Come to Me Softly Page 12

  He dumped his mug in the sink and brushed his fingers across the side of my hand as he passed by, leaving me with a silent show of encouragement.

  Walking out into the main room, I stopped for a moment to appreciate Jared from behind, before I went into my bathroom to finish my makeup and hair. Five minutes later, I headed out of the bathroom and turned the knob to my bedroom.

  I smiled a little, correcting myself.

  Our bedroom.

  Was it ridiculous that the idea of that made me giddy with joy? The thought of Jared and me as a family? That the man who held all of my dreams had become my home?

  And I thought no. There was nothing ridiculous about us, about this love that was always supposed to be.

  That’s what I was giving thanks for today. For this start, this beginning, as rocky as it was. But really, I couldn’t even think of it as a beginning when Jared had forever been my always.

  I swung my door open. Jared stood in the middle of the room. He fumbled with the buttons of a dark blue, long-sleeved dress shirt.

  From under his brow, he glanced up. He stilled when he caught sight of me.

  Something that looked like awe and disbelief filled the blue of his intense eyes as I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.

  The truth written on his face sent a flood of emotion rushing over me. Just the look thundered my heart, pounding it with affection for him.

  “God, you’re beautiful,” he murmured.

  I smoothed out the deep plum dress I’d put on for Thanksgiving dinner. It had a fitted V-neck bodice with three-quarter sleeves, and the tailored skirt came down to just above my knees. Black stockings kept my legs warm, and I’d paired it with black ankle boots. My long hair was pinned up into a messy, chunky twist, and pieces fell down around my face.

  Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ was never fancy, always a house full of laughter and easy conversation and comfort. And a strong current of thankfulness.

  But we dressed up a little just to honor the day. The dress was simple but pretty, and my parents had given it to me last Christmas, so I thought it was fitting.

  Jared slowly crossed the room, each step unhurried, like he relished each one that brought him closer to me. As he approached, he tipped his head to the side in slow appreciation. “Keep telling you, baby, but every time I look at you, you knock the breath right outta me.” Something significant flashed in his eyes. “Still can’t believe you’re my girl.”

  My fingertips fluttered down the hollow of his strong neck, trailed down his chest to take over his job. I slowly worked through the remaining buttons of his shirt as I gazed up at him. “I’ve always been your girl. You just didn’t know it.”

  His expression was all over the place, sexy and sly, this cocky quirk lifting just one side of his mouth, an expression that hammered my heart and sent my stomach tripping with desire. But it was the soft creases at the corners of his eyes that stole my own breath.

  I straightened his collar, murmuring close to his mouth, “Thank you for doing this with me… for me. I can’t tell you how much it means.”

  One arm slipped low around my waist, and he tugged me flush to him. “I’m not ever going to leave you alone to deal with shit again, Aly. We’re in this together.”

  A surge of joy pushed at my ribs. I bit my lower lip as I melted into his embrace, trying to contain how happy he made me. I rested my cheek on his chest. “Together. I like the sound of that.”

  He wound me a little tighter, rocked us as he held me in the middle of the room. “Me, too,” he murmured at the sensitive skin just below my ear. An errant lock of hair strayed down the side of my neck, and Jared brushed it back with his nose, kissed beneath it, before he wound it in his finger. “I like anything that ends in you and me.” The suggestive words fell into my room like a promise.

  I sighed and shoved all my worries down because none of them mattered when I was in Jared’s arms.

  Two loud raps rattled my bedroom door. “Let’s go,” Christopher called.

  Jared pulled back. Something mischievous and sweet played all over that gorgeous face. “God, your brother is a pain in my ass.”

  Softly laughing, I laced my fingers with his, thinking how the two of them had hardly changed, how they fought and warred and seemed once again forever the best of friends.

  “Come on. Let’s go celebrate.” The words were soft, filled with my hope for the day.

  With my hope for us.

  Yeah, today might be difficult, fraught with the glaring obstacles Jared and I knew we’d eventually have to face, sooner rather than later because we’d been tossed right in the middle of them.

  We would have to contend with his past that would forever trail every move he made, the lurking shadows that chased him in the day and haunted him in the night.

  But today that past wouldn’t just linger in the recesses of his mind.

  I’d asked Jared to go back and stand right at the doorstep of the ghosts that ruled his world.

  To step into them.

  And we’d have to deal with all the assumptions born from the trouble Jared had been in, the faulty ideas bred in my father’s mind, and the inevitable disappointment that would come along with them.

  A shiver of nerves raced through me as Jared squeezed my hand.

  But Jared and I were doing this together.

  In response, I gripped his hand tighter and let the deepest peace settle over me.

  Yes, today was a day to celebrate.

  SEVEN

  Jared

  Crisp, cool air floated on the light fall breeze. Across the desert sky, the ice blue canopy seemed to go on forever, the sun casting rays of warmth across the heavens.

  Aly ambled ahead of me, balancing in these cute little chunky boots she wore with that dress. The slight lilt of her hips struck up a cadence with the rest of her body. It left me all itchy and anxious. My fingers twitched as I followed her across the parking lot. Wayward pieces of dark hair spilled down from the mass of locks twisted on the top of her head, dripping down to kiss the back of her luscious neck, which I was pretty damned sure she’d done with the sole purpose of driving me out of my mind.

  Aly tossed a glance over her shoulder. Something like welcome and peace flashed in her eyes when they washed over me.

  I roughed my palm over the top of my head and ran it down to grip at the tense muscles in my neck, doing my best to shove down the nerves that spiked inside of me.

  This girl. I swear to God, she was something else. So fucking sexy and unbearably sweet.

  I’d be damned if I didn’t do this for her. For once in my miserable life, I needed to stand up for something that was right.

  I mean, shit, I didn’t just need to. I wanted to. I wanted to be the man who stood at her side, to declare this beauty that had been bred because it was bred of her.

  Still, a slow dread simmered under it all, marching like an army of ants beneath my skin, burning a fiery path as they worked their way out.

  Never had I stepped back into the old neighborhood. Drawn, I’d gone what seemed too many times, sitting across the road while those simple houses seemed to taunt me from afar, a picture of the life I’d been erased from because I’d been the one who destroyed it.

  But that empty field… it’d called to me, the place that echoed the memories that both comforted and crushed, begged me closer the night when the memories trapped in the deepest recesses of my mind had finally been cut free. Where they had run rampant, challenging, changing everything I’d ever believed.

  I climbed into the front passenger seat of Aly’s little car, and Christopher slid into the backseat behind me.

  I watched Aly slip behind the steering wheel. She turned over the ignition, put the car in reverse, and carefully backed out, craning her head around to make sure all was clear.

  I swallowed down the terror that was building steadily, born somewhere in the darkness places of my spirit.

  It had always been her.

  N
ow I’d do this for her.

  No turning back now.

  The old neighborhood was only about fifteen minutes away. Buildings and stores and houses whizzed by in a distorted haze, grayed-out flashes of nothing as we flew past. No words were said. Instead we just let the tension steadily build in the confines of the car.

  It was like Aly and Christopher knew how difficult going back to the place where we all grew up together would be for me, and the short trip was given as a moment of silence.

  She turned right onto the wide, three-lane road that carved through the center of the city.

  I sucked in a ragged breath.

  Aly reached for my shaking hand over the console, weaving her fingers through mine. Uncontrollably, my knee bounced. With every second that passed, anxiety ratcheted me one degree higher.

  As a kid, I’d been down this road what seemed a million times. Just a stretch of common, innocuous pavement. Until it became the place that meant the most, where stupidity and selfishness had reigned. God, I’d felt so powerful when I traveled the short expanse of road for the first time, thinking myself such a man. In turn, I’d learned I was just a foolish little boy.

  That hollow place inside me throbbed and tremors crawled in a creeping wave through my body, like they slithered out from the darkest places in my spirit.

  God, I didn’t know if I could do this.

  I felt the power of Aly peering at me, searching me through her worry. In the same moment, she was comforting me with the promise of what I never thought I’d have.

  She turned her attention back to the road, flicked on her blinker, and eased into the left-turn lane.

  Fear tightened my throat, cinching off the air that fed my lungs.

  Aly squeezed my hand.

  And she knew.

  God, she knew.

  She knotted her fingers with mine, then she turned left and cut over the spot where I had ruined the good, where I had permanently snuffed out the life and light.

  I choked over the ball of unspent emotion.

  Two nights ago, I’d crossed the same spot on my own.

  Now I was crossing it with her.

  To the left, the old neighborhood rose like a smoke signal sent to warn me away.

  Still, she clung to my hand, reinforcing the lifeline that somehow tied me to this place.

  Even though its height was inoffensive, in the shimmering daylight, the chain link fence that blocked off the empty field where we had spent so many of our days playing now seemed so out of place. Wrong. It gave way to the wooden fences that harbored the homes in safety.

  Aly again flipped on her left-turn signal. I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t relax, couldn’t come up for a breath as she slowly eased onto the street where we’d all grown up together.

  Flashes of light overwhelmed my senses, pictures of moments lost to time. A torrent of memories pummeled through my brain, beat and crashed and consoled.

  Because so many of them were good.

  Aly as a child, black hair flying, that little girl who had always held me in the palm of her hand. Christopher and I laughing too loud, fighting like brothers, living too free.

  My father.

  My sister.

  My mother.

  Pressure squeezed my chest, almost as tightly as Aly clung to my hand.

  She inched up the road. On the left, her parents’ house came into view.

  But that was not what held my attention. It was fixed across the street and one house down.

  I exhaled a pained breath from my lungs.

  The little tan house seemed so much the same, though somehow entirely unfamiliar. The blue trim was now brown, muting out the face of the home. What had once been a staggered trail of flagstone had been completely reworked with a sidewalk and widened driveway.

  I swallowed down the lump that formed in my throat.

  Her flowers… they were gone. The colorful beds that had always grown so tall, so proud, what she’d tended and nurtured and loved beneath the windows of that little house were now a wasted desert of rocks and dirt.

  I squeezed my eyes closed because I didn’t want to see.

  “Fuck,” fell as a muffled breath from my mouth, and it took about all I had not to jump from the car.

  What the hell was I doing here? Showing my face around here when it should have been wiped clean from this place. Just like hers.

  But Aly was holding on to me. Even though she said nothing, I could still hear her whispering, Stay.

  Carefully, Aly pulled up beside a small red truck parked in her parents’ driveway. She killed the engine. All three of us just sat there. None of us knew how to move on from here because I think we all knew I didn’t belong here.

  Christopher set his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. His voice was low and rough, muttering words that were the opposite of what I felt. “Welcome back, man. This place was never the same without you.”

  “Thanks,” I forced out as I stared ahead, unable to look at the face of my friend who occupied so many of the memories battering me now.

  Wrenching the back door open, Christopher climbed out. He left Aly and me to drown in the murky waters holding me under. Maybe I was just a fool, because I’d always been a prisoner to them. I had always been facedown, head under, just on the cusp of death. The feeling that I was suffocating had become a mainstay in my life.

  Was I just pretending now? Pretending I could come up from it? Survive?

  My chest heaved, and I struggled to take in a cleansing breath, trying to rid my head of all the bullshit ravaging my brain.

  God, I was sick of it.

  Aly’s voice was strained as it broke through the flood. “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head and stared down at where she had her hand clenched in mine. Together our skin bore such a striking contrast, the smooth, flawless flesh that spoke of her innocence wrapped up in the horror marking mine.

  I chanced looking up at her. Sympathy dimmed the vibrant green of her eyes and darkened them with concern. But they were free of all the bullshit pity I’d come to expect from those who feigned knowing me, like they could really understand what it was I was feeling. In them was just this unending outpouring of love and awareness.

  “Fuck, Aly… I don’t know what I am.” Blankly, I stared out the windshield. “I knew it’d be hard coming back here…” Pain twisted up my face as I experienced it all, this overwhelming sense of what I had lost and the fear of what I had gained.

  What I’d gained in this girl who sat there listening with that pure heart.

  “But I had no idea it would feel like this. And I just keep thinking I shouldn’t be here. I fucked it up, Aly, I ruined this place, and here I am, coming back. It feels like I’m disrespecting her memory showing up here.”

  Aly leaned across the console. “Look at me,” she demanded.

  I turned toward her and she pressed her forehead to mine. She reached up and held one side of my face, her tender fingertips brushing against the faint scruff that roughened my jaw.

  “You can do this, Jared… you belong here… just as much as I do. This street is a part of your life. Our lives.” As she stressed it, she increased her hold, as if she could breathe those words into me and make me believe them.

  And I wanted to.

  I wanted to trust in that belief as much as she believed in me.

  I inhaled the satiny skin of her neck, let this girl saturate my senses as I forged on, opened myself up to answer her honestly. “I came back here that first night when I found out about the baby… to the empty field,” I clarified, the words scratching up my throat. “It felt different that night, like I could feel you everywhere, like I was supposed to be there. Maybe it was because the field was where we spent so much time, but being here, in broad daylight… I feel like I’m trespassing. Invading something that’s sacred. Crossing some line into a place where I shouldn’t be.”

  “Anywhere I am, that’s where you’re supposed to be,” she said, resolute and without
question, like it was the only thing that mattered. Gentle fingernails scratched down my cheek like she was somehow fastening herself to me, her mouth so close to mine. “I need you here, Jared… with me.”

  On a heavy breath, I tipped my head and kissed her, my mouth firm as it sought out hers. I reveled in the feel of that sweet face resting between my hands. I pulled back and searched for understanding. “You’re the only reason I’m here, Aly.”

  Aly leaned back. Her green eyes shined with all I’d run from for so long. “Maybe that’s the only reason you need.”