"You're not going to lose it. We're in this together."
"Sometimes the fear is still there, you know? That voice in my head that pops up sometimes and says I don't deserve this."
"I know that voice. I have one too that sounds like Henderson." I close my eyes, leaning my head back against the wall. "But we're louder together. You and me, we're louder than the voices. We can drown them out."
"I love you, Ivan. So much I can't believe it."
"I love you too."
After we hang up, I sit in the empty apartment until the sun goes down. I should go back to Rosalyn's, eat dinner with the family, get some sleep. I have work in the morning and a lot to do before Jay arrives.
But I'm not ready to leave yet. I want to sit here a little longer, imagining what it will feel like when Jay is here.
I've been waiting for this moment since I was twelve years old, hiding in a barn with a boy who promised to protect me. Who tookHenderson's belt for me more times than I can count. Who held me when I cried and made me believe I could survive.
It was worth the wait.
Every day of searching. Every mile driven. Every moment of doubt.
All of it was worth it to get us here.
Chapter 52: Ivan
I've been awake since five in the morning, too wired to sleep. The apartment complex is mostly empty still. Just the queen-size bed I bought from a guy at work. His wife made him upgrade and he sold me this one for a hundred bucks. A few boxes of my stuff from Rosalyn's stacked against the wall. No couch yet, no TV, no kitchen table. Just bare floors and blank walls.
And in about an hour, Jay will be here.
I make coffee in the secondhand pot I picked up at Goodwill last week, standing at the kitchen counter because there's nowhere to sit. This is the first time Jay will see the apartment in person. The first time he'll walk through the door of the place that's going to be ours.
Not mine. Not his. Ours.
Twenty minutes before he's supposed to arrive, I hear the motorcycle. The low, distinctive rumble that I've learned to recognize from blocks away. I set down my coffee mug and move to the window, watching as Jay pulls into the parking lot below, finds a spot near the building, and cuts the engine.
He sits there for a moment, his hands on the handlebars. Then he pulls off his helmet and looks up at the second floor. Even from here, I can see him smiling.
I'm at the front door before he reaches the top of the stairs, my hand on the doorknob, waiting. When he appears at the landing, I can barely contain myself.
"Hey," he says, slightly breathless from the climb and the drive. His dark hair is messy from the helmet, sticking up in every direction. His cheeks are flushed from the wind. His eyes are bright.
He takes my breath away.
"Hey yourself."
I grab the front of his leather jacket and pull him inside, kicking the door shut behind us with my foot. He barely has time to drop his overnight bag on the floor before my mouth is on his.
The kiss is hungry, desperate, weeks of phone calls and waiting finally boiling over into this moment. Jay makes a sound against my lips—surprise, relief, pure need—and his hands come up to grip my shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
"Missed you," I manage between kisses, my hands already working at his jacket zipper.
"Missed you too. God, so much."
I'm already walking him backward, steering him toward the bedroom without breaking the kiss. He goes willingly, his fingers working at the zipper of his jacket, shrugging it off his shoulders and letting it fall to the floor somewhere behind us.
"Wait," he says, pulling back just enough to look around, to take in the apartment. "I haven't even seen the place yet. I should—"
"Later." I pull his t-shirt over his head and toss it somewhere, needing to see his skin. "Apartment tour later. This first. I need you first."
He laughs breathlessly, that low rough sound that goes straight to my gut, that makes heat pool in my cock. "I like your priorities."
