Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(11)
Author: A.L. Jackson

God, he was beautiful.

Following close behind him, I felt confident but shaky. All of Jared’s reservations were valid, and I felt them, too. But it was time to face them. As I auto-dialed, a tremble of nerves rushed through me.

“Hello?” Mom answered almost cautiously. A din of noise rose up in the background around her. She’d called me numerous times over the last few days since I revealed Jared and me to her on Saturday. Worried, she’d been checking up on me, promising me one day it would be okay.

I guess moms know best.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”

“I’m good,” I answered honestly. For the first time in months, it really was true. “Where are you?” Distorted voices echoed through the line.

“Ugh . . . standing in a line at the grocery store that is about a million miles long. Remind me next year not to do my Thanksgiving shopping the afternoon before. Everyone and their mother is here. I think there was a fistfight on aisle two over the last jar of cranberry sauce.” The words were light and funny and good-natured, just like my mom.

I smiled, and I could see her rushing around, trying to cram five days’ work into one as she prepared for dinner tomorrow.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. “You seem . . . different.”

“Yeah . . . I just needed to talk to you . . . or tell you . . .” I trailed off.

Silence met me from the other end, waiting.

Jared rode ahead of me, a beacon I followed because he’d always been my destination. My best friend and the master of my thoughts, the one I yearned for even when I hadn’t been old enough to understand what that yearning meant.

“I’m bringing him to Thanksgiving dinner at the house tomorrow.”

I didn’t even need to mention his name because everything Jared meant to me was wound into that one simple statement. A proclamation.

The silence thickened, and her breaths slowed as realization set in, then hastened in relief. She spoke quietly, “I knew he’d come back to you.”

Tears welled in my eyes. Because I was thankful. Thankful for my mom, for her heart, for the support I already knew she was going to give. Thankful for Jared. I stuffed the emotion down and continued, “I want to be the one to tell Dad about us, but I think it’d be a good idea that you tell him Jared is coming so he’s prepared.”

Tomorrow would shock my dad. At least he could be prepared to see Jared’s face.

I could almost see her frown. “Yeah, sweetie, I think you’re probably right.”

THREE

Jared

God, this woman did things to me that couldn’t be legal.

And if they were, they sure as hell shouldn’t be.

I paced the hall outside her bathroom door, feeling like the freak I knew I was.

The shower head squealed when Aly turned it on. Metal screeched as the shower curtain was dragged back. Water echoed, pounding into the empty tub.

She’d kissed me at the door five seconds ago and said, “Give me a couple minutes to get cleaned up.”

From inside, fabric rustled. She was stripping out of her clothes. I knew it. I was picturing her unbuttoning that white blouse she always wore to work, unzipping the black slacks, removing the silk and lace hidden underneath.

My hands weren’t the only thing to twitch.

A low chuckle escaped me. Yeah, I’d done that a time or two for her before, torn those work clothes from her body, back when we’d slinked and stole, back when I cursed myself every time I locked the door behind us for taking what I never should have had.

Guilt taunted me from somewhere deep within my consciousness and wove with the remnants of doubt that weren’t buried all that deep.

I had no idea what was right anymore. I’d spent so much time berating myself for wanting her, now it seemed almost wrong that I was allowed to have her.

I paced a little more before I forced myself to sit on the couch. Either that or break down the bathroom door, and I figured enough doors had been broken down around here.

About ten minutes later, the shower finally shut off. Vague noises filtered through the walls, the slam of a cupboard, the rush of the faucet, the thud of a drawer, hints of my girl who’d left me aching ever since she shut me out just moments ago.

God, I needed her.

A lot of shit had changed since I left, but one thing definitely remained the same.

The girl made me completely insane.

Fucking certified.

Mad with desire and confusion and every f**ked-up, contradictory thought I could ever have.

The bathroom door unlatched.

She was never supposed to belong to me. Yet there she was, standing at the very end of the hall, peering over at me.

Mine.

My responsibility. My life.

Nerves jackhammered my heart into a frenzy.

I still couldn’t make sense of it, everything that had been revealed last night.

Shifting on her feet, she watched me, searched me, like she would give about anything to dig through my thoughts, to really know what I was feeling. Her expression softened.

And I thought, No. Maybe she would just be satisfied to crawl inside me, to sink down into the marrow of my bones and take up residence in any place I’d let her.

But she was already there.

Aly was everywhere. I felt her life in my veins, because she’d breathed hers into mine. All of me belonged to her because before her, I’d been nothing. Nonexistent. Worthless. Now I meant something to someone. Someone was relying on me, and that reality f**king terrified me.

I stretched my hand out, and she shuffled across the floor. Unrestrained pleasure fluttered all around her mouth as she neared, and I couldn’t help but smile. Her hair was all wet, the long length of it flattened out in near-black sheets from where she’d run a brush through it. Dampened tendrils clung to her bare shoulders. She was wearing a tank top and of course those sleep shorts.

I wondered if she knew . . . if she wore them because she could see right inside my mind, watch my thoughts careen and swerve, skid into a desire that surged through every inch of my body.

I yanked her down onto the couch with me.

Aly yelped, giggling as I flung back and pulled her on top of me.

She wiggled and laughed, and I was pretty damned sure she knew exactly what these shorts did to me.

Warmth rushed through me with the joy contained in the sound that passed through her lips, the weight of her blanketing me in the same comfort I’d woken up swimming in this morning.

She inundated my senses, coconut and the good and the girl.

God.

How much had I missed that? How much had I missed her?