Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(29)
Author: A.L. Jackson

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 f**ked 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.”