Page 36 of Freedom
Chapter Seven
They were at an icecream shop just south of Conway, Arkansas—Jake insisted they share a banana split and a hot fudge sundae, even though it was Wednesday—when his phone buzzed. Jake twitched and jerked the device out of his pocket, but whatever he saw on the screen relaxed him. The smile that instantly suffused his face as he raised the phone to his ear reminded Tobias of how Jake had looked earlier when Tobias had said he preferred the hot fudge to the banana split.
His gut twisted in a funny, unfamiliar way. He loved when something he did made Jake that happy, and he didn’t often see anything else draw out that same reaction, so it was strange to watch his face light up over the phone. But that was good, he told himself. Tobias shouldn’t be the only one Jake had to make him happy.
“Hey, Rog,” Jake said cheerfully, and for once he didn’t step away or look nervously at Tobias while saying the hunter’s name. “What’s up? Yeah, we’re just outside Little Rock. Yeah, real good. We checked out the local toad races, you wouldn’t believe the things they do for fun out here... yeah.”
There it was, the furtive glance that made Tobias’s stomach clench. The only time Jake made him feel even a little like a monster was when Tobias knew the wariness in his eyes was about him. “Yeah, let me just check with him. We’re about a couple days out... Hey! I drive the limit! Okay, yeah, I’ll call again when we’ve got an ETA. You too.” Jake flipped the phone shut, set it down next to his ice cream, and took a deep breath. He’d picked up his spoon idly during the phone call, swirling it absently in his half-melted mix of banana and vanilla. “Hey, Toby, what do you think about swinging by Roger’s?”
Tobias clenched down on the instinctive terror. Lessons from Freak Camp suggested that if Jake brought him to a hunter’s home, Tobias would be interrogated, pushed to his knees, passed around. He didn’t believe that. Indeed, he believed now that Jake would hurt anyone who threatened him. Whether that was because Jake thought of Tobias as his, and his alone—that would be nice, and some days Tobias was sure it was true, that he was Jake’s and Jake would never leave him behind, would never stop treating him like a real—or just because Jake hated that behavior in hunters and monsters alike, Tobias didn’t know.
So Tobias wanted to believe that Roger wouldn’t hurt him (at least while Jake was around), and Jake never left Tobias alone unless he could handle it. When he went out at night to a bar, he always asked if he could leave, if Tobias would be okay, and if one time Tobias said that maybe it would be good for Jake to stay, he was sure that Jake would indulge him. And as long as Jake was there, he could be brave.
But more important than Tobias’s abilities or lack thereof was the fact that Jake wanted this. Knowing that let Tobias smile as he looked into Jake’s eyes, and say honestly that sure, they could go visit.
Jake’s gray eyes crinkled in warm pride and pleasure, and he hugged Toby close.
The farther they drove west on I-40, the more Jake talked about Hunter Harper. It wasn’t that he talked about him constantly or made a particular point of dropping the name, but more of his stories began with “so Roger called us about this job” or ended with “Roger called me a damn moron, but that just means he’s glad I didn’t get eaten.”
Tobias didn’t have a lot of experience figuring out who was important to Jake, but he used to talk about his father the way he’d been talking about Roger. “It’ll be great,” Jake said, grinning. “I mean, I haven’t seen him in months, and you know, he’s not real chatty on the phone.”
Jake’s smile and body language said that the visit would be no problem, but something running under the words, a forceful overconfidence or the sharp edge of tension, made Tobias think it wouldn’t be that simple. No, Tobias thought this would be hard, the way going to a mall, even on a weekday, was still hard. The thought made Tobias’s hands tighten on his thighs, almost enough to bruise for just a second before he forced himself to let go. He had to remember that Jake would be with him, and that Jake knew it would be hard but was still confident they could work through it.
~*~
In Albuquerque, Jakestopped to fill the tank though they were just below the halfway mark on the gas gauge.
“Gotta run to the john. You wanna fill her up, Toby?”
Jake had shown Tobias how to pump gas the other week, and Tobias had done it once or twice on his own since—it wasn’t the first time Jake had seen how the kid was scarily good at learning and memorizing directions, some kind of genius, maybe—but he still hesitated before giving a short nod, his jaw taut. As the miles sped away under them, drawing them closer to the New Mexico border, he had grown quieter and quieter, hunching his shoulders in a way Jake hadn’t seen in weeks.
Foreboding prickled over the back of Jake’s neck, and he tried to drive it away by telling stories of all the times he’d been to Roger’s over the years, recovering from hunts and practicing with a crossbow while Dad was gone. Tobias listened—of course he did—but he didn’t smile like he usually did during Jake’s stories, and Jake often got that familiar twist of misgiving that his words were going to fuck them up in new and interesting ways.
As the first sign for Truth or Consequences appeared, Jake started drumming his fingers against the steering wheel as second thoughts itched their way under his skin. Maybe this wasn’t the ace idea he’d thought. Maybe Tobias wasn’t ready to meet Roger yet. Stupid worry. Roger wouldn’t lay so much as a finger on Tobias; he’d cosigned the fucking release papers, after all. And if Tobias was going to meet anyone who knew where he’d been, Roger was the best bet. Jake would trust him with his life and his Eldorado, and he could damn well trust him with Tobias. Just because they were both getting a case of nerves didn’t mean the whole thing would go up in flames.
Still, it didn’t hurt to do a little prep work. Which was why he was making a call where Tobias couldn’t hear during their not-exactly-necessary pit stop.
“Hey, Rog.”
“Kid. Don’t tell me you got took a wrong turn and decided to swing by that Georgia O’Keefe museum in Santa Fe.”
“Nah, nah, we’re on track. Get there before three, I’d say.” He ducked around the aisle to check on Tobias, the impulse as habitual as checking for his gun before a job. Tobias looked very thin and alone, standing by the trunk of the Eldorado with his head tilted down. Watching the pump, of course. “Hey, I have a favor to ask.”
“Yeah?” Roger said guardedly.
“If you could just...” Jake hesitated, grappling with what he was coming to understand but could barely fumble into words. “Take it easy,” he said at last. “Don’t—don’t crowd him or anything. It’s all new to him, y’know?”
Roger’s silence made Jake very aware of the whir of the slushie machine. Finally, he said, “Yeah. I hear ya.”
