TWENTY
Aleena
“Jared, no!”
As if I were detached, the words echoed in my ears. As if they weren’t mine. As if this voice couldn’t possibly belong to me.
Because this voice hurt too much.
I watched his taillight disappear as he rounded the corner, the thunder of his bike bleeding into the night.
Devastation crushed me. Every hope I had splintered, fragmenting as they were torn away.
“Jared, no.”
This time it was a whimper, an utterance of the heart Jared had taken with him when he turned his back on me.
Once I’d promised that I’d take him any way I could have him. That I would take any piece he offered. Willingly, I’d submitted to the risk. Somewhere inside me, I’d always known I would lose him.
I just wasn’t prepared for what that would really feel like.
“Jared… ,” I whispered again.
Steadfast, Christopher held me from behind.
I gave up my fight and buckled, clutching my stomach as I tried to hold myself up.
But Christopher already was.
His mouth was urgent against the back of my head as he supported all of my weight. “Shh… Aly… come on, please stop crying,” he begged.
But I could do nothing but weep for the man who had just wrecked something so true, for the man who held so much hatred for himself he couldn’t see what we really had.
“Come here.” Christopher slowly twisted me around in his arms and pulled me against the safety of his chest. My arms were pinned between us, my hands clutching his shirt. “It’s okay,” he promised.
I cried a little harder.
Christopher went rigid, one arm holding me tight around the back as he pointed somewhere behind me. “Why don’t you all go back inside and mind your own damned business? There isn’t anything out here for you to see.”
Christopher mumbled close to me ear, “Come on, Aly, we need to get you upstairs. I think we woke up the entire complex, and neither of us needs to deal with this shit right now.”
I was barely able to force a nod.
Christopher wrapped his arm around my waist and led me toward the staircase. I held on to the railing, listing to the side, trying to stand under the pain forcing me down. My feet dragged as I staggered up the stairs.
Christopher held me a little closer. “It’s okay, Aly… Come on, you can make it.”
Inside, the apartment was too quiet, echoing with what I’d lost.
Every part of me hurt, an ache so deep I felt it in places I didn’t know existed.
He was gone.
Nausea turned my stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick.” I ran to the bathroom and fell to my knees, purging the riot tearing through my insides.
Ravaging.
Pillaging.
Ruining.
He’d promised me he would.
I dropped my head, crying toward the floor, the hard floor digging into my knees.
I knew he would.
Christopher followed me in and latched the door behind him. He dug through the bottom cabinet for a washcloth and turned on the faucet, getting it damp.
Then he kneeled down at my side. “Here.” He wiped my mouth and the sweat drenching my forehead. His face was a mess of sympathy and anger and the remnants of Jared’s violence. Blood had dried in smeared streaks where he’d wiped it. One side of his mouth had already begun to swell, and a bruise was forming on the outside of his right eye.
He got up and rinsed it and then handed the cool cloth back to me.
“Thank you,” I mumbled quietly. On my side, I slumped all the way to the hard floor.
Christopher sank down across the cramped room, slouching up against the closed door with his legs lying limp out in front of him, staring at me, his body just as beaten as my heart.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, clutching the cloth to my mouth, searching for comfort where none could be found.
He dropped his gaze and shook his head, then raised it again, his gaze pinning me with a portion of the anger that had spurred his intrusion into my room fifteen minutes before. “How long was it going on, Aly?”
I swam in my shame. Not of the fact of Jared and me, but for keeping it from my brother. Yeah, I was twenty, and Christopher had no right to tell me I couldn’t. But the way we’d gone about it was wrong. “A month… ”
The answer couldn’t even penetrate the thick air because I think both Christopher and I knew it wasn’t true.
“Longer, I guess,” I finally said, my fingers wringing the washcloth as if it would give me courage to speak. “He started coming to my room a couple of weeks after he got here… but at first we would just talk.” This slow sadness seeped through my veins. “Over time I think we both became something neither of us could live without.”
And I had no idea how I would live without him now.
Christopher drew up his knees, propped his forearms on them. “Why didn’t you just tell me? You don’t think I would have understood?”
I frowned. “Would you have? Because it didn’t seem that way tonight.”
Groaning, he released a heavy breath toward the ceiling. “I don’t know, Aly… Maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe I would have flipped out like I did tonight.” He looked straight at me. “Either way, keeping it from me was wrong. I heard the two of you fighting when I was walking down the hall… and shit… I knew something was going on between the two of you. I mean, I f*cking point-blank asked him, Aly, and he swore that you were just friends, said he only cared about you and was looking out for you. And here I invite the a*shole into our apartment, and he’s the one taking advantage of you.”
“He wasn’t taking advantage of me, Christopher.” My voice strengthened as I denied Christopher’s assertion. “I love him.”
I loved him so much.
And he was gone.
A sharp pain stabbed me in my gut, deep, deeper than any place I’d ever felt before. I shuddered and wheezed.
“Yeah, well, you made that abundantly clear tonight.” Sarcasm wound its way through the words, before he blinked, and his expression filled with sympathy. “You always have, haven’t you?” It wasn’t a question, just a realization that finally latched on to his consciousness. As if disillusioned, Christopher rubbed his battered face, a choked sound forced from his throat. “Shit… I’m such an idiot.”
Remorse seemed to hit him, and he wrenched both hands through his hair and spoke toward the floor. “God, Aly, I can’t believe I hurt you like that. I really am sorry. I had no right to react like I did. I just… lost it.”
“None of us were thinking straight,” I whispered.
There was no justification for anything that had happened tonight, but I knew he’d never purposely harm me, and it hurt too much to be angry with my brother. I’d already been stripped bare, every place in me left raw. I couldn’t deal with Christopher now. I was too consumed by this unbearable void suddenly prominent in the middle of me.
He sighed and focused on me. “I know you care about him, and I care about him, too, but he’s messed up, Aly. Dangerous. It’s best that he’s gone.” He shook his head. “I heard what you said… what he said, and you deserve better than that.”
My body shook, recoiled at the words.
I’d known I shouldn’t say it, that the love I held for Jared should only be shown and never spoken. But listening to him talk about his mom was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, hearing the hatred that had poured from his mouth, feeling the blame he harbored so close. Worse was knowing how the guilt had destroyed him ever since that day. I wanted to take it away, show him he was worthy of being loved – that I loved him and I always would. I didn’t even know how to regret saying it. Even with him gone, I still needed him to know. To take that piece of me with him that I could never give to anyone else, because I would always belong to him.
“He’s really gone, isn’t he?” I whispered.
Grief gripped me by the heart.
“Yeah, Aly, he’s really gone.”