Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(28)
Author: A.L. Jackson

I straightened his collar, murmuring close to his mouth, “Thank you for doing this with me . . . for me. I can’t tell you how much it means.”

One arm slipped low around my waist, and he tugged me flush to him. “I’m not ever going to leave you alone to deal with shit again, Aly. We’re in this together.”

A surge of joy pushed at my ribs. I bit my lower lip as I melted into his embrace, trying to contain how happy he made me. I rested my cheek on his chest. “Together. I like the sound of that.”

He wound me a little tighter, rocked us as he held me in the middle of the room. “Me, too,” he murmured at the sensitive skin just below my ear. An errant lock of hair strayed down the side of my neck, and Jared brushed it back with his nose, kissed beneath it, before he wound it in his finger. “I like anything that ends in you and me.” The suggestive words fell into my room like a promise.

I sighed and shoved all my worries down because none of them mattered when I was in Jared’s arms.

Two loud raps rattled my bedroom door. “Let’s go,” Christopher called.

Jared pulled back. Something mischievous and sweet played all over that gorgeous face. “God, your brother is a pain in my ass.”

Softly laughing, I laced my fingers with his, thinking how the two of them had hardly changed, how they fought and warred and seemed once again forever the best of friends.

“Come on. Let’s go celebrate.” The words were soft, filled with my hope for the day.

With my hope for us.

Yeah, today might be difficult, fraught with the glaring obstacles Jared and I knew we’d eventually have to face, sooner rather than later because we’d been tossed right in the middle of them.

We would have to contend with his past that would forever trail every move he made, the lurking shadows that chased him in the day and haunted him in the night.

But today that past wouldn’t just linger in the recesses of his mind.

I’d asked Jared to go back and stand right at the doorstep of the ghosts that ruled his world.

To step into them.

And we’d have to deal with all the assumptions born from the trouble Jared had been in, the faulty ideas bred in my father’s mind, and the inevitable disappointment that would come along with them.

A shiver of nerves raced through me as Jared squeezed my hand.

But Jared and I were doing this together.

In response, I gripped his hand tighter and let the deepest peace settle over me.

Yes, today was a day to celebrate.

SEVEN

Jared

Crisp, cool air floated on the light fall breeze. Across the desert sky, the ice blue canopy seemed to go on forever, the sun casting rays of warmth across the heavens.

Aly ambled ahead of me, balancing in these cute little chunky boots she wore with that dress. The slight lilt of her hips struck up a cadence with the rest of her body. It left me all itchy and anxious. My fingers twitched as I followed her across the parking lot. Wayward pieces of dark hair spilled down from the mass of locks twisted on the top of her head, dripping down to kiss the back of her luscious neck, which I was pretty damned sure she’d done with the sole purpose of driving me out of my mind.

Aly tossed a glance over her shoulder. Something like welcome and peace flashed in her eyes when they washed over me.

I roughed my palm over the top of my head and ran it down to grip at the tense muscles in my neck, doing my best to shove down the nerves that spiked inside of me.

This girl. I swear to God, she was something else. So f**king sexy and unbearably sweet.

I’d be damned if I didn’t do this for her. For once in my miserable life, I needed to stand up for something that was right.

I mean, shit, I didn’t just need to. I wanted to. I wanted to be the man who stood at her side, to declare this beauty that had been bred because it was bred of her.

Still, a slow dread simmered under it all, marching like an army of ants beneath my skin, burning a fiery path as they worked their way out.

Never had I stepped back into the old neighborhood. Drawn, I’d gone what seemed too many times, sitting across the road while those simple houses seemed to taunt me from afar, a picture of the life I’d been erased from because I’d been the one who destroyed it.

But that empty field . . . it’d called to me, the place that echoed the memories that both comforted and crushed, begged me closer the night when the memories trapped in the deepest recesses of my mind had finally been cut free. Where they had run rampant, challenging, changing everything I’d ever believed.

I climbed into the front passenger seat of Aly’s little car, and Christopher slid into the backseat behind me.

I watched Aly slip behind the steering wheel. She turned over the ignition, put the car in reverse, and carefully backed out, craning her head around to make sure all was clear.

I swallowed down the terror that was building steadily, born somewhere in the darkness places of my spirit.

It had always been her.

Now I’d do this for her.

No turning back now.

The old neighborhood was only about fifteen minutes away. Buildings and stores and houses whizzed by in a distorted haze, grayed-out flashes of nothing as we flew past. No words were said. Instead we just let the tension steadily build in the confines of the car.

It was like Aly and Christopher knew how difficult going back to the place where we all grew up together would be for me, and the short trip was given as a moment of silence.

She turned right onto the wide, three-lane road that carved through the center of the city.

I sucked in a ragged breath.

Aly reached for my shaking hand over the console, weaving her fingers through mine. Uncontrollably, my knee bounced. With every second that passed, anxiety ratcheted me one degree higher.

As a kid, I’d been down this road what seemed a million times. Just a stretch of common, innocuous pavement. Until it became the place that meant the most, where stupidity and selfishness had reigned. God, I’d felt so powerful when I traveled the short expanse of road for the first time, thinking myself such a man. In turn, I’d learned I was just a foolish little boy.

That hollow place inside me throbbed and tremors crawled in a creeping wave through my body, like they slithered out from the darkest places in my spirit.

God, I didn’t know if I could do this.

I felt the power of Aly peering at me, searching me through her worry. In the same moment, she was comforting me with the promise of what I never thought I’d have.

She turned her attention back to the road, flicked on her blinker, and eased into the left-turn lane.