idea of being face-to-face with him was too overwhelming. She had no idea what she’d do—if she’d yell at him for being an idiot, or be all calm and icy (which was what she was hoping), or grab the sides of his face and start kissing him the instant she laid eyes on him (which was what she suspected). And she had even less idea of how he’d react to any of those things if she actually did them.

It would be easier to catalog the things shedidknow than the ones she didn’t. She knew taking care of Sam wasn’t as much fun when he wasn’t there. Because a day in the park, a visit to a tourist attraction, cooking dinner, ordering takeout, sitting on the couch—all the ordinary moments of her life—were drabber without him in them.

She knew that in destroying her fantasy of what it would be like for Sam to have a father—the fantasy of rescue, of being yanked out of the rut and into a dashing romance, an easier, safer life—she had found something she hoped could be even better. A tease, a hint, of the possibility of companionship, partnership, contentment.

Not that there hadn’t been sizzle, too. There had been abundant sizzle. But it was real sizzle. The friction of coarse bark and inconveniently placed buttons, of artificial limbs insinuating themselves into movie moments, of a kid’s questions instead of a long, leisurely morning lounging over breakfast in bed. And Jake himself, not the unmarred perfection of a bigger-than-life Army Ranger, not twenty and idealistic, but who he was: rough himself, inconvenient even, sometimes. Troubled, troubling.

She knew that she could never settle for less now. That she owed it to herself to find someone who made her feel that way, rough, messy, sizzling. Poised at the edge of danger and, strangely,safe. Someone like that who also loved Sam as much as she knew—knew in the depths of her heart—that Jake did.

And she owed it to Sam to never settle for less—not for herself, and not for him. Even if it meant that it would be just the two of them. Because there were way, way worse things than the feel of Sam’s little hand in hers, the contented sound of his humming.

She and Sam walked past the big open field, the grass and wildflowers.Oh, shit, she’d forgotten his inhaler, an oversight she’d been committing more and more recently as it approached the two-year mark since his last attack. There was enough pollen in that field to make her nose and eyes itch, but Sam seemed unfazed. Maybe he had outgrown his asthma.

“Mom, can I run in that field?”

Her immediate impulse was to say no.

Jake would say yes.

Jake’s not here, though, is he? Doesn’t matter what he thinks.

The voice in Mira’s head sounded a little like Opal, warm and giddy. Someday, maybe, her own good sense would catch up with the situation and that voice would be her own. For the time being, she was grateful anyone was talking reason in there.

“Mom.”

“Let’s go up to the playground,” she said, and he trotted after her obediently. He was a good kid. She’d done a good job.

There were some other kids climbing on the play structure and she almost told him not to go too high, but then she didn’t. Instead, she turned away so she didn’t have to see him perched up there, above the world, and she thought about things.

Last weekend, Opal had taken Mira out for some retail therapy—shopping for skimpy dresses and lacy underthings—because she had insisted that whether or not Mira was interested in dating again, she had to dress up at least once a week like she was too hot for Jake’s sorry ass. They’d spent hours at the mall, until the pain in Mira’s chest had quieted to a bearable ache and it had seemed possible, maybe, that it wouldn’t always be the loudest thing she felt. Maybe.

Unfortunately, though, whenever Mira looked at the lacy underthings in her lingerie drawer, all she could feel was that deep sadness. Because Jake would have appreciated them so very, very much, right before he ripped them off, got bossy all overherass, and then held her and talked to her for hours. But that was never going to happen.

So someone else—someday, when she was ready—would have to appreciate the new purple demi-bra and practically nonexistent thong.

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