TWENTY-FOUR
Jared
God, seeing her had to be about the best feeling I’d ever experienced. With just the suggestion of her face, dizzying waves of relief slammed into me, filling up that hollowed-out void.
Aly.
Slanting a nervous hand through my hair, I did my best to sit still while I stared down at the green eyes that had locked on me. Strands of the darkest hair swirled all around her, stirred up by the cool breeze that had fallen with the descending night. Frozen midstep, she clung to the railing like maybe she feared she would fall, like the world had just dropped out from beneath her feet.
I guess mine had the moment I opened my eyes to find her hovering over me that first night I’d slept on her couch.
God knew she was the only one who’d managed to change it.
A somber smile pulled at my mouth while something profoundly heavy pulled at my heart.
The girl was so beautiful. Breathtaking.
Air seemed impossible to find, my pulse all thready and harsh. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to get up, to take her in my arms, to kiss her and hold her and make sure she was real because I’d spent so many nights dreaming about her that I wasn’t entirely sure what real was anymore.
Cautiously, I climbed to my feet. A tumult of thoughts fired through my mind while somehow I remained at a complete loss for words. I had no idea how she’d react to me being here, had no clue what she was thinking, couldn’t tell if she was happy or relieved or angry because she just looked f*cking sad.
I wanted to wipe that sadness from her face and erase it from her heart because there was no question I was the one who’d written it there. The most selfish part of me coming back was I still didn’t know if I knew how. The only thing I knew was I could no longer stay away. It just wasn’t possible when she was the only thing I could see.
“Aly,” I finally managed to whisper, her name the sum of all the tumult coursing through me. She was all that mattered.
Five steps down, she stood there, unmoving, before her head slowly began to shake, her lips trembling as tears broke loose. Her eyes squeezed shut. She dropped her face, her free hand in a fist as she spoke toward the concrete steps. “You came back.”
Her voice ached with uncertainty and loss, swam with turmoil, echoed the broken girl I’d left standing in the middle of the lot screaming my name.
And it stung. This girl had been hurting just as badly as me.
But what had I expected? That she was fine? That there’d been a second’s chance that she’d moved on like I promised her she would?
I mean, damn it, there’d been no denying what I felt in her touch.
And there was no denying now how I hurt her.
Lines creased between my eyes. “How could I not?” My hand fluttered in her direction, wishing I could make every f*cking inch of space separating us disappear. “I lied to you, Aly. That night… ” I swallowed hard as my attention shot to the place where I’d left her behind before I angled it back on her. “I left knowing I could never forget you, but praying somehow you could forget me. And I know I shouldn’t be here. I know I should give you a chance to forget, but, Aly… I miss you.”
I missed her. God, I missed her.
Aly looked up at me through the hair shielding her face, the face that was all twisted in grief, soaked with tears and the scars I’d carved in her spirit.
“Aly – ”
Harshly, she shook her head, a quick command for silence. She didn’t look away from me as she slowly started up the steps. She edged to the left, and I turned to let her by. An overwhelming fear of rejection punched me in the gut when I realized I was too late.
Until she glanced up at me as she passed, her eyes imploring. Please.
On the landing, Aly fumbled with her keys and unlocked the door, left it open in invitation as she went inside. She didn’t stop when she dumped that huge-ass purse from her shoulder and onto the floor, the act rushing me with all these memories of the days I’d spent waiting for her to walk through that door. Shit. Could I be more of a fool? Because here I was, asking for the same thing I’d been asking for before, seeking out her comfort when I knew it could never be something I would deserve. What the hell did I think had changed? But something had… I felt it deep… whatever had struck me that night on the deserted road in Nevada, the night I realized I wanted to live. That I had something to live for.
Because I wanted to live for her.
I wanted it. I wanted to be with her. And I didn’t f*cking want to hide it anymore.
I hesitated at the threshold before I stepped through. Inside, the apartment was the same, but somehow it felt vacant, like I’d missed too much of what had happened behind this door in the months I’d been away.
Quietly, I latched it shut.
Aly didn’t spare me a glance as she disappeared into her room. I trailed a ways behind, not knowing what to expect. At the doorway, I paused. Twilight encroached on the room, natural light fading as the last was sucked into the night. Shadows danced and played, taunted and teased. So much had been shared between us here, things that changed lives and hearts and realities.
Aly stood at the foot of her bed, facing the window, her arms crossed over her chest, hugging herself, like she was struggling to keep herself from falling to her knees. Her shoulders jerked, and I knew she was crying as she tried to hold herself together.
Roughly, I scrubbed my palms over my face because I realized I wanted that to be me – I wanted to be the man who was strong enough to lift her up when she fell. But I was weak, f*cking inept, and I didn’t know how to make myself right when everything inside me was wrong.
Still I wanted to try. I was determined to try.
Apparently her door had long since been repaired, but not the damage I’d done. I clicked it shut behind me. I plodded across the floor and turned her dressing table chair out to face the room. I settled on it, my elbows finding my knees, my entire frame hunched over in submission.
A dense silence blanketed the room.
“Aly, tell me what you’re thinking,” I finally begged. The words sounded like gravel as they scraped up my throat. “If you want me to go, just say it, and I’ll walk out that door, and I promise you, this time you’ll never see me again.” Maybe I was too late. Maybe she had moved on. God, I couldn’t f*cking bear the thought, the thought of someone else touching her, the idea of someone else loving my girl. That same old insanity rose in me. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to temper it, to block it out, because I had no right to claim her. But damn if I didn’t want to.
I felt her moving toward me, and my lids fluttered open, my face pinched as I lifted my gaze to take her in. Warily she approached with her head hung low, her movements all slow and unsure.
“You think I don’t want you here?” Hurt overwhelmed her expression. “Did you not believe what I told you, Jared? Or did you think what happened between us was just a game to me? I meant every single word. I gave myself to you.” She beat her fist out in front of her, each strike pounding the air with emphasis, before she drew it up to the valley between her breasts, just over her heart. “I haven’t been able to sleep in three months… three months… because all I could do was worry about you.”
Her bottom lip trembled, and she sucked it between her teeth. “Look at you. God, Jared, you break my heart. What happened to you?” She reached out and ran the back of her hand along the fading bruises on my cheek and fluttered her fingertips over the puckered skin extending out right above my left ear. My hair had grown long enough to barely cover the rest of the scar that snaked around to the back of my head.
I’d been lucky. That’s what they said. How many times had I heard it before? This time when I woke up in the ICU, the doctor had granted me no pleasantries. Point-blank, he’d told me, “You should be dead.” And he’d looked at me like maybe he thought I deserved to be.
“I happened.” I sat up straighter, lifting my chin so I could meet her eye, because I had no defense. “It’s always me. I’m a f*cking mess, Aly, but without you, I’m a disaster. I… ” I winced, cutting my attention to the shadows on her floor, before I gathered enough courage to look back up at her. “You make me better. I don’t even know what I’m doing here, but those three months I spent with you were the best of my life. You made me feel things I’ve never felt before.”
Made me feel things I never thought I could feel, things I thought I wasn’t allowed to feel, things that hinted at joy and swam thick with affection. And I was feeling them now, all these emotions swarming me, a tug-of-war of confusion and need.
Aly’s exhale was palpable as it rushed across my face, her movements tentative as she inched forward, her legs knocking into my knees. Maybe there was something reminiscent of the first night when she’d pushed us over the edge, that intense desperation that had been present when she asked me to stay. But tonight, nothing in her intentions seemed seductive like they’d been then. If anything, she looked scared.
F*ck. I couldn’t get my leg to stop bouncing as she slowly crawled onto my lap, straddling me, her warmth covering me whole.
It took about all I had not to crush her to me.
Fingertips gentled along my jaw, and she inclined her head to the side. “You can’t understand how much I missed you,” she whispered through the torment that wouldn’t seem to let her go.
But she was wrong. It might be the only thing I could understand.
Shaking, I took her face in my hands, the tips of my fingers weaving in her hair. She reached up to cover them with hers.
“Jared,” she whispered. Tears streaked down her face, hot and fast.
“I’m so sorry,” I promised. “And I know I can’t take back these months I’ve been gone, but I want to try… I want to try to make this work. God, Aly, please tell me you want the same thing.”
Aly choked, and again, she whimpered my name.
Frantic, I searched her eyes, feeling the pain that radiated from the surface of her skin. Fear coiled, and again I was thinking maybe I was too late, I’d done too much damage, and she was getting ready to push me away.
But she was holding on to me like she was going to hold on to me forever.
I wet my lips, shaking. “Baby… tell me what’s wrong.”
Aly stared down on me with overwhelming dread as she pulled my hands from her face. For a few painful seconds, she clutched them between us. She lowered them and flattened them across her belly. The heat of her palms held my hands there, pressing, pressing, telling. Everything in the movement was severe, pleading, her cheeks soaked with the tears that wouldn’t quit leaking from her eyes.
All the muscles in my body stiffened. My mind raced through every scenario because there was no possible way to accept her meaning.
But she wasn’t clarifying, wasn’t taking it back.
“No,” stumbled from my mouth as I edged back in the chair, needing space, my head shaking.
Her fingers dug into the backs of my hands as she pressed them more firmly against her stomach. “Yes.” It was a declaration.
“No, Aly, no.”
Panic spread slowly just beneath the surface of my skin. Every cell in my body lit in an excruciating blaze, like dominoes tipped one by one, catching fire.
“How?” How could I have done this?
She slanted her face away, then jerked it back to me. “I don’t know. I… I messed up.”
She messed up? Silent, mocking laughter pounded me in the chest.
It was me who messed up. I always did.
The walls closed in and the room spun. I nudged her from my lap.
Aly reeled back when I set her on her feet. “Jared, please talk to me.”
But I was the one who was reeling. Floundering. Standing, I fisted my hands in my hair as I began to pace her room. How could I have let this happen?
I don’t get to have this.
“Don’t do this, Jared. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong.”
“I have to… I have to go.” I headed for her door. I just needed some air. Because I couldn’t f*cking breathe.
“Don’t you dare leave me, Jared. Please… don’t do this to me.” Her words were cracked and rushed. From behind, she grabbed me by the shirt, desperate as she pulled me back. “I won’t let you do this to me… I won’t let you do this to us.”
I wheeled around, taking her by the wrists, binding her hands between us as I brought us chest to chest. Wide, startled eyes stared up at me, her perfect mouth parted in shock.
“Do you think I could? F*ck… Aly… ”
Didn’t she get it?
I swallowed, overwrought, as I looked at the girl who I’d done so wrong. I didn’t know how to be okay with this because I’d never been more scared of anything in my life. I’d taken life, and I had no right to give it. But there was no staying away from the only one who had ever touched my heart.
I increased my hold. “I… please just give me some time.”
Aly drew her lips into a thin line, her brow knit as she studied me, as if she wanted to resist. Instead she nodded quickly and took a single step back. “Okay.” She swallowed and nodded again. “But before you walk away, I need you to know I love you, Jared.”
I knew it. Believed it.
And I’d give anything to know how to love her back, the way she should be loved, wholly and without all the bullshit holding me down. I wanted to be enough. My spirit writhed. How could I ever be?
When I turned and walked out the door, Aly moaned as if in pain, but she didn’t try to stop me.
I barreled downstairs. Night had completely taken hold. I hopped on the piece-of-shit bike I had bought to get here. I turned it over and the engine churned to life. I rolled it out, trying to see through the anxiety that seized me, constricting my lungs, jackhammering my heart. Everything about this was wrong… so wrong.
Stopping at the gate, I rammed the heels of my hands into my eyes, a loud groan loosed into the air. An unknown emotion welled thick, urgent at the base of my throat as it fought for release. I widened my eyes, striving to clear my vision as I turned out onto the blurry street.
I knew where I was headed.
Because I was drawn.
Traffic was heavy, the streets clogged. I wanted to scream. Raking a hand through my hair, I mumbled incoherencies, not sure I could hold it together. When I finally got across town, I slid the bike into the left-hand turn lane. The blinker flashed, and I wavered. I had a stranglehold on the handlebars when I crossed over the spot where I had taken it all, where she’d bled and I’d never wept. That unspent emotion clashed with the anger, fighting, struggling to break free.
A quarter of a mile down the street, I pulled off onto the shoulder. Dust billowed as I braked, a storm of energy rising around me. I stumbled from the bike. The old neighborhood was eerily quiet, lights glowing from windows, trees whispering in the breeze. Panting, I scoured the field that sat deserted across the street. I sucked in a steeling breath and ran across the street. Shoving the toe of my boot in the chain-link fence, I climbed it and swung my legs over as I jumped down on the other side.
Tall, grassy weeds grew high in the center of the field. I wandered out to the middle and fell to my hands and knees. Memories ran amok, a chaos that came too close and coursed too free. Aly as a little girl… my mother calling my name. Both pulled at me, a war between what I needed and this debt I would never be able to fully pay. Had I really deceived myself into believing if I came back here I could finally escape it? But I’d come on this impulse, an instinct that spurred me forward, promising things would be different.
Yeah. They were different, all right.
I wheezed for air.
I rose onto my knees, my hands pressed to the side of my head, trying to make sense of the million different emotions that were fighting inside my heart and mind.
“Mom,” I called out to her, wishing she could hear. Praying she could. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. I tried. I f*cking tried, and no matter what I do, I can’t make this right. I want to make this right.”
I pitched forward, clutching my stomach, knowing that I was absolutely going to lose it. Her face flickered before me, her voice so soft.
“Mom,” I mumbled quietly, “please tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
I just didn’t f*cking know anymore.
Hunched over, I buried my face in my hands. And I knew I couldn’t go on like this any longer. Something had to give. I’d tried, and I f*cking failed. I was tired of failing. Tired of hurting people I cared about.
In this place, Aly’s presence consumed me. Impressions of the little girl who’d grown to possess me ran rampant, rushed along the hard ground, and drifted in the air.