Chapter 15 Ivan
Jay is holding onto me like I'm the only thing keeping him from drowning, like I'm a lifeline thrown to someone who's been going under for years.
We're still in the doorway and he's sobbing against my shoulder, these raw, broken sounds that tear something open in my chest. They don't seem like they could come from the boy I remember, the one who never showed weakness, who taught me that crying makes things worse.
But the man in my arms is shaking so hard I can barely hold him up, his entire body wracked with the force of his emotions, and his fingers are digging into my back like he's afraid I'll disappear if he loosens his grip for even a second.
I walk him backward into the room slowly, supporting most of his weight, kicking the door shut behind us with my foot. I don't look around, don't take in the details of where he's been living, what his life has become.
All I can see is him.
All I can feel is him.
His weight against me, solid and real. His hands are clutching my jacket so tight I can feel the fabric straining. His tears soaking through my shirt to the skin beneath, warm and wet and proof that he's here, that this is real, that I actually found him.
His knees buckle suddenly, his legs giving out beneath him.
I go down with him, both of us sinking to the floor in a tangle of limbs, and I don't try to stop our fall.
I just make sure I cushion him as we go down, make sure he doesn't hurt himself.
The carpet is thin and rough beneath us, scratchy against my jeans, but I don't care.
I pull him closer, shift him so he's practically in my lap, wrap myself around him completely, hold him the way he used to hold me in the barn when things got bad and the world was too much to bear.
His face is pressed into my neck now and I can feel his whole body heaving with sobs, the grief pouring out of him like a dam that's finally broken after holding back an ocean.
His breath is hot against my skin, ragged and uneven, punctuated by these broken sounds that might be words but I can't make them out.
"I've got you," I murmur into his hair. "I've got you, Jay. You're not alone anymore. I'm here now."
"Ivan," he chokes out between gasping breaths. "Ivan Allen Collins."
My heart clenches painfully in my chest. He's reciting my information back to me. Through everything, through all the years and all the pain and all the reasons to forget, he remembers too.
"September twenty-third," he says. "Born in Atlanta. Birthmark on the right shoulder blade. Shaped like a—like a—" His voice fails him completely and he's just sobbing again, unable to finish.
"Kidney bean blob," I whisper, finishing for him, and something between a laugh and a sob escapes him, this sound that's so broken and beautiful it destroys me.
"Kidney bean blob," he repeats, and the words come out mangled by tears but I hear them, I hear the smile even through the crying.
He pulls back just enough to look at my face, and his eyes are red and swollen and streaming with tears.
His face is a mess of bruises and blood and pain, and he's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. The most precious.
"Your safe place was the barn. With me. That's what you said. Your safe place was wherever I was."
"That's right," I tell him.
He crumbles again, pressing his face back into my shoulder, and I hold him while he cries. I hold him the way he held me a hundred times when we were kids, in that dingy bedroom with the yellow walls and that cold barn with its dusty hay, after Henderson's belt left marks on my skin.
I hold him and I let myself cry too, because I've been holding this in for years—this grief, this longing, this desperate hope—and I can't anymore. I don't want to hold it back anymore.
We stay like that for a long time. I don't know how long.
Time has stopped meaning anything. The light outside the window fades from gray to purple to black, the sun setting on the most important day of my life, and still we sit on the floor of his motel room, tangled together, crying until there's nothing left inside either of us but the truth.
We found each other.
We did it.
We're finally together again.
When Jay finally goes quiet, when the sobs taper off into ragged breathing, he doesn't let go.
He keeps his face pressed against my neck, his breathing still uneven, his hands still fisted in my jacket.
I can feel his heartbeat against my chest, fast and desperate at first, then slowly, gradually, beginning to calm.
I look around the room for the first time.
It's small. Smaller than my bedroom at the Reyes house.
There's a bed with a sagging mattress and tangled sheets that look like they haven't been washed in weeks.
A dresser with a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey on top.
A bathroom door that doesn't close all the way, hanging crooked on its hinges.
This is what his life has become.
I think about the mug shot I stared at for twenty minutes, the emptiness in his eyes.
I think about the bar fight, the arrest, the charges.
I think about the bruises still fading on his face, the way he moved when we went down to the floor—carefully, like his ribs hurt.
I think about all the years I spent imagining what Jay's life might look like, hoping desperately that he was okay, that he had found something good, that he was happy somewhere even if I couldn't find him.
He didn't find something good. He found this. A motel room that rents by the week and a bottle of whiskey.
I came here not knowing what I would find, half expecting the Jay I remembered—strong, capable, protective, the one who always knew what to do and how to fix things.
I thought I would be the one who needed him, the way I needed him when I was twelve years old and terrified of everything.
I thought he would take one look at me and know how to make everything better, the way he always did.
But that's not what's happening here. That's not what he needs from me.
Jay taught me how to survive. He taught me the rules, the tricks, the ways to stay invisible and stay safe.
He taught me how to take a beating without crying, how to read a room for danger, how to keep going when everything inside me wanted to stop.
He taught me how to eat fast and sleep light and never trust anyone completely.
He gave me everything he had, every tool and every strategy, and then the world ripped us apart and I used those tools to build a life.
And while I was building, he was breaking.
While I was learning a trade and making a future, he was falling apart. While I was letting the Reyes family teach me what love looks like and what home means, he was living in a motel room and drinking himself numb and fighting strangers in bars.
I look down at him, this man who saved me when I was a child.
His face is pressed against my chest now, his breathing finally starting to slow and even out.
I can see the bruises on his cheekbone, dark purple fading to yellow-green.
The scab on his lip where it split open.
The dark circles under his eyes that speak to sleepless nights and too much whiskey and not enough food.
He looks older than twenty-one. He looks worn down to the bone, like something that's been used up and discarded.
I'm the stronger one now.
The realization settles into me, not with pride but with purpose, with a kind of fierce determination that makes my arms tighten around him.
He spent so much energy protecting me, saving me, teaching me, that he had nothing left to protect himself with.
He gave me everything and kept nothing for himself.
It's my turn now. My turn to protect. My turn to save.
I tighten my arms around him and press my lips to the top of his head. His hair is longer than he used to wear it, a little greasy, like he hasn't washed it in a few days. I don't care. I press my lips to his hair and I make a promise, silent and sacred.
I will not let you fall any further. I will not let you drown. I will pull you out of this darkness even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming.
He makes a small sound against my chest, something like a whimper. He burrows closer, trying to get smaller, trying to disappear into me.
"I've got you," I whisper into his hair again, because I need him to hear it, need him to believe it. "I've got you, Jay. I'm not going anywhere. I'm never leaving you again."
He doesn't answer, but his hands loosen their grip on my jacket just a little, just enough to tell me he's starting to believe it. Just enough to tell me he's starting to let himself trust that I'm real, that this isn't a dream or a hallucination brought on by too much whiskey and too little sleep.
I think about everything I want to say to him.
That I never stopped looking, never stopped hoping.
That I searched for him every month. That I have his note laminated in my wallet, the words so familiar I could recite them in any state of consciousness.
That I built my whole life around the hope of finding him again, that every decision I made was influenced by the thought of what I would do when I finally found him.
But there will be time for that later. There will be time for all of it—the stories, the explanations, the filling in of years of blank space.
Right now, all that matters is this. The two of us on the floor of a motel room, holding onto each other like we're the only solid things in a world made of uncertainty.
I'm not the scared kid he saved anymore. I'm a man now, with a job that pays well and a family that loves me and a life I built from nothing but determination and the tools he gave me. I have resources. I have stability. I have a home with people in it who would help if I asked them to.
And I'm going to use everything I have to save him back.
I don't know what comes next. I don't know how to fix whatever's broken inside him, or how to undo years of damage. But I know one thing with absolute certainty, a truth that settles into my bones like it was always meant to be there, like it's been waiting for me to find it.
No matter what, I will never stop fighting for him.