Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(5)
Author: A.L. Jackson

Something terrifying and completely right.

“She changed me. And if you spent so much time with her over the last few months, then I know you know Aly and I are supposed to be together. None of this other shit matters. None of it. Nothing except for her and the baby.” I met his eye. “You and I have been through a ton of shit, Christopher. I know I messed up. I messed up with you and I messed up with your sister. And I’m sorry. I wish I could change the way I handled everything, go back and do it differently, but I can’t.”

I saw the hurt bleed through the anger in his eyes, and he shook his head as he looked to the wall. “You lied to me, Jared. Fucking lied straight to my face when I asked if you had something going on with my sister behind my back.”

“Yeah, I lied. But you didn’t just ask if there was something going on. You told me there couldn’t be. Aly and I . . . there was no stopping us. We were going to happen.” I swallowed hard. “And I was ashamed of it, ashamed that I couldn’t stop myself from going to her. You think I didn’t know I should stay away?” I touched my chest. “I did. But I couldn’t. Keeping it from you was shitty. Wrong. But I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want Aly feeling any of the shame I was feeling, and I thought by keeping us a secret, I was somehow protecting her. And that’s all on me.”

I looked at my oldest friend, f**king laying myself bare. “The first night I snuck into her room, I knew I was going to hurt her, Christopher. I knew it because I wasn’t right inside. And I’m never going to be completely right. You and I both know that. I’ve destroyed a lot of shit . . .”

I let my gaze fall, drift, and I slowly shook my head. “But Aly . . . I’m always going to love her. Pretty sure I have since we were all little kids growing up together. You can hate me all you want, but you’d better get used to seeing my face around here because I’m not going anywhere. And if I do leave, I’ll be taking Aly with me.”

My attention darted to the movement at the end of the hall. Aly was standing there tucked up against the wall, listening. Dark hair tumbled all around her shoulders, her eyes swimming with the assertion I’d just made. The girl was staring at me like I was her light.

I swallowed hard.

But she was mine.

And f**k, it hurt thinking and talking about everything I’d done, the past I could never outrun, the sins I’d committed, the destruction I continually left in my wake.

Still, she was there, her eyes flooded with all the love she felt for me.

I stretched a hand out in her direction, beckoning. She dropped her head, shuffled forward, and folded herself in my arms.

“I love you,” she mumbled when she buried her face at the side of my chest.

I kissed the top of her head before I ran my hand over it. Holding her close, I looked over at Christopher. He watched us with something that maybe looked like relief, all wrapped up with a ton of distrust that I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to erase.

Of course I wanted to fix the damage I’d done. Bottom line, Christopher was my best friend. He’d been my entire life.

But the girl in my arms?

She was the one who really mattered, the one I had to make things right with, the one I was going to love for the rest of my life.

TWO

Aleena

Warmth blanketed my skin, Jared’s admission like a balm that penetrated my soul. It filled up the places inside me that his absence had hollowed out, those places that had ached with abandonment and throbbed with the fear that I had to do all of this alone.

Like water to parched soil, that warmth filled me up until I felt it blossom into something else—pride.

I was proud of him. Because I knew how difficult it was for him to stand in front of my brother and say everything he had, to admit all of it aloud.

I burrowed myself deeper into his embrace because while his words soothed and nourished me, what I needed most of all was to feel.

“Thank you . . . for coming back to me. I needed you . . . I need this,” I mumbled almost incoherently. Once the words were released from where they’d been locked inside, I couldn’t stop them. “You don’t know how thankful I am.”

“Aly,” Jared said almost as if he was rebuking me, shocked by the confession pouring from my mouth. “Baby, it’s me who is thanking you. Without you, I don’t have anything. And you’ve given me everything.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong, Jared. I need you, too.”

His skin was hot and smooth, radiating the same desire he’d left burning in me since last night. Strength vibrated in his every move, his sinewy muscles corded and tight.

Jared was rough. Hard. The defined angles of his jaw were coated in coarse hair, and turbulence swam in the depths of his ice blue eyes.

But he was holding me as if I were delicate glass, as if he’d just been granted a gift, like I was the most fragile kind of treasure that he would guard with his life. There was something secure and strong and incredibly gentle in his hold.

Even as damaged as I knew he was, this gorgeous man was my perfection.

Almost on instinct, my fingers crawled up his narrow waist to the place where a haunting depiction of my eyes had been etched into his skin. The most intense green stared out from between two wilted petals on the dying rose sealed on the center of his chest.

That rose had always seemed a beacon to me. A key.

Almost every inch of Jared’s torso and arms were covered in ink, swirled colors and sweeping scenes of blacks and grays that represented all of his pain twisted across his skin.

But the rose that represented his mother on the center of his chest had always seemed the most profound because it wholly represented his love for her and how much he believed he’d lost when she died.

I’d been undone when I found he’d made me a permanent part of it. Like the moment that had defined him had defined me, too.

And now he’d allowed me to become part of his definition. Still, I hurt for him because I understood that he was a broken man. Last night we’d lain awake for hours in the quiet, me in his arms while he stared at the ceiling and let all the revelations of our reunion seep into his consciousness. He’d murmured into my hair that he’d never be good enough for me, even though he’d spend his life trying to be. He told me it was so much easier admitting he loved me than accepting that I loved him.

I knew he still felt unworthy of love.

Yet I loved him with everything that I was.

That love was enough to crush me.