Come to Me Quietly (Closer to You #1)(76)
Author: A.L. Jackson

Because I wanted to live for her.

I wanted it. I wanted to be with her. And I didn’t f**king 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**king 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**king 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 br**sts, 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**king 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.

Fuck. 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.