Chapter 18 Jay
I wake up slowly, drifting up from a sleep deeper than any I've had in years without nightmares. Just warmth and the feeling of being safe. It takes me a moment to understand why. To remember where I am. To piece together reality from the fog of sleep.
Ivan is in my arms.
The realization shocks me all over again.
Sometime in the night, we shifted. I'm curled around him from behind, my chest pressed against his back, my arm wrapped tight across his waist. My face is pressed into his hair, and I can smell him.
My hand is resting on his stomach, and his hand is covering mine, our fingers loosely intertwined like they belong there.
My whole body goes absolutely still. I don't move, I don't breathe. I just lie there taking it in.
This is definitely something. This is everything in my life I've been afraid to want.
I should pull away before he wakes up, before he realizes that this is weird. That there's something not quite right about how much I want to keep holding him.
If he woke up and realized that I was holding him like this, what would he think? Would he be disgusted? Would he pull away? Would he look at me differently, see me as something other than the boy who protected him?
I can't make myself let go. Because this is Ivan, and he's here. Now he's in my arms and it feels like everything I've ever wanted, and I'm terrified that any movement will shatter it, will break the spell.
He's still asleep, his body relaxed and trusting in my arms. I let myself look at him, in a way I couldn't last night when he was awake and watching me with those pale blue eyes that see too much.
He's beautiful.
The word keeps coming back, no matter how many times I try to push it away, no matter how inappropriate it is.
He's grown into this man I barely recognize—tall and solid and strong, with broad shoulders that fill out my t-shirt, with arms that are corded with muscle from working with his hands.
His light brown hair is messy from sleep, sticking up in places, falling across his forehead in others.
His lips are slightly parted, soft and pink and so close I could—
No. I can't think like that.
But I can't look away either.
There's a faint scar near his eyebrow that I don't remember, a thin white line cutting through the skin. I wonder what happened, what hurt him while I wasn't there to protect him. I wonder how many scars he has that I don't know about, how many times he got hurt without me there to shield him.
I failed him. The thought is like a knife to the gut. I promised to find him and I didn't. I promised to protect him and I couldn't.
Yet, here he is now and he's in my bed, in my arms, wearing my clothes, trusting me enough to sleep beside me.
I don't deserve him. I never did.
I close my eyes against the wave of want that crashes through me, sharp and painful and impossible to ignore.
This isn't right. This isn't what he came here for.
He came to find his foster brother, the boy who protected him when they were kids.
He came looking for family, for connection, for the person who made him feel safe when the world was cruel.
He didn't come here for—whatever I'm feeling. This ache in my chest that's half longing and half terror. This need that goes deeper than wanting to protect him, deeper than brotherly love, deeper than anything I have words for.
I want him in every way.
Fuck.
Slowly, carefully, I ease my arm from around his waist. Every instinct in my body is screaming at me to stay, to hold on, to keep him close. But I can't. This isn't fair to him. He doesn't need to wake up and find me wrapped around him like some kind of weird creep who can't control himself.
Ivan makes a soft sound of protest, a small noise in the back of his throat, but doesn't wake.
He just shifts slightly, rolling onto his stomach, settling back into sleep.
He's taken over the whole bed now, sprawled across it with his face pressed into the pillow.
My pillow. The one I was sleeping on. I can see the indent where my head was, and now his face is there, breathing in whatever scent of me might linger on the fabric.
I tear my gaze away before I do something stupid. Before I climb back into that bed and pull him close again. Before I let myself have things I have no right to want.
I walk to the bathroom on unsteady legs, closing the door behind me with a soft click.
The face in the mirror is a mess. The cut on my lip is healing but still visible, a dark line across my mouth.
My eyes are shadowed, hollow, surrounded by dark circles that speak to years of bad sleep and worse choices.
I still look like someone who lost a fight. I look tired. I look like exactly what I am—a twenty-one-year-old man who's been living like a kicked dog, just trying to survive from one day to the next, one bottle to the next, one fight to the next.
I think about Ivan. His job with the company. His family—the Reyes, with their Sunday dinners and birthday parties.
He built a life. A real life, with a future and people who care about him and a place where he belongs. He has a bedroom in a house, not a room in a motel. He has a family that kept him even after he aged out. He has everything and I'm so fucking grateful he does.
And what do I have to offer him? A motel room that I rent by the week because I can't afford a deposit on an apartment.
A motorcycle that I rebuilt from scrap because I couldn't afford anything better.
A job I could lose any day if Mick decides I'm more trouble than I'm worth, if my drinking gets worse, if I get arrested again and he doesn't bail me out next time.
A bottle of whiskey on the dresser and a body that can't sleep without pills.
Shame washes over me, hot and choking, making my throat tight and my eyes burn. This is what Ivan found when he came looking for me. A man who's so broken he doesn't remember what it feels like to be whole.
He should go back to his life. Today. Before it's too late.
The thought is like poison, bitter and choking.
Back to the Reyes family and his career and the future he built without me.
He should leave me here in this motel room and forget he ever found me, because I'm only going to drag him down.
That's what people like me do. We drag down everyone who gets close to us. We're anchors, not lifelines.
But even as I think it, I know I can't say it. I know I'm too selfish, too hungry for the feeling of not being alone. I want him to stay longer. I want it so badly it scares me. I want to be better for him.
I leave the bathroom and walk to the dresser. The whiskey bottle is sitting there. Cheap whiskey in a cheap bottle for a cheap life. I stare at it for a long moment, this thing that's been my companion for years.
Ivan's face last night flashes through my mind. When I told him about the drinking. The way his hand tightened on mine, like he was afraid I was slipping away even while I was sitting right next to him.
He was thinking about Henderson. I know he was. How could he not? He was looking at me and seeing the beginning of the same path.
I'm not Henderson. I would never hurt Ivan.
I would cut off my own arm before I raised it against him.
But the drinking—the goddamn drinking is a problem.
I've known it for years, in that distant way you know things you don't want to face.
But seeing it through Ivan's eyes last night made it impossible to ignore.
I can't let him be afraid of me. I'd rather die.
I pick up the bottle. The whiskey sloshes inside, amber and familiar, the sound as known to me as my own heartbeat.
How many nights has this bottle—or one just like it—been the only thing standing between me and the nightmares?
How many times have I reached for it in the dark, desperate and shaking, needing the numbness it brings?
I walk to the bathroom with the bottle in my hand. I stand over the sink, my reflection staring back at me—bruised and hollow-eyed and pathetic. I unscrew the cap, the familiar motion automatic.
My hands are shaking. It's just whiskey. It's just a bottle. But it feels like letting go of the only thing that's kept me sane—or maybe the only thing that's kept me from having to face how insane I've become.
I pour it out. I watch it swirl down the drain, the smell of it sharp and familiar and almost comforting.
I pour until the bottle is empty, until there's nothing left but the smell lingering in the air.
Then I drop the empty bottle in the trash can beside the toilet and stand there, gripping the edge of the sink so hard my knuckles go white.
That was probably stupid. The nightmares will come back worse than ever. The shaking will start, the sweating, the inability to sleep. Without the whiskey, I'll be unable to hide from all the things I've been running from for years.
I'll have to feel everything. Everything I've been drowning for years will come flooding back.
But Ivan is here. And I would rather face every nightmare in the world, than see that look of fear in his eyes again.
I leave the bathroom. Ivan is still asleep, one arm flung over the side of the bed now, his hand dangling toward the floor. His face is peaceful. Like he's not worried about anything.
I sit down in the one chair by the window, the one I've spent countless sleepless nights sitting in, staring out at the parking lot and wondering if this is all my life will ever be. And I watch him sleep.
What the fuck am I supposed to do now?
He'll wake up soon. He'll need breakfast, coffee, maybe a shower.
He'll want to talk about what happens next, about how we stay in contact, about whether this is a one-time visit or the beginning of something more.
About whether he goes back to his life and I stay here in mine, and we try to bridge the gap with phone calls and occasional visits.
And I don't know what to tell him. I don't know how to ask him to stay when I have nothing to offer. I don't know how to let him go when losing him again might actually kill me. I don't know how to be what he needs when I can barely take care of myself.
I don't know how to tell him the truth—that waking up with him in my arms was like coming back to life after being dead. That I don't want to be his foster brother. That I want—
I shut that thought down hard, slamming the door on it before it can fully form.
I can't go there. Ivan grew up thinking of me as the person who kept him safe.
He didn't come here looking for anything else.
And if I told him the truth, if I let him see what I really feel, how much I want him in ways I have no right to—it might ruin everything.
It would ruin everything and drive him away for good.
It might make him look at me with disgust or pity or worst of all, that careful distance people use when they're trying to let you down gently.
I can't risk that. I've already lost him once. I won't survive losing him again.
So, I sit in the chair and I watch him sleep, and I try to figure out how to be whatever he needs me to be. A friend. A brother. A reminder of the past.
Anything.
I'll be anything, play any role, become any person, as long as he doesn't leave my life again.
Ivan stirs, shifts, makes a soft sound. I watch him swim up from sleep, watch his eyes flutter open, watch him frown in confusion as he tries to remember where he is.
Then he sees me and he smiles.
"Hey," he says. "How long have you been awake?"
"A while. Didn't want to wake you. You needed the sleep."
"You should have." He stretches, arms over his head, and the shirt—my shirt—rides up, exposing a strip of stomach. Tan skin, a line of muscle, the suggestion of more beneath. I look away quickly, before I can see more. Fuck. "I would have gotten up. We could have talked or something."
"You needed the sleep. You had a long day yesterday."
Ivan sits up, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, his hair sticking up in every direction. "How did you sleep? Any nightmares?"
"No. I slept really well. Best sleep I've had in years."
Ivan's smile widens. "Good. That's really good, Jay."
I don't tell him that he's the reason. I don't tell him that having him next to me was the only thing that kept the dreams away, that his presence was like a shield against the darkness. I don't tell him that waking up with him in my arms was the best moment of my entire miserable life.
I just nod and say, "Yeah. It is."
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up, stretching again, rolling his shoulders.
My clothes are rumpled on him, the sweatpants sitting low on his hips in a way that makes my mouth go dry.
The t-shirt is tight across his shoulders, pulling at the seams. He looks comfortable.
He looks like he belongs here, like this is his space too.
But he doesn't.
He belongs somewhere better than this shithole. Somewhere with clean sheets and walls that aren't stained.
But God help me, I want him to stay with an intensity that frightens me.
"So," Ivan says, looking at me with those clear blue eyes that see too much. "What happens now?"
He's looking at me for answers I don't have. I don't have a plan. I don't have anything except this aching need for him to not walk out that door.
"I don't know what happens now," I admit.
"Well," Ivan says. "I guess we'll figure it out." Then he smiles at me again and goes into the bathroom.
I blow out a breath.
He's not leaving.
Not yet.