Page 40 of Freedom
Tobias nodded quickly, and then, with a supreme effort, he pulled his head up to look into Jake’s face. He could be brave enough to look at Jake and force his mouth into a smile, even though he didn’t think he’d done a very good job.
The open worry and concern in Jake’s face undid him, and he had to drop his eyes again. He couldn’t see Jake’s face, couldn’t know Jake cared, and still reduce the world to the crystal clear lines of obedience and worthlessness that he needed to survive what was coming. He couldn’t do that to Jake or himself.
“Toby,” Jake said, his voice low and raw in a way Tobias hadn’t heard often. Then he blew out his breath. “You’re gonna be fine. Really. We’ll take it easy tonight, and it’ll... it’ll get better.”
Tobias nodded again because a response was expected, and they turned once more to reenter the hunter’s house.
~*~
When Jake stepped intothe living room after tucking Tobias into the bedroom with a book, Roger held out a glass one-quarter full of whiskey. “So, tell me how this is better.”
Jake sighed explosively, tension draining out of him for the first time since they arrived, and took the glass. “It’s not. It’s not fucking better than anything. God, he hasn’t been like this since—the first week. I don’t know what the hell happened, he was doing so good just the other day, you wouldn’t have fucking recognized him. He was smiling and looking at people, talking to them... and then we get here and... sue me, Roger, I didn’t know being here would mess him up this bad.”
“Really,” Roger said flatly. “You didn’t get the teeniest hint before you rolled in here. ’Cause I seem to remember a certain phone call when you were back in Boulder and skunk-drunk.”
Jake made a wild gesture with his free hand, knuckles of the other hand white around his glass. “That was one time, and I thought we had it handled, and then we’re here and he’s flinching at tables and not looking at anything and I thought he was... How long should I have waited? It seemed like he was ready!”
“Yeah? And now?”
Jake swallowed, and his defiance cracked like a burning ghost. “Are you saying we shouldn’t’ve come?”
“No, no,” Roger said quickly. “I’m glad you did. Always good to see your ugly mug, and... I wanted to see him.”
“It hasn’t been this bad,” Jake said again, looking and sounding younger without the usual easy arrogance in his voice. He started to take another drink and seemed surprised his glass was empty.
“I believe you.” Roger refilled his own glass and Jake’s. “So tell me what it has been like.”
Jake sure as hell hadn’t planned to treat Roger like his own personal shrink, but the last few months rushed out anyway, messy and jumbled, good times and fuckups weaving together into something that came nowhere close to what he and Tobias had together. He certainly didn’t spill everything—just barely caught himself before talking about that first nightmarish night, though Roger no doubt noticed when he abruptly changed directions—but hopefully enough to show him that Tobiashadbeen better. Not healthy by any means, but not this fucking awful flinching and paralyzing terror.
Roger let Jake talk, leaning back in his chair, occasionally moving to refill a glass or nod agreement. He grunted, “Good,” when Jake mentioned how much of a goddamn lifesaver Roger’s book had been but otherwise gave nothing away.
“I mean it, you wouldn’t have recognized him compared to now. And then we were weaving south when you called, and I asked Tobias if he’d mind swinging up to meet you, and he said he wouldn’t.”
Roger snorted. “And that surprised you? How often does he tell you no, moron?”
“All the damn time,” Jake said, ignoring the hot flash of guilt.But mostly when he thinks that’s what I want to hear.
Roger had a way of looking at a man that came nowhere near letting him off the hook. Jake shifted and cleared his throat. “We work a lot on... boundaries.”
Roger’s eyebrows shot up. “That so?”
“Yeah.” Jake waved his hand in a vague gesture. “Making sure he tells me when he doesn’t like something or isn’t ready for it yet.”
“Uh-huh.” Seriously, Roger’s eyes could drill through solid steel. “Not that I ever wanted to chat with you about the birds and bees, but do those boundaries cover what goes on when you share a bed?”
Jake was not drunk enough for this conversation. Or even to pretend it was the alcohol making his face flush. “We got a PG rule. One of the first ones I made.” And he wasn’t going to think about why he’d made it, so he pressed on instead with the goddamn truth. “It’s just, Toby, he’s—he needs me close by. It helps him. And he doesn’t sleep that well, anyway, so it’s better if... I’m there when he wakes up.”
Roger huffed and raised his glass to his lips. “Well, at least I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
Jake focused on emptying his glass in two more swallows, because it wasn’t like he needed reminding that even thinking about kissing a traumatized, underage kid was all kinds of fucked up. He knew, dammit.
“So, you got a lot of rules for him?”
Jake shrugged one shoulder. “Not that many. Just to help us both get by. And I told him, y’know”—he waved his hand—“that nothin’, nothin’ was gonna happen to him if he broke ’em.”
They drank in silence for a minute, the silence stretching out until Jake had no idea what Roger thought of him.
“That’s a start,” Roger said eventually. “But you gotta remember you’re goin’ against a lifetime of him getting beaten within an inch of his life if he so much as blinked wrong.”
