Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(21)
Author: A.L. Jackson

She clicked the fob. The running lights flashed. I stood at the passenger door and watched her walk around the front of the car. She climbed inside and started the ignition.

Fear constricted my chest. This was the first time I’d seen Aly this way, pushing me away instead of begging me closer. Exhaling a heavy breath from my lungs, I finally unlatched the door and sat down in the seat.

Silently, Aly put her car in reverse, backed out, and pulled out onto the street.

The ride home was short and still the f**king longest of my life. Aly didn’t say a word, just kneaded at the steering wheel, while her chest rose and fell in spastic quakes. Like she was struggling. Struggling not to cry. Unspoken words strained between us, fighting for release. But the truth was, I didn’t know what the f**k to say because I didn’t know what Aly wanted to hear.

She parked and got out, and I followed her upstairs.

Inside, the apartment was dark. Empty. Cold.

Aly dumped her purse to the floor and went straight for her room. I swallowed hard as I trailed her, three steps behind. I stopped in the doorway. She flipped on the small lamp on her dressing table. Dull light climbed up the wall, spread out in a subdued glow across the ceiling.

She kept her back to me and hugged herself across her middle.

I fidgeted, shifting uneasily on my feet. Aly was just so goddamned beautiful, it caused me physical pain to look at her. It was an ache that started in the center of my chest and spread out to saturate the deepest places in my body. It throbbed in that hidden place that’d been made for her, the one she filled up when I had no idea that was really where she was supposed to be.

Pressure built up in the stifled air.

Suffocating.

I wanted to reach for her, break through it.

I f**king hated it. Hated hurting her.

I took a step inside and locked the door behind me. Hesitation stilled me before I finally found my voice and whispered, “Aly . . . baby . . .”

Crossing to the middle of the room, I stretched out my hand with the intention of touching her, comforting her, but Aly whirled around, stumbling back.

Wetness streaked down her cheeks and glistened in her eyes, that gorgeous face a mess of tears. My gut twisted into the tightest knot.

She blinked rapidly, fighting some kind of internal war. She fisted her hands, clutched them like a shield at her chest. “Did you f**k her? When you were with me?” The words were chopped and broken.

They cut through me like a jagged knife, bleeding me dry. “What?” was all I could gasp.

Disbelief shook my head, and I wet my lips as I roughed a hand down the back of my neck, dropped it to my side, and took one anguished step forward. “Goddamn it, Aly . . . you really think I’d be with her when I was with you?” I asked, incredulous, my head pitched to the side. “You think you weren’t the only f**king thing I could think about, night and day?”

More tears slipped free, and Aly blanched as she gasped for air, hit by another wave of pain. “I don’t know!” It came out as a tormented cry. She held her fists closer, tighter, her voice cracking as it lowered. “I don’t know, Jared, and that scares me. I feel like I know you better than anyone else in this world and there’s still a huge part of you I don’t know at all.” The words tumbled out in an agonized confession.

Emotion slammed me, shame and guilt and the f**king insane amount of love I had for this girl.

Aly’s eyes went wide when I rushed in and gripped her by both sides of the head. Waves of soft hair were all bunched up between my fingers, her smell and her sweet and her heart washing over me in a breaking wave. I forced her to look at me, my hold intense. Desperate. Just as desperate as the admission that flooded from my mouth. “I will never lie to you, Aly. And, yeah, I f**ked her.”

A sob tore up Aly’s throat, and she thrashed, struggling to break away.

But I was not letting her go.

My fingers dug into the back of her head, my thumbs on her soaked cheeks. “It was before I ever stepped through your bedroom door. The first week I was here.”

A sharp breath wheezed down Aly’s throat, and she wrapped her hands around my wrists, like she didn’t know if she wanted to push me away or pull me closer.

I made the decision for her, tugging her close enough her nose was touching mine. “Even then . . . even then . . . I felt f**king guilty because somewhere inside me, I already knew I belonged to you.”

Aly whimpered and dug her fingers into the skin of my wrists. She winced, the words rough with her own insecurities. “I can’t stand the thought of you being with someone else. Not knowing who you were with or what you did while you were gone these last three months. It kills me, Jared . . . kills me to think of what you were doing while I was here worrying about you. When you came back, I tried to pretend like it didn’t matter, that it was in the past. But seeing you with that girl . . . it hurt.”

My fingers twisted in the mass of her hair. Shame sliced through my consciousness, flashes of the dirty hotel room in Vegas where I’d wasted away, where I’d begged for death to come. Where I’d missed and hurt and gave in to the demons that would forever plague my mind.

“You want to know what I did while I was gone, Aly? Fine.” I squeezed her tighter, lifted her higher as I forced her to look at me, to see me, to see the part she was scared she didn’t know. The part I didn’t want her to see because it was the part she should be scared of. The side that harbored the foul, where the vile held my soul captive.

“I f**king filled my body with everything and anything I could find to cover up the ache that was left without you in my life. I started using again, Aly. Day after day, night after night, I tried to drown out the memory of you. Then I almost got myself killed. I should have died out there on that deserted road when I crashed my bike. But somehow there was still something keeping me chained to this world. Last night I found out what that was. It was you. It’s always been you.”

I cupped her face. My whisper intensified as I stared down at the fervent green eyes begging up at me. “I never touched anyone while I was gone. No one. I couldn’t. Not after you.” I brushed her tears away and shook my head. “No one.”

With my words, Aly snapped. She gripped me by the back of the head and dragged my mouth to hers. She made a desperate play to bring me closer, pressing the length of her body to mine as she tore at my shirt. Her kiss came urgent, like she was dying and I was the only one who could save her.

Heat surged into the confines of her room, drowning us in need.