A hand settled very, very lightly on his upper back and then rubbed softly, gently. It was soothing, and he knew immediately that it was Jake.
“Rye, is this okay?” Jake asked quietly.
Yes.It was. Somehow. Although if it had been anyone else...
Rye nodded, but kept his head tucked down against his knees.
“Great, okay. You’re okay,” Jake murmured. “Rachel, we should call . . . your dad? And . . .”
“Yeah, yeah. This is amazing. This is... Christ, I need to call Shirley.”
“Shirley . . . ? Shirley at the general store? That’s his . . . Oh—”
That’s her name. My mom. My mom is Shirley.God, how he wanted to say the words. But they wouldn’t come, and with a painful burst of shame, he realized he’d almost forgotten. He’d almost forgotten her name. How could he have done that? Or maybe it had been so long she’d have forgotten his name too.
He sucked in a breath, fighting against nausea. Jake’s hand rubbed his back again.
“Shh, Rye, it’s okay now,” Jake said softly. And oh, how Rye wanted to believe him. He wanted it more than anything. “You’re safe, and we’re gonna get you home, okay?”
Nodding again, Rye tightened his arms around his legs and pressed his forehead down against his knees.
A chair scraped across the floor on the other side of the desk. “Jake, I’m gonna go into my office and make some phone calls, okay?”
“Yeah, we’ll stay here. And actually, can I use your phone? I was supposed to be meeting Sue”—Jake paused and let out a short huff of what might have been a laugh—“about now actually. I just need to tell her I can’t make it.”
Rye scrunched his eyes closed tighter as the conversation continued around him for another few seconds. Then Rachel left the room, and he heard a door close to his left. Jake moved away from him briefly, and there was some rustling. Another chair scraped the ground, moving toward him. And he flinched and shuddered, and he held his breath again, waiting for whatever was going to happen. But all he heard was a quiet grunt and then Jake exhaling with a long shudder of his own.
Everything began to blur together then—Jake’s voice as he spoke on the phone, Rachel’s voice as she returned to the main room, the low hum coming from somewhere else. Another man arrived—someone they called Wayne—and he was loud and scary, but Jake was there the whole time, talking to Rye softly, reassuring him that he was safe.
And then Jake rubbed his back again and told him Rachel and Sue were going to find his mom. They knew where she was and wanted to tell her in person, and it shouldn’t be too much longer.
And Rye couldn’t breathe again. For a few very long seconds, he was stuck, his chest weighed down and his stomach coiled. It hurt. It hurt, and he was scared. And when he finally sucked in a breath, he started crying.
He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to cry, and that awful voice of that awful man screamed at him in his head about how he was a stupid child and to stop with the fucking tears already.
But he couldn’t stop himself.
This was all he’d ever wanted. For fifteen years, it was all he’d ever wanted. His mom. His mom to come and take him home. His mom to hug him, to tell him she loved him and she missed him.
Her face flashed in his mind—her eyes bright and smiling at him and her voice sing-songing his name.“Ryan Henry, I love you, you silly goose.”The image was then ripped away with a flurry of cold darkness filled with hate, doubt, angry words so freezing that they burned.
Would she even want him back? Would she still love him? Would she—
Jake’s soft voice cut through the darkness and the questions and the doubt as a large hand settled on his back, pressing into him lightly. “They’re on their way, Rye. Five minutes at most. Five minutes. Okay?”
Hereallyhadnoconcept of time. He hadn’t for years now. And yet, the next five minutes had to have been the longest five minutes of his life.
He sat in the hard, cold chair, focusing with everything he had on Jake’s hand on his back, because that kept his thoughts from drifting back to that dark place where his mom didn’t love him anymore and the home he remembered and wanted so much didn’t exist.
Jake spoke quietly, sometimes to him and sometimes to the other man in the room—Wayne—who’d been in and out of the other back office, talking loudly on the phone or asking Rye questions that Jake answered for him.
At what must have been the end of those long, long five minutes, Wayne came out of his office again, and Jake’s hand paused where it had been rubbing Rye’s back.
“They just pulled up.” Wayne’s footsteps were heavy as he made his way across the room. Rye’s stomach twisted into all sorts of knots. “Well, I’ll be damned, this is really happening. I never thought I’d see this day come, I tell you, Jake. And Shirley... Christ, Rachel’s having to hold her up, looks like.”
The nausea returned, even stronger now, along with the sound of his heart pounding, and Rye couldn’t breathe again, the weight on his chest too heavy. He pulled his knees in tighter against him as Jake’s hand left his back only to return a few seconds later from his other side.
“Hey, Rye, they’re here,” Jake murmured, his voice closer to Rye’s ear now and so gentle and kind. Rye scrunched his eyes closed more and tried again to breathe. “They’re here, and your mom really, really wants to see you. Can I help you up?”
