Page 6 of Boyfriend on Parole: The Care of Broken Things Extended Epilogue (Breaking Free #2)
“Sorry we couldn’t come. I would have hitchhiked but Thaniel made me sleep instead.”
It wasn’t the time to say it. He didn’t mean to say it, but then it slipped again. “I’m getting out.” It was easier after having already said it twice, or maybe things were always easy to say to your best friend. “Tuesday.”
She shrieked, a sound that set her into a round of painful coughing he deeply regretted, but she wouldn’t let him think about it. “Tuesday? This Tuesday?”
There was commotion on her end of the line. All kinds of hubbub not helped along by Hailey who was calling out “Tuesday! Tuesday!” Even with all her coughing.
He begged her to stop. “Your throat! Hailey, your throat!”
The phone changed hands again, and Nathaniel was uncharacteristically sharp as he demanded, “What’s this about Tuesday?”
The receiver nearly dropped from his hands. He was trembling. His whole body was. “They’re releasing me. I’m getting out.”
More commotion. Chaos, even. He remained hunched over the receiver as he heard it playing out, divorced from it as the others reacted, even though he was the star of the show.
Part of him wanted to hang up the phone, anxious and frightened by all the impact he was having.
Nathaniel was trying to calm him even as he freaked out himself.
“This is just the plan. It was always the plan.”
“I can stay at Jenny’s,” he blurted. “If it’s too soon. If you’re not ready.”
“Who’s not ready?” Hailey demanded. The phone had been put on speaker. “I already have the sheets on your trundle.”
He started to cry, but didn’t realize it until he heard Eli going, “It’s alright, puppy. It’s alright.”
He couldn’t imagine it was. He couldn’t imagine anything could be. It was hitting him. Really hitting him. Not leaving the prison or returning to outside life, but having them, seeing them.
“I wish it was earlier,” Nathaniel said. “I wish I’d come see you.”
“No. That’s not—Hailey’s sick.”
And then it was Eli again. “Is Leslie there. Or Arty?”
Arty was only a short way away, for once not looking at the floor but actively eavesdropping. “Yeah. Rat too.”
“Can you share the receiver? I want to speak to him.”
It was strange to crowd in with Arty. There was no speaker phone, so for both of them to hear they practically had to be touching heads.
He’d only ever shared the phone with Eli, so he’d forgotten how that closeness could be discomforting.
Arty didn’t seem to enjoy it much either, but his expression was focused.
“Sir,” Arty said as he spoke into the phone.
“I’m putting him in your hands for the final stretch, Finn. I imagine he’ll find it hard to sleep, so he’ll need to prioritize rest. Can you make sure—"
“Hello Arty! Did you get my letter!” Hailey was still shouting despite her throat.
Arty flushed, his whole face going red. “Ms. Hailey.”
It was a shocking upset. “You send him letters?”
“It was my first one! Did you like it, Arty? I can send you a thousand more. Especially if you promise to tell me more about your cat.”
Arty cleared his throat, though it still took time to answer. He was having great difficulties, not least because his body seemed to be navigating emotion for the first time. “I did like it. And the drawing.”
Worse and worse. “You send him drawings too?”
Hailey laughed, perfectly delighted. “Jealous Samuel is fun too. Does it feel terrible? Are you spitting blood?”
“I’m spitting something .”
Make that extremely delighted. She laughed herself into another coughing fit. It helped, a little, as Hailey always helped. Especially when she added. “It won’t be scary. I’ll make sure of it. Believe me, okay?”
And he knew she could do it. Even more than her fathers, even more than his sister, Hailey seemed blessed with the singular ability of making everything alright.
“It’s such perfect timing,” she said. “School finishes soon and we’ll have the whole summer. Entire months of just us. Isn’t that amazing?”
It certainly was. Far too much to believe. “You’ll be at your mom’s half the time.”
“We can still meet during the day. You can come over and maybe we can even have sleepovers. I’ll start working on mom now. And then you can meet Kevin! Oh, this is very good. I don’t know why I never considered taking you with me to mom’s.”
Probably because Marie would prefer to saw off her own leg than agree to let him visit.
She loathed Hailey’s visiting the prison and found it entirely unacceptable that her daughter’s first friend was a hardened criminal.
Still, he couldn’t definitely say that Hailey wouldn’t manage it.
He had yet to see her give up on anything she set her mind to.
“I can’t do sleepovers. The parole—and the nightly curfew.
I’ll have to be back at home before ten, remember? ”
“Oh,” Hailey said, but she was only deflated for a moment. “What happens if you’re not back by ten? Does your ankle monitor self-destruct and take your leg with it?”
She sounded more intrigued than devastated at the thought. He had to laugh. “Only one way to find out.” But it was hard to be flippant when everything mattered so much. “It’s going to be weird. And a lot of restrictions that get in the way.”
“We’ll deal with whatever comes.” It was something she’d told him dozens of times, the crisis one he suffered at least once a week. “No one will ever give up on you, so don’t give up on us either, okay?”
As if he could. His brain was a 24/7 echo chamber of all their greatest hits. He couldn’t have been free of them if he tried—and he certainly wasn’t going to try.