Page 32

Jonah

It was almost poetic, how it ended the same way it began: in a nondescript hotel room, with Jonah’s stomach in knots.

The hospital discharged him that morning, and Antonio Ellis stuck to his word about finding temporary arrangements for Jonah.

The hotel the Bureau put him up in was decent, and it was in a nice part of the city. Not that it mattered. It was only for a handful of days, while the agents and the local police needed easy access to Jonah for questioning. There were talks of a trial further down the road, where Jonah would be expected to come back to Chicago to testify against associates of Shepard whom Jonah had been unlucky enough to meet, but nothing was set in stone.

Something no one seemed to consider was how difficult it might be for Jonah to be confined to a room that mirrored so many of his worst memories .

Hotel rooms, give or take a few hygiene standards and choices in decor, were largely the same. It was Jonah’s personal Groundhog Day of off-white walls and mass-produced paintings, sheets that never quite felt clean enough and AC units that always, always ran too cold. There was something about the buried-deep smell in the carpeting, the remnants of stale smoke and mildew the cleaners could never quite shake. Jonah thought that scent might cling to him for as long as he lived.

It was made easier by Liam’s presence. He hadn’t left Jonah’s side since arriving at the hospital, and he had promised that he would stay with him until Jonah sent him away.

A few days ago, Jonah would have given anything to share one more night in a hotel room with Liam. Now, he was too much of a mess to truly relish the moment, because Jonah’s mother was due to arrive at the hotel in less than an hour.

The last time he had seen her, under the dimmed kitchen light of his childhood home, his mom hadn’t been able to meet his eyes. At the time, he’d felt the scorch of her shame like a physical burn.

Later, he’d wondered if that avoidance had anything to do with the bruise forming beneath his orbital bone in the impression of his father’s hand. Maybe she hadn’t been able to stomach seeing her own betrayal reflected back at her.

If that was the case, he couldn’t imagine her reaction to seeing him now .

Months ago, Jonah had begun to resign himself to the reality that he would never see his family again. As time went on, it had become easier to operate under that assumption than hold out any hope for the alternative. His sins began to pile up: the crimes, the strangers, the drugs. So many betrayals of his own body, his faith, his upbringing, pushing him farther from the light of the affection his parents had once held for their eldest son.

After a while, the thought of seeing his family again, the thought of his family seeing him , became a fear rather than a comfort. How would it feel to look them in the eye now, after everything he had seen and done?

It was the nightmare that had haunted him for so long, and now it was a monster come to life, staring him in the face.

Making the call hadn’t been easy. He’d gone into it with the full expectation of rejection, either outright or in the form of a dead line and a blocked number. Liam had lent his phone and sat beside him in the hospital bed as he dialed, holding Jonah’s sweaty hand between his own.

The moment he heard his mom’s voice on the other end, however, her familiar cadence of skepticism at the unknown number, Jonah had lost all ability to speak.

Liam had stepped in, after a pleading nod from Jonah.

“Mrs. Prince?” he had said. “I’m here with Jonah.”

Entire lifetimes had passed in the few seconds of silence that followed. Then, barely loud enough to be audible, she had echoed his name in an exhale that couldn’t have been anything but relief.

It wasn’t a long call, mostly because Jonah couldn’t manage to string more than a couple of words together, but they had ended it with the exchange of a hotel address and a meeting time.

The constant anxiety since then had rendered him exhausted, but Jonah couldn’t sleep. He turned on the TV, then turned it off again. He showered, but he was forced to put on the hospital-issued sweats afterward, making the whole thing feel like a waste.

He avoided the bed altogether, opting instead to sit in the stiff armchair by the window, hugging his knees tightly to his chest. A lukewarm cup of coffee sat beside him on the windowsill, untouched. Liam had prepared it in the cheap coffee maker solely as an attempt to drown out the other smells of the room with a comforting one.

Several times, Jonah tried to give Liam an out. He was aware, however distantly, that it was the day before Christmas. Liam was undoubtedly skipping out on his family traditions in favor of rubbing Jonah’s back as he knelt in front of the toilet, losing his battle to nerves every time he tried to eat something. After everything Liam had already sacrificed for him, it felt wholly unfair for him to give this up, too.

Of course, Liam shut down every attempt. And selfishly, but maybe not so secretly, Jonah was grateful for one man’s unwavering determination to stay .

In the elevator to the lobby, Jonah curled his fingers around the handrail and tried to level his breathing. Liam stood at his side, a silent pillar of support.

Agent Ellis had reserved the hotel’s conference room for the reunion. Neutral ground, he had called it. He wanted to give Jonah privacy while retaining the option to escape to his room if he needed to. Jonah was still too resentful to feel properly grateful, but he couldn’t deny that the safety net was a comfort.

When the elevator doors chimed open on the ground floor, Jonah’s breath caught, as if someone had kinked his oxygen line. He stood frozen for so long that Liam had to wave his hand in front of the sensor to keep the doors from closing.

“You sure you’re ready?” Liam asked.

Jonah forced his eyes to move to him. “She’s already here,” he said weakly.

The line between Liam’s brows pinched tighter. “The choice is still yours.”

That was true on paper, he knew. Shepard was dead, Jonah was a legal adult, and he hadn’t spoken to his parents in over a year. There was no one left to control the trajectory of his life but him. But at that moment, the freedom of choice was just one more burden to shoulder .

Here he was, alive despite everything, standing at the edge of what could have been a new beginning, and he was more terrified than ever.

“I need to see her,” he said finally, forcing himself off the wall.

Liam nodded, falling into step beside him.

When they reached the end of the hallway just off the lobby, Jonah spotted the door to the conference room. It was a warm, dark wood, with a single pane of glass showing through to the other side. There, within the small rectangular frame, Jonah caught a glimpse of silver-streaked brown hair tied back in a bun.

She was turned away, staring out at the overcast sky through the window on the opposite wall. Her body was cloaked in a bulky sweater, but Jonah recognized her immediately.

He moved, stepping past Liam and closing his hand around the doorknob. It was as if there was a magnet connecting his heart to hers, a bond pulling him toward her that no amount of time passed or betrayals committed could have broken. It fueled his body with the courage to push the door open and step inside.

“Mom?”

She turned instantly. The eyes that stared back at him were sunken into the ghost of a face he had once known better than anyone’s. It was so different and every bit the same as he remembered, and both realizations ached .

“Jonah.” Her voice was a wispy nothing from behind her fingers.

Standing before her, even sheathed in the bulky material of his oversized sweats, Jonah was stripped down to the bone. It was as if every memory was painted onto his skin, an open gallery of his shame. Regret knocked into him, nearly staggering him back. He was overwhelmed by the urge to fold into himself and disappear.

This had been a mistake. How could he have ever thought there was a chance they could come back from this?

She took the first step forward, leading with a hand outstretched, but it dropped to her side before she made contact. “Your face,” she whispered.

He didn’t know what to say. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” would have been a lie. “I’m okay,” would have been an even more egregious one. Before he could grasp at a response, her gaze trailed higher.

“Your hair,” she said.

He reached up to run his fingertips over the short, soft buzz. It had taken a long time to get used to, but even longer since he had really thought about it. Shepard had made him shave it the first time he’d caught lice from a client’s dingy hotel room. The last thing I need is another outbreak in the house. Jonah had felt so filthy, like a plague of disease to the others. He had kept it short after that.

“It will grow back,” he said, hating how it sounded like an apology .

As if hearing his voice broke the final thread of her control, she closed the distance and threw her arms around Jonah, startling him to momentary stillness. His arms hovered close without touching, eyes wide and blinking over her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she cried against his chest.

They were the words he had wished for. Words he had long abandoned hope of ever hearing. Now, on the receiving end of them, after too much time, he only felt numb.

Could it really have been that simple? After all this time, could she really cross the wasteland between them in only a few steps?

Torrents of conflicting emotion warred inside him as his hands came to rest on the back of her sweater. He caught Liam’s eyes over her shoulder, an unobtrusive observer against the far wall. Liam smiled at him, but Jonah thought he sensed a current beneath the surface; something wary and concerned.

When his mother’s legs buckled beneath her, it was Jonah who was left to hold their weight off the ground.