Chapter 17 Ivan
Jay falls asleep before I do.
I can tell by the way his breathing changes, going slow and deep. His hand is still loosely holding mine, his fingers warm against my palm. I don't dare move in case I wake him.
In the dim light, I can barely make out the shape of his face on the pillow next to me—the bruises dark against his pale skin, the cut on his lip still visible, the shadows under his eyes that speak to too many sleepless nights.
He looks exhausted. Not just tired from a long day, but wrung out.
I lie there in the dark, listening to him breathe, and I try to process everything that's happened in the last twelve hours. Yesterday, I went to work like any other day, pulled wire through conduit, installed outlets, had lunch with my crew. It was ordinary. Unremarkable. Just another Friday.
And now I'm here, lying next to the person I'd started to believe I might never find.
I keep waiting to wake up, to discover this is just another dream where I find Jay only to lose him again when my alarm goes off.
But I can feel his hand in mine.
This is real.
I turn my head slightly on the pillow to look at him, careful not to move enough to disturb him.
In sleep, some of the tension has eased from his face.
The lines around his eyes have softened.
His mouth has relaxed. He looks younger, softer.
More like the boy I remember, the one who smiled at me in a dingy bedroom and promised not to hurt me.
He's still incredibly handsome. Even more so.
The thought surfaces, and I don't push it away because what's the point?
It's true. Even with the bruises painting his face in shades of purple and yellow and green, even with the wear that hard years have carved into his features, he's still the most striking person I've ever seen.
He was beautiful when we were teenagers, in the way that some people are beautiful without knowing it. Now he's something else entirely.
I force myself to look away, though I want to stay awake all night staring at him.
The whiskey bottle on the dresser worries me.
I can see it from here, the glass catching what little light there is.
I keep thinking about it, about the way Jay's eyes flicked to it when I asked if he drank a lot.
About the shame that flashed across his face.
He drinks to forget. He drinks to sleep. He drinks because the world hurt him so badly, broke him so thoroughly, that he can't face it sober anymore.
But then I think about Henderson, about the sound of beer cans opening.
I think about the way his mood would shift when he'd had too much.
I think about the fear that lived in my stomach every night, that tight knot of anxiety, waiting to see if this would be a bad night or just a regular one.
Waiting to see if Jay would get hurt trying to protect me.
Jay isn't Henderson.
I know it with every fiber of my being. Jay would never hurt me, would never raise his hand to someone weaker than him. But the drinking scares me anyway. Not because I think he'll become violent—that's not who he is, not in his DNA—but because I can see where this road leads.
He said he would cut back. He said he would stop.
He said he didn't want me to look at him and see Henderson.
The desperation when he said it, the raw fear—like the thought of me being afraid of him was worse than anything else, worse than jail, worse than the beatings, worse than being alone—that's what I hold onto now.
He doesn't want to be this person. He's just been this person for so long he doesn't know how to be anyone else. He doesn't remember what it feels like to be whole.
I can help him. I have to believe that.
It's not comfortable here. The mattress is too soft in some places and too hard in others, springs digging into my back.
The pillow is too flat, offering almost no support.
The sheets are scratchy against my skin, cheap and worn thin from too many washings.
The whole place feels transient, like it was never meant to be anyone's home.
But I don't care. I'm warm and I'm safe and Jay is right here beside me and breathing. After years of not knowing, that's everything.
I should feel strange about this. The thought keeps circling back.
Two grown men sharing a bed in a motel room, holding hands in the dark.
If anyone else saw us, if Rosalyn or Mitchell walked in right now, they'd probably think—well, I don't know what they'd think.
Something. They'd make assumptions. They'd have questions.
But lying here with Jay doesn't feel strange at all. It feels like the most natural thing in the world. Like a piece of me is finally clicking back into place.
When we were kids, I used to crawl into Jay's bed when I was scared. He never complained, never pushed me away. He would just shift over to make room, and I would curl up against his back, and somehow the fear would get smaller. The monsters in my head couldn't reach me when Jay was there.
He was safety. He was home.
I feel the same way now. Like the monsters can't reach me.
Like I'm finally somewhere safe, somewhere I belong.
After years of placements and group homes and finally the Reyes family—who I love, who saved me—I've never felt as safe as I do right here, in this terrible motel room, with Jay beside me.
Hours later, I wake up in the dark, disoriented and confused.
For a moment I don't know where I am. The bed is unfamiliar, too soft and lumpy.
The sounds are wrong—no Rosalyn moving around in the kitchen, no Caleb's cartoons, no familiar creaks of the Reyes house settling.
The smell is different—dust and something male and warm.
Then it comes back to me in a rush that makes my heart stutter—the mug shot, the drive, Jay opening the door, his face when he recognized me, everything that happened after.
I'm still in the motel room.
I'm with Jay.
But something has changed.
We've shifted in our sleep, the way bodies do when they're sharing a small space and unconscious minds seek comfort. We're not lying side by side anymore, careful and separate. Somehow, in the hours since I fell asleep, we've moved closer.
Jay is pressed against my back, his chest warm and solid against my shoulder blades.
His arm is draped across my waist, heavy and secure, his hand resting on my stomach, fingers curled loosely against my shirt.
His breath is warm on the back of my neck, slow and even, still deep asleep.
His legs are tucked behind mine, knees fitting into the curve of my own.
We're pressed together from shoulders to feet, not an inch of space between us.
We're spooning. There's no other word for it, no way to describe it that's less intimate. We're curled together like puzzle pieces, like lovers, like we were made to fit this way.
My heart is pounding. I can feel it hammering against my ribs, can hear the blood rushing in my ears.
I should move. That's my first thought, the instinct that fires before anything else. I should shift away, put some space between us, preserve whatever boundaries exist between two people who grew up as foster brothers.
This is—this is something, isn't it? Something we should probably talk about? Something that crosses a line?
But I don't move.
I lie there in the dark, frozen, feeling the weight of Jay's arm across my waist, feeling the warmth of his body against mine, feeling his breath on my neck with each exhalation, and I don't move.
Because the truth is, I don't want to move.
I don't want to break this, whatever this is.
I don't want to shatter this moment, this feeling of being held, of being wanted, of being home.
I want to stay right here, wrapped up in Jay.
His arm tightens slightly around me, a reflexive movement in sleep, pulling me closer against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat now, steady and strong against my back.
He makes a soft sound in his sleep, something between a sigh and a murmur, and I feel it vibrate through his chest into my back, the sound traveling through both our bodies.
My heart is beating faster than it should be.
There's something happening in my body, some response I'm not prepared for.
A hyperawareness of every single point where his body touches mine—his chest against my back, his arm across my waist, his hand on my stomach, his breath on my neck, his legs tangled with mine.
It's not uncomfortable.
It's not unwelcome.
It's definitely not anything I want to stop.
It's just... there. This feeling. This pull. This awareness of him not as Jay-my-foster-brother, not as Jay-who-protected-me, but as Jay. A man. Someone whose body is pressed against mine in a way that makes my skin feel too tight and my breath come faster.
I think about how he looked earlier, when I first really saw him standing in that doorway.
The dark eyes that went wide with recognition.
I think about how I couldn't stop looking at him, couldn't stop drinking in every detail.
How I still can't, even now, even in the dark when I can't see his face.
I don't know what this means. I don't know if this feeling in my chest is just the overwhelming relief of finding him, or if it's something else. Something more.
We're just two people who are finally together again after thinking we'd lost each other forever.
Of course, it feels intense. Of course, holding each other feels like the most important thing in the world.
That's all this is.
Jay shifts again in his sleep, his face pressing more firmly into the back of my neck, his nose brushing against my hair.
His breath is warm on my skin, sending shivers down my spine.
Fuck, that feels good. His arm pulls me even closer, if that's possible, like he's dreaming that I'm slipping away and he's trying to keep me here.
"I've got you," I whisper so softly.
He doesn't wake, but some of the tension seems to ease from his body. His grip on me loosens just slightly, becomes less desperate and more tender.
I close my eyes. My hand moves, settling over his where it rests on my stomach. His fingers twitch slightly at the contact, then relax, curling around mine even in sleep. Holding on.
I don't know what tomorrow will bring. I don't know how to fix Jay's life, or how to make the drinking stop, or how to undo years of damage and pain. I don't know what we are to each other now.
But I know I'm not letting go. I'm staying right here, in this lumpy bed in this sad motel room, with Jay's arm around me and his breath on my neck and his heartbeat steady against my back.
I'm staying because this is where I belong.