"I broke my promise," I sob. "I said I'd find you and I didn't, I failed you, I failed—"
"You didn't fail me," Ivan says fiercely, his arms tightening around me. "You never failed me. You saved me, Jay. You saved me when no one else would. You broke your arm protecting me. You gave up everything for me. You didn't fail me."
But I did.
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 aswe 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.
