Me too,I type, and I mean it more than I've meant anything in my life.I want everything with you too. Don't text and drive!
The dots appear and disappear several times before his next message comes through: Ok.But I can't stop thinking about kissing you.
My face heats up. I type back:Don't stop. Text me tonight. Drive safe.
Ok.
I fall back on the bed, phone clutched to my chest, and I let myself feel it. The joy. The hope. The terror and the excitement and the overwhelming certainty that my life just changed forever.
We're becoming something.
And maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be okay.
Chapter 25: Ivan
The drive home takes forever. I keep replaying the moment. The look on Jay's face when I grabbed his shirt, the way time seemed to slow down in that instant before our lips met. The way he kissed me back.
I can't believe I kissed Jay. I kissed him and he kissed me back and nothing will ever be the same.
My phone buzzes in the cupholder. I glance down at a red light, see Jay's name on the screen.
Still on the road?
I type back quickly, one-handed:Yeah. Traffic slowed me down.
He texts back:Text me when you get home. I need to know you made it.
I will. Promise.
The light turns green. I put the phone down, but I'm smiling so hard I probably look insane. A woman in the next lane at the stoplight definitely looked at me weird.
I don't care. I can't stop smiling.
When I finally pull into the driveway at the Reyes house, it's late afternoon. I sit in the truck for a minute, my hands still gripping the steering wheel, trying to compose myself. Trying to make my face do something other than this manic grin. I need to look normal. I need to walk in there and act like I didn't just have my entire world rearranged in a motel parking lot.
I fail spectacularly.
Rosalyn takes one look at my face when I come through the door and her eyebrows shoot up. A smile tugs at her lips. "Well. Someone had a good weekend."
"Yeah." I can't stop smiling. It's like my face is broken, stuck this way. "I did. Really good."
She's stirring a pot on the stove, smells like her homemade soup. She watches me as I drop my keys on the counter and grab a glass from the cabinet, filling it with water from the tap. Caleb runs in from the livingroom and hugs my legs with both arms, nearly knocking me over, and I ruffle his hair with my free hand.
"You're back!" he squeals. "Did you bring me something?"
"Caleb, leave him alone," Rosalyn chides. "He just got home."
"It's fine." I crouch down to his level. "I didn't bring you anything this time, buddy. But next time, I promise. Deal?"
"Deal!" He runs off again, satisfied.
"You want to tell me about this friend?" Rosalyn asks when Caleb is gone. "The foster brother you found?"
"His name is Jay." Just saying his name out loud makes me feel like I'm glowing from the inside out. "Jason, really, but everyone calls him Jay. He's—" I stop, trying to figure out how to describe him in a way that won't give everything away, in a way that sounds normal. "He's the one who took care of me. Back at the Hendersons. The one I told you about. He protected me."
Rosalyn's expression softens immediately. She knows about the Hendersons. Not everything—I've never told her about the belt, about the beatings, about the worst of it. But she knows it was bad. "And you finally found him after all these years? After all that searching?"
"He was in a news article online. There was a—" I hesitate, not sure how much to share. "There was a bar fight. He got arrested. That's how I found him. His name came up in the arrest records."
