"Yeah?"
"I'm really glad I found you."
My throat tightens with emotion and the tears threaten to start up again. "I'm really glad you did too."
I fall asleep faster than I have in years, without whiskey, without pills, without anything but Ivan's warmth beside me and the sound of his breathing in the dark. I fall asleep holding his hand, and I don't have nightmares.
Instead, I dream of white sand and blue water, and Ivan is there beside me.
And we're both finally safe.
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.
