Hold on Tight

by Serena Bell

  She’d been aiming for teasing, but her voice came out harsher than she’d intended, and her father was quiet for a moment before he spoke. “No. He told us he was going to fly out to see you. That was all we knew. But when he got back—it was obvious things hadn’t gone well for him. He said you’d—turned him down. Mira, why?”

  “Because …” She hesitated, too long. “Because I don’t love him.”

  “Is this about Jake?”

  “No. Saying no to Aaron had nothing to do with Jake.”

  “But—you—care for Jake?”

  It was a funny, old-fashioned turn of phrase, but something about it snuck past her vigilance and made tears come to the surface. Because—exactly. She cared, so much, for Jake. About what he’d suffered, about who he was. About the fun she and Sam had had with him in Seattle, the burn of his kisses, the sweetness of being awake with him after Sam went to bed. And she cared, so much, too much, that he’d walked away. She couldn’t stop caring, even though she wanted to switch it off. “It doesn’t matter how I feel. Jake and I aren’t going to be a couple.”

  This time the silence dragged out so long, she thought their connection had broken, and she said, “Hello? You there?”

  “You have to remember,” he said, very quietly, “that I know what it feels like. To love someone who can’t love you back.”

  In all these years, somehow, she’d never once thought of it that way. Her father, her mother. A man who loved a woman who could walk away from her family. A man who’d been left behind, who’d seen his daughter left behind.

  A man who would do anything to keep his daughter from suffering that same pain. To keep her from making the same mistakes.

  So much made sense about her father right then. How much he worried, how angry he’d been at Jake eight years ago, how hard he’d been on her about making good decisions and not leaving herself vulnerable—to heartbreak, to other people’s poor judgment, to anything. He’d wanted to armor her so she could never be hurt the way he’d been hurt.

  “I never knew—I didn’t know—” that you loved her that much. “—that she hurt you so badly.”

  For a long moment, she thought he was going to clam up. Then he said, softly, “I think I always knew deep down she wasn’t the kind of woman who loved back. There was something missing in her that way. That’s what I worry about for you. That Jake’s like that. That he can’t—he can’t give you what you deserve.”

  “What do I deserve?”

  “To be loved. Also, the world, handed to you on a silver platter. That’s—that’s all I ever wanted to give you.”

  There was so much pressure in her throat, her chest, behind her eyes, that she almost couldn’t speak. “I know, Dad. But I never wanted the world on a silver platter.”

  Her father laughed. “I know,” he said. “If anyone knows that, it’s me. All those times I tried to make things easier for you and you fought me tooth and nail …”

  She started to get angry with him, old habits dying hard, but then she stopped. Because she’d just realized something important about the nature of their battles. That they weren’t about her—not at all, not in the ways that mattered most.

  The thing was, her father was never going to change, not much. He’d never stop worrying about her. He’d never stop worrying that she would make mistakes in who she loved, that she would love too much or not enough, that she would get left again the way she’d been left by her mother. By Jake at the lake. The way her father had been left.

  Her father was never going to be less opinionated, less controlling, less—well, difficult. He was always going to think what he thought about the way she ran her life.

  Her father wouldn’t change. But she could change. She could see his overbearing love for what it was—his fear. The consequence of the losses he carried with him, to this day.

  She didn’t have to make him stop. She didn’t have to get away from him. She had only to stop reacting as if it mattered, and it would stop mattering.

  Because she had nothing to prove. She’d had a baby at eighteen and raised him to be possibly the best seven-year-old boy on the face of the earth. She’d stayed when she needed to stay and left when she needed to leave. She’d moved them across the country without anyone’s help, gotten herself a job, and held it even when events had conspired against her. She’d run smack into the thing she feared and longed for most—Jake’s reentry into their lives—and faced it down, and here they were, she and Sam, still lurching along and figuring things out like everyone else on earth.

  She looked around the living room, at the fleece throw nestled in the corner of the couch, at Sam’s games spread out on the floor, at the thick stripes on the curtains she’d bought for the big front window. It felt cozy, like home. Her and Sam’s place. She’d done a good job.

  She’d done a damn good job, and that—that was what mattered.

  “I’ve so got this,” she said, to no one in particular.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said. And then, “I love you, Daddy.”

  She hadn’t called him that since the night she told him she was pregnant. Because it had felt like too much, being someone’s mother and someone’s baby. But now it felt just right, like scales in perfect balance.

  “I love you, too, sweetheart.”

  “Do you want to come visit me and Sam sometime soon?”

  His voice, when it came over the line, was thick with emotion. “I would love that.”

  Chapter 30

  Sam was acting weird. Squirrelly. He was making her nervous.

  Maybe she’d broken him. Maybe all the change and the uncertainty, losing two father figures in Florida and one here, had finally undone him. Maybe he was about to have some little-kid nervous breakdown, and it would be all her fault.

  On the other hand, maybe he just had to pee and wasn’t telling her. You couldn’t tell with a seven-year-old.

  They’d parked at the Discovery Park lot and strolled past the visitor center, where she had, in fact, pointedly asked if he needed to use the restroom before they walked out of range. He’d denied any need, and they’d ambled along the path toward the playground he liked, the one where they’d picnicked with Jake and played pinecone baseball. That seemed like an eternity ago now.

  After the conversation with her father a few days ago, she’d texted Jake to try to set up a time for him to take Sam on an outing. She couldn’t change her father and she couldn’t make Jake love her, but she could doggedly go after what she needed—just as she always had, even if she hadn’t given herself credit for it.

  And what she needed was to make sure Jake’s relationship with Sam was okay.

  You want to take Sam this weekend? she’d texted.

  I wish I could. Out of town. But—maybe soon.

  She hadn’t quite realized that there were degrees of heartbreak, that something cracked could fall apart into shards, that the shards could be ground down into powder. She’d thought she’d lost what there was to lose already. But it turned out she could feel worse, because Sam’s loss amplified hers. He’d been mopey since Jake’s departure—even all the Lego-building with Aaron hadn’t seemed to snap him out of it, and when Aaron was out of earshot, Sam had told her that running races with Aaron was fun but that dads were better, and I want a special fun day with my dad soon, Mommy, okay?

  She might have to march downtown and strangle Jake with her own bare hands if this continued, because he could break her heart and stomp on the shards, but he’d sure as hell better not break Sam’s. And she didn’t believe Jake—didn’t believe maybe soon, didn’t believe wish I could. What she believed was his walking away, which she could still see in her mind. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed.

  Something in her calling out to him, Come back!

  For now, though, she knew there was nothing she could do except go after what mattered, which was taking care of Sam.

  Hence today’s trip to the park.

  Sam had been all
obsessive this morning, starting in before breakfast about how he wanted to go to Discovery Park and play pinecone baseball and if she didn’t want to take him could he call Jake? It had made her feel like six different kinds of crap, but she said no because she’d burned her last scrap of wounded pride in the text where she’d invited Jake to do something with Sam, and there was no way she could do it again so soon. Besides, the idea of being face-to-face with him was too overwhelming. She had no idea what she’d do—if she’d yell at him for being an idiot, or be all calm and icy (which was what she was hoping), or grab the sides of his face and start kissing him the instant she laid eyes on him (which was what she suspected). And she had even less idea of how he’d react to any of those things if she actually did them.

  It would be easier to catalog the things she did know than the ones she didn’t. She knew taking care of Sam wasn’t as much fun when he wasn’t there. Because a day in the park, a visit to a tourist attraction, cooking dinner, ordering takeout, sitting on the couch—all the ordinary moments of her life—were drabber without him in them.

  She knew that in destroying her fantasy of what it would be like for Sam to have a father—the fantasy of rescue, of being yanked out of the rut and into a dashing romance, an easier, safer life—she had found something she hoped could be even better. A tease, a hint, of the possibility of companionship, partnership, contentment.

  Not that there hadn’t been sizzle, too. There had been abundant sizzle. But it was real sizzle. The friction of coarse bark and inconveniently placed buttons, of artificial limbs insinuating themselves into movie moments, of a kid’s questions instead of a long, leisurely morning lounging over breakfast in bed. And Jake himself, not the unmarred perfection of a bigger-than-life Army Ranger, not twenty and idealistic, but who he was: rough himself, inconvenient even, sometimes. Troubled, troubling.

  She knew that she could never settle for less now. That she owed it to herself to find someone who made her feel that way, rough, messy, sizzling. Poised at the edge of danger and, strangely, safe. Someone like that who also loved Sam as much as she knew—knew in the depths of her heart—that Jake did.

  And she owed it to Sam to never settle for less—not for herself, and not for him. Even if it meant that it would be just the two of them. Because there were way, way worse things than the feel of Sam’s little hand in hers, the contented sound of his humming.

  She and Sam walked past the big open field, the grass and wildflowers. Oh, shit, she’d forgotten his inhaler, an oversight she’d been committing more and more recently as it approached the two-year mark since his last attack. There was enough pollen in that field to make her nose and eyes itch, but Sam seemed unfazed. Maybe he had outgrown his asthma.

  “Mom, can I run in that field?”

  Her immediate impulse was to say no.

  Jake would say yes.

  Jake’s not here, though, is he? Doesn’t matter what he thinks.

  The voice in Mira’s head sounded a little like Opal, warm and giddy. Someday, maybe, her own good sense would catch up with the situation and that voice would be her own. For the time being, she was grateful anyone was talking reason in there.

  “Mom.”

  “Let’s go up to the playground,” she said, and he trotted after her obediently. He was a good kid. She’d done a good job.

  There were some other kids climbing on the play structure and she almost told him not to go too high, but then she didn’t. Instead, she turned away so she didn’t have to see him perched up there, above the world, and she thought about things.

  Last weekend, Opal had taken Mira out for some retail therapy—shopping for skimpy dresses and lacy underthings—because she had insisted that whether or not Mira was interested in dating again, she had to dress up at least once a week like she was too hot for Jake’s sorry ass. They’d spent hours at the mall, until the pain in Mira’s chest had quieted to a bearable ache and it had seemed possible, maybe, that it wouldn’t always be the loudest thing she felt. Maybe.

  Unfortunately, though, whenever Mira looked at the lacy underthings in her lingerie drawer, all she could feel was that deep sadness. Because Jake would have appreciated them so very, very much, right before he ripped them off, got bossy all over her ass, and then held her and talked to her for hours. But that was never going to happen.

  So someone else—someday, when she was ready—would have to appreciate the new purple demi-bra and practically nonexistent thong.

  Sam and the other kids had climbed down from the structure and Sam was demonstrating pinecone baseball to them. They were developing an actual game, with home plate and several bases, and it looked like they were dividing into two teams. She watched closely for a moment, but they split without visible trouble into two groups, and Sam’s team lined up near the improvised home plate to bat.

  Sam was up first. He turned around where he stood, as if searching for something he’d lost. But he hadn’t brought anything with him. He caught her eye and looked away.

  Squirrelly.

  She frowned.

  Sam swatted at the ball and somehow beat the throw to first. He jumped up and down and tried to catch her attention. “Did you see?” he called.

  “That was great!”

  Sam craned his head and looked around, and she followed his gaze, and then she saw Jake.

  He was striding up the path toward them, purposeful and even, his shoulders big enough to support a house. He was still a good distance away, and she got to watch him narrow the distance between them, figuring it out as he approached—he and Sam had plotted this, that squirrelly boy—and then swooning a little under the rush of pleasure that brought—they’d plotted this because he was coming to tell her he’d been an idiot, although her underwear was all fucking wrong, white cotton top to bottom.

  He was carrying a cooler and wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and seriously, she was having these intense, unstoppable fantasies about peeling him out of his clothes and riding him while he lay under her, staring up at her in worship.

  Um, that was the opposite of bossy.

  But they could do that too, right? Because here he was, and he was smiling. Smiling!

  Only then he wasn’t. He was frowning, and he was hurrying off the path toward the baseball game, and she turned to see Sam bent over, and—

  She ran.

  Chapter 31

  Sam was beside himself. “I ruined everything,” he said.

  “You did not,” Mira said.

  They sat on opposite sides of Sam’s gurney in an ER triage room. He was fine, breathing well, though a little hyper from the steroids they’d given him. They were waiting for the pediatrician on staff to see and discharge him.

  Jake and Mira had reached Sam’s side at the same moment, and everything had happened fast after that. They’d tried to get him calmed down, tried to get him to relax and just breathe, but it had been a long time since he’d had an attack and he’d lost the knack. No one around had an inhaler, and Mira vowed that when this was over, she was going to strap one permanently to Sam’s arm.

  Without discussion, they’d split the tasks. Jake had used every inch of his physical presence and every ounce of his natural command to make the crowd back off to give them more space. Mira had coached Sam to relax and breathe, and when it became evident that wasn’t going to happen, Jake had scooped him up and run him toward the parking lot as Mira ran alongside, dialing 911. By the time they reached the parking lot, Sam’s breathing was a little less labored, and minutes later, the ambulance arrived. Mira rode in the back with Sam, and Jake drove Mira’s car to the hospital.

  Now was the first moment she’d had to consider the events of the last forty-five minutes, and her emotions were in an uproar. They’d been in an uproar before Jake had showed up and rearranged the topsy-turvy world once again. Before Sam had been, if not in mortal danger, scaring the shit out of her. Before Jake had been exactly the father Sam needed, the man Mira wanted.

  But parenting was parenting,
and she wasn’t going to get any time to think or sort things out. Sam was crying.

  “Jake had a whole plan. He had a picnic and wine and he was going to tell you he was sorry and he wanted to spend lots of time with us, and then he was going to kiss you, and I ruined it all.”

  She looked over at Jake, and he nodded to confirm Sam’s story. That was it, just a nod, but her hope winged, a rustle of feathers, an unwinding of the dread and sadness she’d carried with her.

  “I ruined the picnic and now you won’t get back together and Jake will never live with us and you will never ever ever ever ever get married like normal moms and—”

  “Sam,” Mira said. “Honey. You didn’t ruin anything. You’re not in charge. You don’t have the power to ruin things. Your dad and I are in charge. We’re the only ones who can ruin things.”

  Startled, Jake looked up and met her gaze. She gave him a small, tight nod. That’s right, you heard right. You and I. We.

  “I think sometimes I’ve made you feel like you have to take care of me,” Mira said to Sam, leaning down over the bed and touching her lips briefly to his forehead.

  She sat up and looked pointedly at Jake. “But you don’t. I’m really, really good at taking care of myself.”

  She held Jake’s gaze, and she saw a reflection of her own hope in his eyes. “Although,” she said. “Wow, it was good to have you there. In the park. Thank you. For everything. You were …”

  There didn’t seem to be an adequate word to describe what it had felt like in that moment, having a partner, having someone who cared as much as she cared and who could do what had to be done. Or how easy it had felt to let him, how right.

  Her father had implied that Jake was like her mother, unable to love, but that wasn’t true. She knew it wasn’t. She saw it in how thoroughly, how much, he loved Sam. And she’d seen it every time they’d been together, every time he’d opened up and spilled himself out to her, in words or kisses or touches, rough or gentle, overflowing everything he’d ever held back in any other part of his life.