"I've got you," I whisper so softly.
He doesn't wake, but some of the tension seems to ease from his body. His grip on me loosens just slightly, becomes less desperate and more tender.
I close my eyes. My hand moves, settling over his where it rests on my stomach. His fingers twitch slightly at the contact, then relax, curling around mine even in sleep. Holding on.
I don't know what tomorrow will bring. I don't know how to fix Jay's life, or how to make the drinking stop, or how to undo years of damage and pain. I don't know what we are to each other now.
But I know I'm not letting go. I'm staying right here, in this lumpy bed in this sad motel room, with Jay's arm around me and his breath on my neck and his heartbeat steady against my back.
I'm staying because this is where I belong.
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 thatfill 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.
