Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(60)
Author: A.L. Jackson

I smirked back him. I was already on my way.

I slinked past a group of girls who crowded the way. Rounding around the back, I inched up behind her. My hand slipped around her waist, all too hasty to flatten my body to her back. Pulling her close, I met his eye from over her shoulder.

Hatred flashed on his face, before Dickhead reeled it in. Then he tossed me an arrogant smile. “Hey, man.”

“How’s it going?” I lifted my chin in my own silent sneer.

That’s right, ass**le.

Mine.

And f**k, I didn’t pretend not to know what I was doing. Claiming her. Marking her.

Unease shifted his feet and flared his nostrils.

Dickhead deserved it, too, making me squirm that night months ago when he’d been locked up behind her door, driving me straight out of my goddamned mind, not knowing what was happening or what was being said. He’d come looking to reconcile, wondering what had gone wrong between the two of them. Aly had taken him into her room to talk. Him being alone with her had driven me crazy. At that time, Aly and I had been messing around, touching, feeling, kissing. No sex. That had been the rule.

But that night I’d snapped. Tripped.

Right into ecstasy.

It was the night I finally accepted there was no stopping what was happening between Aly and me.

It was the night I’d taken it all. Aly had given herself to me. Gave me what no one else had ever had. Sarcastic laughter caught in my throat. Guess I should be thanking him for pushing us over the edge.

Dickhead shrugged it off, like it didn’t matter at all. Like he could pretend none of this mattered anything to him.

But I saw it all there, witnessed it where it was written across his face.

“It was great to see you, Aly. I’m sure I’ll talk to you soon,” he said with a nonchalant lift of his shoulder as he backed away. His eyes made another pass down the length of her body.

“Yeah, I’ll see you around,” she returned.

• • •

Darkness shrouded the room. I stared up at the shadows on the ceiling. I’d been awake for hours. There was nothing I could do to settle or quiet my mind. Couldn’t still the agitation twitching all the muscles in my body.

Wind howled. Branches screeched along the outside wall, and a faint rim of light flicked shadows through our bedroom window. Winter battered the desert city on cold gusts of air, the sky inky and clear. There would be no rain or snow. No relief for the dried-up ground.

And there would be no relief for what haunted me tonight.

Aly stirred at my side where she slept. A soft breath of air parted her lips. All that silken hair was strewn out on our bed, a single bare shoulder exposed where she rested on her side, facing me. I looked down at her angel face. I traced the sharp cut of her chin and across the defined angle of her high cheekbones.

Yet everything about her was soft.

The hardness of me always seemed a contradiction.

But still we always seemed to fit.

Doubt fluttered into my consciousness and mingled with the guilt.

Christopher’s concern had gotten under my skin. Gabe’s presence had irritated it like a little piece of sand.

In the shadows, I lifted my hand, stared at the numbers stamped on my knuckles. I fisted it, wishing for a way to erase it.

A way to erase who I was.

God. I just wanted to be free.

To forget it all.

Aly burrowed into my chest. Her naked flesh burned into mine. She singed me. Made me forget my name and made me lose my mind.

Allowed me escape.

A way to shun the pain and neglect my shame.

That was what I had to hold on to. Not the f**ked-up questions brewing in my head, the ones Christopher had planted there.

A blink of light lit up on Aly’s nightstand. A silent text illuminated her phone.

I smiled a little to myself.

Had to be Christopher. At half past three in the morning, no less. He’d probably gotten himself into trouble. I was betting my phone would ring in about fifteen seconds with him asking me to come bail him out of whatever he’d gotten himself into.

Instead Aly’s lit again.

Then again.

Unease twisted through me. Carefully I stretched over her to retrieve it. I sat up in bed, careful not to disturb her. She just shifted to her stomach and turned her head the other direction.

I flicked my thumb over the faceplate.

Not Christopher.

And I knew I was intruding, reading Aly’s texts. But f**k, I couldn’t stop myself.

Can’t stop thinking about you after seeing you tonight.

Hatred flared like a sickness clawing at the inside of my stomach.

Instinctively, I scrolled through the feed.

What are you thinking, Aly? Is this really what you want?

I crushed her phone in my grip.

You can’t want that, Aly. That life? That guy? What happened to you? What happened to the girl I knew? We had a good thing and you’re wasting it on him? I should never have just walked away. I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder.

My vision clouded.

I know you have to feel trapped. I promised you a long time ago I wasn’t giving up on us. I’m still not.

I swallowed the lump wedged in my throat. Shaking. Fucking shaking. The good-guy act perfected, playing me out to be the bad guy when he knew nothing about how much Aly meant to me. Fucking ass**le. What did he think? That I’d let him have her? Give her up? Not a f**king chance.

I scrubbed my palm over my face, trying to break up the nerves, trying to clear my narrowed sight.

Another text came through.

The baby thing, it’s weird. I admit it. But I can get past it. Just call me. Let me help you.

The baby thing? He could get past it?

Rage simmered in my blood. A steady build that just about hit an all-out boil. I ground my teeth as I squeezed Aly’s phone in my hand, the other fisting tufts of my hair as I fought with the impulse to throw her phone against the wall, and I had the sudden undeniable urge to hear glass shatter. I tried to shun the compulsion to jump to my feet, did my best to ignore the desire to seek out a release, the moment’s reprieve I’d find in the destruction, my fists lost in a fury as I buried them again and again in the wall.

Or better yet, buried them in his face.

I swallowed hard, staring at the screen as I tapped out a return. My hands trembled, and my fingers fumbled across the plate.

Shit.

Stay the f**k away from my girl. I won’t ask you twice.

I gritted my teeth as I pushed send.

Minutes passed while I sat there seething, waiting for a response.

Daring him for one.

The coward gave me none.

Her phone sat silent while I struggled to breathe.