“How could I regret you?” I brought my hands to his face, held them there, gave in to the smolder singeing my skin. “I missed you, Jared. So much. They sent you away, and I thought I’d never see you again. Do you know how much that hurt?”
But I knew he really could have no idea.
How could he?
“I thought about you every day,” I admitted, burrowing my head farther into the bed, farther into his warmth. We skirted along the edges of an embrace, his hands on my face, mine on his, the expanse between us so great I wasn’t sure we’d ever be able to cross it. “What was it like?” I asked, lifting my face to his.
He paused, his breath palpable in the room. “I don’t know, Aly. It sucked, I guess. People were always telling us what we could and couldn’t do, all the while they were calling it a rehabilitation center. There were some really good guys there, ones who just did some stupid stuff. I always hoped that maybe it did them some good. Most of us there were hopeless, though. It wouldn’t matter what punishment we had, there was no chance of coming up with a different result.”
Hopeless. I blinked, trying to understand, to make sense of the tone in his voice. “You felt you were like that?”
Sadness swelled in the room, a thickness that made my skin crawl with goose bumps.
“They let me out when I turned eighteen, Aly. Eighteen.” His voice cracked. “How fucking ridiculous is that? As if I’d paid my dues? As if spending two years of my pathetic existence behind bars would make up for what I’d done?”
Anger rushed from him, these waves of rage that pounded and fought against my spirit. Jared’s body jerked, and I could feel him trying to hold it back, to hold it in. His face contorted as if he were trying to block it all out. “What kind of bullshit is that? She was worth so much more than that.”
“Jared – ”
In a blink, he shot off my bed and onto his feet.
Shocked, I twisted around and scrambled onto my hands and knees as I faced the man standing in the middle of my room. Agitation spun through him, twitching his muscles. My breaths came heavy and strong, mixed with the hostility seeping from Jared’s pores.
Jerking both hands through his hair, he glared down at me, his eyes frantic. “Just don’t, Aly.” He touched his chest with a fisted hand, then dropped it. “Please don’t say something that means nothing.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Please. Not you, too.”
When he opened his eyes, the walls were down, everything bared to me.
Devastation.
It was the only thing I saw.
My heart twisted, this pain slicing me through to the core, cutting to the place where Jared had been a fantasy in my mind. There I’d imagined he had somehow still been whole and not what I saw now, a mess of the few mangled pieces of himself that now remained in the wake of his ruin.
“Jared,” I whispered, my hand fluttering out in his direction, silently begging him to take it. Seeing him this way killed me. It reminded me too much of those months when I could do nothing but watch him fade away. Some part of me had held on to the hope that time had healed some of those pieces.
Now I was certain it had not.
He stumbled back to the door, recognition flashing in his eyes. “You can’t fix me, Aly.”
I winced and dropped my chin as if I could conceal the place where he attempted to extract my thoughts. “I know that,” I whispered.
“Then don’t try.”
ELEVEN
Jared
Fuck.
I stood with my back to her door and tried to reel the evening in. My hands fisted in my hair, and a scream locked in my throat.
I couldn’t breathe.
Because I didn’t fucking know how.
Being in Aly’s presence had proven that.
How had I allowed this to completely spin out of control?
Aly.
Damn it. Motherfucking trigger.
She was slowly driving me mad. Insane. Constantly pushing me up against a wall there was no chance of breaking through, needling her way into my thoughts and mind, invading places I couldn’t allow her to go.
Still she managed to sink her fingers under my skin.
Urges slammed me harder than they had in years.
Addiction was a bitch like that. No matter how many years passed, it never let me forget the temporary escape it gave. The moment’s euphoria. The only place where I could forget. Well, maybe not forget. It just numbed me to the place that I couldn’t feel.
Crossing the room, I fumbled out of my sleep pants and pulled on the jeans I’d worn earlier. I shoved my feet in my boots, grabbed my keys from the coffee table, and bounded down the stairs. I turned my bike over, the loud roar of the engine coming to life. Power vibrated under my hands and feet. I kicked it free of its stand, rolled back, put it into gear. Slowly, I wound around the complex and slipped out one of the side gates.
As soon as I hit the street, I flew. Heat blasted my face. Lashes of hot, angry air tore at my shirt and whipped through my hair. I had no idea where I was going, no destination.
Motherfucking story of my life.
But I couldn’t stay there with her sweet eyes and tender hands. Couldn’t allow myself to slip into her false comfort, to settle into her warmth.
God, I wanted it.
Craved it.
Craved her.
She was doing things to me I couldn’t allow. Fuck, I’d even let her touch me, her fingers like fire as they sketched along the lines that marked my skin with my sins. She’d traced those lines as if she’d drawn them in the pages of one of her books. I’d opened my mouth and let things pour free that I’d never once uttered out loud before.
I let her take a little of what I wasn’t willing to give.
I pinned the throttle as far as it would go. The street blurred below me, and I shook with the speed, shook with the anger.
Stupid.
She admitted that she’d thought about me. Missed me.
On some level, I’d missed her, too. Too much to admit.
But it was on a level that no longer truly existed, just a hollowed-out place that echoed the joy I once had and what might have been. The fucked-up thing was she inhabited that space like she was made for it.
There was no need denying it. I cared about her. But I couldn’t care about her the way she’d want me to. Couldn’t love her the way she deserved to be.
I refused to ever love anyone again.
I was done destroying the things that were important to me. It hurt too much when they were gone.