29. Jack
Jack
I’ve been back from Nanaimo now for a full two months. My physical body is slowly, stubbornly healing, the daily medical reports are clean, the ribs are knitting back together, and the doctors are cautiously pleased with how I’m recovering.
Unfortunately, my mind is still completely fucked.
When we had first arrived home, stepping through the front doors of Silas’s house, it felt like learning how to breathe underwater.
Everything is too big, too loud, too claustrophobic.
Every floorboard that creaks underfoot instantly sounds like heavy boots coming down those basement stairs in Seattle.
Every shadow in the hallway tricks my eyes, dragging me backward into the dark.
Because of it, I track Silas’s movements with a frantic, desperate obsession. I find my fingers constantly curling into the heavy fabric of his shirt, clutching at him, refusing to let him go for even a second.
I can’t let him out of my sight. If I turn around in the kitchen or the living room and he isn’t right there, my brain panics, heading straight back to the cage.
Silas feels the razor-thin tension humming under my skin. He never pulls away, or gets frustrated. He just stops whatever he’s doing, wraps his massive arms tight around my waist, and holds me through the shakes until the ghosts finally retreat.
As I lay next to Silas on the couch, my head in his lap I watch him doom scroll on his phone, and I’m about to give him shit for it, when a sharp knock echoes against the front door.
My whole body violently flinches, a sudden jolt of ice flooding my veins, but Silas quickly places a hand on my head, “It’s okay, baby,” he murmurs, showing me his phone.
I glance at the screen, seeing the live feed from the door camera: a woman standing on the porch holding a thick manila folder. I recognise her instantly, a social worker from the local family services division, and I’m guessing she’s here to talk about Hale.
He quickly presses a kiss to my knuckles, “Hop up.”
I move, sitting up and I watch as Silas lets her in, while I sit rigid on the couch, only half-listening as she explains the situation.
Social Services have spent months searching for any extended family of Hale’s, but have come up completely empty. He is officially classified as a minor without immediate family custody.
She speaks carefully, measuring every word, clearly trying to soften the blow.
“I would like to suggest that Hale be placed into the local foster system while things get sorted out,” she says smoothly.
Her eyes flick nervously toward me, and I know in that exact second that she knows what happened to me. She knows I am broken goods, a liability, someone who can’t possibly look after a child.
Panic claws at my throat, and I start to stand, ready to fight tooth and nail, to scream that Hale isn’t going anywhere, that he’s ours. But before my words can even form in my mouth, Silas moves.
He steps closer to her, using his height and his sheer, terrifying aura of authority to back her into a corner.
“No,” Silas says. His voice is flat, absolute, and carries a quiet, lethal weight that leaves zero room for debate. He looks the social worker dead in the eye. “He doesn’t go anywhere. He stays here. We’re keeping him.”
“Mr. Thorne, legally, emergency placement requires…” she starts, her professional facade cracking.
“Start the paperwork,” Silas interrupts, his hand sliding into his pocket before resting a heavy, protective, and grounding arm over my shoulder once he walks back to my side.
“We aren’t fostering him. I’m starting adoption proceedings first thing tomorrow morning, and he stays with us.
He’s ours, and he isn’t going anywhere.”
I watch him as he doesn’t speak further, just stands there watching her, daring her to defy him.
She’s clearly smart enough to recognize a dangerous man when she sees one because she doesn’t push it. She backs down, packing up her paperwork and leaving a few minutes later, having already agreed to meet with Silas the next day to start the process.
Later that evening, the house is quiet again.
Hale is upstairs in his room, finally sleeping, though I know why he’s quiet.
He had overheard the social worker earlier, terrified that he was going to be ripped away from us and thrown into the system, and he had stayed locked in his room all day.
In the end, Silas had gone up to talk to him, promising him he wasn’t going anywhere.
And me? I may have hovered out in the dark hallway, standing outside his slightly ajar bedroom door, unable to stop myself from listening.
“But she said she was taking me, Si,” Hale’s small, trembling voice drifts out into the quiet of the house. “I don’t want to go. Please let me stay.”
“Buddy, you aren’t going anywhere,” Silas replies, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard it. Then, a pause. “But… I want to ask you something. It’s important.”
“Okay,” Hale whispers, tiny and still holding his breath.
“I was wondering…” I smile in the dark as I hear Silas clear his throat, because it would seem that even a lethal former Special Op’s, tech guru can get nervous. “Um, how would you feel if I started the paperwork on your adoption? Um… with me. So I can, you know, be your dad.”
“Really?”
I feel hot tears prick my eyes at Hale’s voice, so small and overflowing with raw emotion.
“Yeah, buddy. Really. I love you, Hale. And I really want to be your dad. If that’s okay with you.”
My heart leaps into my throat at Hale’s next words.
“But what about Jack? Can he be my dad too?”
I lean further against the doorframe, holding my breath, desperate to hear Silas’s answer.
“One day, buddy. One day.”
“Then yeah. That would be pretty cool. Si. Can I call you dad?”
“You sure can, buddy.”
I stepped away from the door after that, leaving them to their quiet, little miracle.
They spent the next hour talking, and as I walked back down the stairs to wait for Silas, I know the last remaining pieces of my fractured heart is finally clicking back into place.
* * *
Silas and I are sitting side by side on the edge of the bed, the quiet of the evening wrapping around us like a blanket.
The heavy gold ring catches the amber glow of the bedside lamp as Silas reaches out, his large, calloused thumb gently brushing a stray lock of hair from my forehead.
My eyes drop to his hand, catching the flash of polished metal resting against his pinkie finger.
My breath stutters in my throat. It’s my ring, the one I had slipped off and left behind on my bedside table the night I left, terrified of dragging him into my nightmare. He’s kept it with him the entire time.
I run my fingers over it, “It was my mother’s. She gave it to me before she died.”
Silas leans closer, pressing his forehead against mine. “You did say it was hers. Why did she give it to you?”
Silas’s arm tightens around me, pulling me flush against his chest where his heart beats a steady, frantic rhythm just for me.
“She told me to save it,” I murmur, “She told… She told me to give it to the man I love. Because when I find him, I need to hold onto him so tightly that the rest of the world stops existing.”
Tears well up in my eyes, hot and clean, washing away the last of the dirt and blood from Seattle.
“I found you, Sol,” I whisper, looking up into his dark, unwavering eyes.
Silas looks down at his hand, a soft, heavy shadow crossing his dark eyes before he curls his fingers around mine, trapping my hand against his palm.
“You found me, dove,” Silas murmurs, his voice dropping low that vibrates right through my chest. “Even when you tried to protect me by running, that ring stayed with me. It was the only piece of you I had left to hold onto while I tore everything apart looking for you.”
Tears well up in my eyes, hot and clean, washing away the last ghosts of the dirt and blood from Seattle.
“You found me,” I whisper, looking up into his unwavering, possessive eyes. “You found me when I was already dead and buried.”
“I would burn the entire world to ash and dig through every dark corner on this earth before I ever let you slip away again, Jack,” Silas replies, his voice breaking with a raw, desperate intensity that makes my soul ache.
“You are my entire existence. Every line of code I write, every breath I take… it belongs to you. You are my home.”
“I’m yours,” I whisper against his lips, capturing them in a kiss that tastes like salvation, like light, like forever. “Always yours, Sol.”
* * *
The next weekend, I’m surrounded by the smell of woodsmoke and charred grill as it drifts across the back deck, hanging thick and heavy in the warm afternoon air.
I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders, leaning on my knees as I sit on the edge of the steps.
Out on the lawn, I watch as Eli cooks at the BBQ, CJ standing next to him, supervising.
Eli flicks his wrist at CJ, and I laugh quietly as CJ frowns, and listen as he insists that meat patties are supposed to be charcoal, and not the raw and still running around the paddock that Eli is cooking.
All the while, Finn and Deck argue loudly over whether a steak is medium rare or thoroughly ruined.
This is my family. My brothers.
I hear Hale’s laugh, as it rings out clear and bright as he moves around Mack, a hockey stick loose in his hands as he flicks a ball toward the goal.
“Yeah, fucker!”
We’ve tried to curb Hale’s language, but given he’s already lived a lifetime, we’ve pretty much given up. And seeing as he hangs out with ice hockey players, former soldiers and Finn, Eli and myself, he really doesn’t stand a chance.
So, I sit and watch as my ten-year-old boy celebrate, running around with his hands in the air after firing a goal past Callan, his small body practically vibrating with triumph.
Ice Hockey is Hale’s religion.