Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(78)
Author: A.L. Jackson

Agitation ratcheted higher, twisting me tighter. I hated her looking at me that way.

In emphasis, her lids dropped closed. “Gabe is delusional, Jared.”

She blinked them open, her eyes swirling with all this doubt I didn’t know how to make sense of. “All of this is about us, Jared. About your fear. Don’t you see it? What you’re doing to us?”

My attention dropped to the bandage on her arm. Yeah, I f**king saw what I was doing to us. What I was doing to her.

She took a desperate step forward. I could see the bob of her throat, the hard swallow as she approached me. “Don’t you see what’s going to happen to us if you keep ignoring everything inside you?”

Dread barreled in. My heart started pounding so f**king hard I could feel it in my ears.

“You have to get help, Jared. Talk to someone. Find a way to face the demons inside of you.” It was no longer a request. I could feel it. It was an ultimatum sliding out of my girl’s mouth.

Aly shoved her fisted hand out in front of her and turned it over. She slowly unfurled her fingers. In her palm was a wadded- up piece of paper, small and yellow and square. Still it shouted out like some harbinger of war.

I blinked in confused distress, and took a step back as the dread increased.

“Take it,” she pled, inching forward.

And I didn’t f**king want to, but I was helpless to tell this girl no. With a shaky hand, I reached out to take the crumpled paper from her hand.

When I did, something like horror lashed across her face and settled in her eyes. “Please, know I didn’t want to do it this way, Jared. I never wanted to back you into a corner.” Misery twisted her face, and she clutched her chest. “I love you more than I could ever tell you. And I’m scared because I feel you slipping away. Every day it feels like another piece of you is stolen from me and one day I’m going to lose you. I can feel it, Jared. All the hurt you keep hidden inside is going to wreck you. Wreck us.”

Panic hammered at my chest. I smoothed out the paper, trying to comprehend what Aly had written on the sticky note, knowing whatever it was I definitely didn’t want to see.

And I was thinking of all these f**king terrifying scenarios. All of them led back to her writing her good-bye.

But no.

It was an address. In California.

Los Angeles.

Something vicious curled in my consciousness.

With it pinched between my fingers, I stared at her, my eyes narrowed as I searched her face, as I fought against the nausea that bound my stomach into knots and raced up my throat. It lodged right at that ball of unspent emotion, throbbed and pulsed and pled with the sorrow that could never be shed.

“What is this?” I forced out.

Hesitation thickened her tongue. She wrung her hands and whispered, “It’s your father’s address.”

I felt as if I’d been punched. How many fights had I fought in my life? How many hits had I taken? I had no clue. The only thing I knew was this hurt was worse than any physical blow that had ever been inflicted.

“You looked up my father’s address?” I demanded through the betrayal.

I gripped my head. I didn’t want to believe it. How could she do this to me?

Aly stole forward. She stretched her fingers out toward me, f**king calling out to me like she did.

I backed away.

“Please don’t be mad. I never wanted to give it to you like this. I . . . I started looking for him a couple weeks ago. I was going to talk to you about it, Jared, encourage you to find him because you have to. You can’t move on and never look back when your soul is tied to the past. You need your family.”

Bullshit.

She was supposed to be my family.

I crumpled up the little piece of paper and hurled it toward the wall. It didn’t go far. It dropped fast and tumbled across the floor.

“What the f**k, Aly? You just go getting in my business?”

She blanched like I slapped her and staggered back. Confusion flitted all over her face. Her mouth trembled. “Your business?” Hurt saturated the words. “Anything that has something to do with you is my business.”

“Not that!” shot from my mouth. “I asked you to leave it the f**k alone.”

One f**king thing I’d asked from her.

One f**king thing.

I’d given her everything else.

“Why do you have to go digging up ghosts? It’s done, and there’s not one single thing I can do to change that.”

“Ghosts?” Disbelief flashed all over her face. “You think I’m digging up ghosts? Well, guess what, Jared.” Aly jabbed her finger toward the floor. “Those ghosts live right here. Haunting you . . . every move you make. And those ghosts are going to ruin us if you don’t turn around and acknowledge they’re there.” Her angry eyes softened. “You have to find peace with what happened to your mom, Jared.”

Peace?

Images burst behind my eyes. All that f**king blood and that scared smile, my mother’s voice a fading echo in my ear. That f**king dream that set me on fire every night, singeing as it seared, cutting me deeper and deeper.

It’ll be okay.

Red veiled my sight. I crammed my fists into my eyes.

I ruin everything I touch.

Anger surged, saturating every cell. Sickness clawed. I spun, and my fist connected with the wall to the side of the fireplace. Plaster and paint splintered, giving way beneath the rage that curdled my soul. Pain throbbed up my arm, and that sadistic satisfaction burned through my wicked spirit.

Aly screamed.

Ruin.

I cocked my arm back and rammed it again, tearing through the false security I’d erected around us, as if these walls could protect her from me.

Coals continued to smolder, the darkest red in the pit of the fireplace.

Burning to dust in that f**ked-up shrine.

Enraged, I raked my hand through the row of pictures displayed on the mantel. Frames flew across the room and crashed to the ground. Glass shattered as another piece of me was destroyed.

It incited something inside of me.

I hated.

God, I hated.

Gritting my teeth, I dug my fingers into the edge of the carved wood that hung over the fireplace. That mantel. Sweat beaded on my forehead as I tore at it, like pebbles of vile blood excreted from my spirit.

It began to splinter and the seal broke free from the wall. I grunted as I tore it completely away, and I lifted it above my head and threw it against the stones, desperate to rid this house of anything that was my mother when it was supposed to belong to Aly.

Aly.

Blood seeped from my fingertips as I dug them behind the wood that had been mounted on each side of the hearth. The thin pieces of wood carved with the bouquet splintered. I frantically ripped and tore and rid this house of what never should have intruded into this place.