But I didn’t fucking want to.
Upstairs, I let myself into the silent apartment. Christopher’s bedroom door sat wide open. No question, he was on the hunt, doing what the guy did best.
Quieting my feet, I crept across the room. At her door, I paused and tried to make sense of what I really felt.
When I first came here, anger was all I knew.
Tonight, I just felt fucking sad.
And I knew it was her.
It was her.
I turned the knob and stole inside her room.
Night seeped between the slats at her window, shadows playing their secrets out across her walls. Aly lay sprawled out on top of her bed, her body twisted slightly to the side. She wore these little lace panties and a matching white camisole. The dark mass of her thick hair was bunched up high over her head, the long strands spilling down all around her.
And her face…
I rubbed at my chest.
She was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. So fucking sexy and perfect and good. Like this light that shone into the blackness, lit up something in me that had been dead for so long.
Locking the door behind me, I quietly crossed the room, careful not to wake her. I just watched over her as I slowly undressed down to my underwear.
I needed to feel her.
God.
I needed to feel her.
The bed dipped as I eased down beside her and took her in my arms. Relief broke over me in waves, like maybe for a few seconds I could come up for air.
A contented sigh murmured from her lips, and her cheek found its way to my chest. “Jared,” she exhaled, the word trickling out in her own relief. Gentle fingers crawled across my rib cage before they affixed to my opposite side.
I inhaled deeply, memorizing it all, the perfection I held in my arms. She consumed me in ways I never should have let her. The last month had been like a fucking dream I somehow had been given the chance to live.
I crushed her to me and buried my nose in her hair.
But it was just that.
A dream.
I don’t get to have this.
Aly shifted to her elbow, and sincere green eyes opened to me. “I was worried about you.” Her voice was all scratchy as she searched my face in the dimness of her room. “I tried to call you.”
I blinked hard, trying to shun it all, this pain I didn’t know how to deal with. “I hate that you worry about me.” I stared up at her, knowing it was both a lie and God’s honest truth.
Aly snuggled back in the crook of my arm. It was impossible not to find comfort in her warmth. For a few seconds she held me close, soft fingers playing along my bare chest. She seemed to waver before she slowly climbed to her hands and knees, caging me. She just hovered there, looking down at me like maybe I meant too much, like when she looked at me she saw things she shouldn’t see.
I mean, fuck, to her, I knew she did. I knew it. I knew she saw things that really weren’t there.
Her eyes stayed fixed on mine as she gradually leaned down, her lips gentle as she pressed them to the rose at the center of my chest. “You miss her,” she whispered.
I wheezed for the air her words knocked from my lungs. My heart squeezed so fucking tight, and I struggled to breathe under the pain crushing my chest. The memories I’d fought to block out all day came flooding through, unrepressed. Aly had destroyed all the barriers I fought so hard to keep in place, leveled them with the touch of her hand.
A trigger I was powerless against.
And I thought maybe I should be pissed off at her, saying something so ridiculously obvious. But I wasn’t. Because in her words was everything I kept concealed. It wasn’t pity or some fucking lame attempt at sympathy that I didn’t even begin to want.
Aly understood.
Locking her to me, I fisted my hands in her hair and drew her face close to mine because I needed to see her.
I needed her. Every fucking second of every fucking day.
Fear lifted in a flurry of nerves. My mouth was so dry, but the words that had festered for years sought release from my tongue. I couldn’t stop myself from talking, from telling Aly because I just needed someone to know. “I have no right to, Aly, but I do. I miss her so much. I would do anything… give anything… to take it back.”
Sadness swept across her features, and I hated that I put it there. How many times had I warned her that she didn’t need my shit? That I had nothing to give and everything to take? I fucking took and took and took.
And here I was again, ruining the good.
When would I ever stop?
Emotions rushed, guilt and anger and fear.
Aly dipped down and kissed the rose again. I gritted my teeth, my hands like vises in her hair as she caressed over the imprint of my sin, covered it wholly with her nose and her mouth and her breath, showering me in everything I’d never deserve.
She rose up, and unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m here for you, Jared. You know that, don’t you? You can talk to me. You can tell me,” she murmured almost urgently. “Please talk to me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Visions flashed.
Aly took me by the face, forcing me to look at her. “It’s okay… You can trust me.”
I couldn’t look away from the eyes that watched me so earnestly, like she really believed it would be.
Because it wasn’t fucking okay.
That was the problem with Aly. With her, I was always pretending it was. Pretending that it was okay to feel this way, pretending it was okay to care about her so much. Pretending that maybe someday all of this really might be okay.
And I couldn’t fucking stop.
She swept her lips across mine. “Talk to me… please, Jared… I’m here.”
I clung to her a little harder, my tongue darting out to wet my lips, my voice ragged. “I was so reckless, Aly… so fucking reckless. Just a stupid punk kid.”
Just like the assholes I constantly beat down in juvie, ungrateful for everything they’d been given.
Mindless.
Shameful.
Unforgivable.
That hatred flared, thrashed as it clamored through my spirit.
Deep inside, that warning system was blaring, a merciless siren that could never be silenced. It was shouting at me to shut my mouth before it was too late. Before I couldn’t take it back.
But with Aly, it was already far too late.
My eyes dropped closed, and I grated out the words “I was so excited that morning.” My body jerked as I completely freed the memories I’d suppressed for so long. It was kind of shocking how I could still remember exactly the way I felt. But after so many years, it was there, like this glaring reminder that promised I had no chance. “I thought I was on top of the world.”