Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(71)
Author: A.L. Jackson

“Aly, baby, I love you so much. So f**king much.” I burrowed deeper. Seeking. Pleading. “You feel so good. So good.”

“Talk to me,” she begged through a pant as I devoured her flesh, the softest hands working back through my hair, nudging me back, still holding me close. “Tell me what happened tonight.”

A gush of air punched from my lungs, and I stilled. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Aly pushed up to sitting. I snapped back to find the sadness in her face, this girl who could undo me in five seconds sinking her fingers into my skin. Literally. She clutched my hands. Green eyes flashed. “You can’t keep doing this, Jared. You think I don’t know that something is killing you right now? You think I don’t know it’s been getting worse for the last month?” Pain laced through her tone. “These nights when you wake me up in the middle of the night . . . your eyes . . . they’re so intense. But hollow, Jared. Like you don’t really see me.”

Rejection slammed me, wound with a spike of remorse.

All I ever saw was her.

Her.

Didn’t she know that?

I felt sick as I pushed away, because there was no chance I could deal with this shit right now.

Aly dug her fingers in deeper, refusing to let me go. “Don’t you dare walk away from me right now, Jared. I know you, and I know what you’re thinking right now. I want you.” Hoarsely, it trembled from her throat. “Always. I love you more than anything in this world and I know you love me. But I also know whatever my mom was talking about tonight shredded you.”

Her expression softened, and she released one hand to cup my face. It singed me, her touch always fire, always comfort.

With it, my eyes dropped closed.

“I know you’re hurting. I’m here for you. You can talk to me. You can tell me.”

Bitter laughter broke into the night and I blinked back at her in disbelief. Was she really asking me to do this again? Did she not remember?

“The last time you told me that, Aly, I lost you.” The words flew from my mouth, harsh and hard, with all the crushing pain of living those months without her. “I refuse to ever let that happen again. Nothing is ever going to come between us. All this shit . . . none of it matters. None of it. Not when I have you. I keep telling you to let it go.”

“You can’t just keep pretending, Jared.”

“I’m not pretending. I’m just trying to find a way to live.”

To find a way to live when I knew I really shouldn’t.

Aly’s eyes pressed closed for the longest time. Agony pinched up her expression, before she opened to me, those green eyes falling over me with all this love and affection.

My heart steadied, pounding hard.

She took my face between both her hands. “All I want is for you to live. To be free.” Fear cut into the tenderness of her affection. “But I know you better than anyone else in this world. Anyone, Jared.” She leaned forward and gently placed her palm over the punctuated throb of my heart. “And I know there is still a huge piece of this that is dead.”

I swallowed hard with the strike.

Her voice lowered, filled with all the understanding of what she really didn’t understand. “You have to talk to someone, Jared,” she pressed on. She shook her head as if she was trying to grasp the right thing to say. “Find your father. Do something. What happened tonight? Do you think I missed the expression on your face? Do you think I didn’t know how deeply my mother hurt you just with the mention of your family? You are not okay.”

Anger surged and anxiety spun. “I told you to let it be, Aly.” It slid from my mouth as a hiss.

Fuck.

She was going to do this now? “I warned you, told you I would never outrun all the shit in my life. You accepted that.”

Aly lifted her chin. Her throat bobbed heavily as she swallowed. A tear slipped down her cheek, and God, if it didn’t hurt watching it.

I didn’t want to hurt her.

Ever.

But she had to know I wasn’t going there.

Her voice was soft in surrender. “You also told me you wanted to be better.”

I squeezed my eyes closed.

Goddamn it.

My fingers twitched because part of me wanted to destroy. To give in to the destruction. Because that’s what I always did.

I looked back her, at this girl who’d shattered all of my beliefs. Cupping her precious face, I lost myself in all that love. “Baby, it’s you . . . you that makes me better.”

Aly’s face tipped away, and she took in a shuddered breath.

“Please,” I said as I inched forward. “I need you to let this go.” Cautiously, I folded her up in my arms, careful as I laid us down in the middle of our bed. My hand slid down her delicate neck and flattened on her chest. “Please,” I whispered again.

Aly curled onto her side. She pressed her face to my neck and whispered her own plea. “Please, let me help you.”

But that’s what Aly didn’t fully understand. She couldn’t grasp that she’d brought me back from the dead. Yeah, a piece of me died when my mother did. But what was left of my heart and soul belonged to Aly.

She clung to me, like I’d been clinging to her earlier. “I can’t lose you,” she said.

I brushed my fingers through her hair, wound a lock in my finger, the words hoarse. “You won’t.”

She couldn’t.

Because she was the only air I could breathe.

TWENTY

Jared

Aly stood at the island in the kitchen. Completely absorbed, her focus was intent on whisking the creamy mixture she had billowing up in a silver bowl.

Affection pulsed through me. Hard and defined.

With my shoulder leaned up against the short hall wall just outside our bedroom door, I watched her.

How could I stop?

Quietly she hummed to herself. Black hair fell down around one shoulder, her attention fully absorbed in the task at hand.

It hurt a little looking at her. It seemed impossible one woman could make me feel this way, that one girl held my heart with a single string. The one that connected us, this unseen bond that wound us so f**king tight sometimes it felt like it was squeezing the life right out of me.

Like I couldn’t breathe.

But really, it was that I couldn’t breathe without her.

Shaking my head, I glanced around the open room. Our house looked like it’d blown up. Balloons and streamers were strung up everywhere, all of them black and silver with dots of hot pink.

I chuckled a little.