“I’ll get a jack,” my dad replied instantly. The sound of his boots thumped past me.
I looked around under the car. Finn was still wearing his basketball shorts. His legs were bare from the thigh down.
“Can you twist toward me?” I asked. “So I can reach your other hand.”
Finn looked past me for a moment, then slowly started to inch sideways. The tops of his feet scraped along the dirty floor as he twisted, inch by inch, until he could reach for me with both hands.
“I’m gonna pull you out,” I told him, gripping both of his little hands in mine.
“My shorts are stuck,” he told me again.
“Fuck the shorts,” I replied. “You ready?”
I didn’t wait for him to answer me before I started pulling, watching carefully to make sure that he didn’t get caught up on anything else.
“Got the jack,” my dad said, a couple of police officers with him.
“I got him,” I replied, pulling him a little further. “Use your feet, son. Push off with your toes.”
His shorts had come off completely, and his underwear was halfway down his ass by the time I pulled Finn out from under the Chevelle. I yanked up the underwear and pulled him into the space between my knees, rocking him as he clung to me, his face in my neck.
“I got you,” I whispered, smoothing the hair at the back of his head, my other arm wrapped tightly around him, covering every inch I could. “I got you, pal. You’re safe.”
“Fuck me,” Uncle Leo choked out from somewhere. “Thank fuck.”
“I want my mom,” Finn whispered, shuddering.
“I’ll take you to your mom,” I promised him.
I got to my knees and lifted him with me as I stood up. With his bare legs wrapped around my waist and his arms around my neck, I carried him out of the garage.
“Ambulance is here,” a cop told me, stepping into my path. “So he can get checked out. We’ll need to speak to him—”
“Get the fuck out of my face,” I barked, making him hurriedly back away.
I strode toward the sidewalk as a few of the guys nodded at me in relief.
“Casper’ll stay here and deal with the cops,” Draco said as he jogged toward me. “I’m with you. We’ll take Kara’s rig.”
“Goin’ to your mom,” I told Finn, kissing his sweaty head. “Hang on. You’re safe. I got you.”
A few minutes later, I was in the back seat of Kara’s SUV with Finn in my lap. He’d refused to let go, and I figured after all he’d been through that day, wearing a seat belt was the least of our worries. It was a tight fit, but I made it work by sitting sideways, one leg along the back seat and the other braced on the floorboard.
“I got you some water, Finn,” Kara said from the passenger seat. She twisted to meet my gaze. “You’re probably thirsty. I’ll put it in the cup holder back there so you can reach it, okay?”
There was no response.
Finn didn’t say anything at all during the two-hour drive north. His breath just came in quiet gasps, and he kept his forehead pressed against my throat, one of his hands tucked in close to his chest and the other gripping my shirt.
Even as I worried, part of me was glad that he was quiet. Once I had him in my arms, fear for Dylan and Jesse had hit melike a wave, and I wasn’t sure I could answer any questions Finn asked. Both of the kids had been in such bad shape when they’d been taken away. I had no idea what to expect. I wasn’t even sure how Dylan could survive the number of wounds he’d had. If he did, I had no idea what his future would look like. Jesse—their face had been so beaten that it was swollen twice the size it should’ve been. They hadn’t been bleeding like Dylan, but after a beating like that, who knew how fucked their insides were. Sometimes the worst injuries were the ones you couldn’t see.
I couldn’t imagine a life where we lost either of them, and even though Draco was hauling ass, it still took way too long to get to Portland.
At the hospital, Finn didn’t even flinch when the sounds of Harley pipes filled the parking garage as I climbed out of the SUV. Since he was still in his underwear, Kara wrapped him in a sweatshirt she’d found on the floorboard. There wasn’t anything we could do about his bare feet, but the way he was clinging to me, I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t think his feet would touch the floor any time soon.
Following Kara and Draco, I carried Finn into the hospital.
What felt like both years and only a heartbeat later, the elevator doors opened up, and I stepped out to find Teddy waiting.
