Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(84)
Author: A.L. Jackson

I was speared.

Gutted.

Darkness rushed in.

I couldn’t see.

Sickness curled through my stomach. I stumbled back. Old wounds ripped open. Wide and gaping. Crippling. I gripped my head.

Oh f**k.

I shook my head harder, fumbling down off the steps that had led me to his door.

What the f**k did I think I would achieve coming here?

Redemption?

Closure?

All I’d earned was another slap across my mother’s face, her memory disgraced.

My attention shot to the woman’s hand still splayed across her chest, to his that hung limp like submission at his side, their matching rings a f**king mockery.

I slammed my eyes shut as if I could block it all. The same pleading voice ripped through the memories. I tore my eyes open. My father stood right in front of me. “Jared . . . please . . . don’t take off,” he coaxed. “Please . . . stay. Talk to me.”

I took two shaking steps back.

He grabbed for my elbow. I tore it away, flinging my arm out at him in warning. “Don’t f**king touch me.”

Hurt flared in his eyes. “Jared, please.”

His attention latched onto my knuckles, first the hand I hurled in front of his face. It shot to the other stamped with the year she died before he tracked it up the sins that marked every inch of my skin.

The deepest frown pulled at his brows, like he was processing the last seven years, like he didn’t recognize me and he was seeing the son he shunned for the very first time.

Then it all registered.

He buckled at the middle, gripped his own head. “Oh my God . . . Jared.”

What did he think? That I’d just moved on with my life? God knew I’d been trying to, to find some semblance of normalcy amid all the chaos, to let myself love when I’d stolen his.

I glanced up at his house. But that was exactly what he’d done. He’d moved on.

He’d rejected me and forgotten her.

I was just a kid.

The thought blasted through me, almost knocking me from my feet.

That rock of unspent emotion lodged in my throat burned with the burden, threatening to break free, cracking under the weight of the affliction I’d carried for all these years.

God, I hated him. Hated that he hurt me.

It was the first time I could admit it.

He hurt me.

Left me when I needed him most.

I fought against the emotion brimming within me.

I’d just needed him to tell me it’d be okay.

Tell me that he loved me even after everything I’d done, like he’d done when I was a little boy.

Just once.

He never had.

Now, he lifted his head and stared back at me.

Tormented.

Maybe he was just reflecting my own expression.

His wife had moved to the top stair. With her hand covering her mouth, she watched us. Tears streamed down her face, hot and fast. With some kind of twisted pity. Like she knew me.

She didn’t know anything.

“Jared,” he attempted again, taking a step toward me where I stood panting in the middle of their lawn while night crawled heavily across the sky, sinking down. Closing in.

I felt caged.

Fingers reached for me.

I held both palms up in warning, backed further away, repeated on a pained whisper, “Don’t touch me.”

I couldn’t handle it right now, making sense of everything I was feeling. It was too much.

Turning, I jogged toward my bike, leaving behind everything that should have remained in the dark.

I told her . . . I told Aly again and again to let it go, to let it die, because there wasn’t anything in this world that I could do to change the past.

Now even those memories had been defiled.

I was almost to my bike when frantic arms wrapped around me from behind, desperate as they clung to me. I flung around, ready to shove them off. But I froze with the long blond hair that was all over me, this girl burying her face in my chest, my tee soaking through with her tears.

“Jared,” she exhaled through a sob. “It’s really you.” She squeezed me tighter. “It’s really you.”

My arms lifted away from my body while she glued herself to it. They encircled her with a hovering embrace. My heart pounded so hard I was sure it would hammer a hole right through my aching chest. Then these blue eyes looked up at me, holding more sadness than I’d ever seen.

This girl that was more like a women than a child.

“Jared, please, don’t go. Stay.”

God, she looked so much like my mom.

My baby sister.

Fucking beautiful.

I was shaking when I tentatively wrapped her in my arms, touched her and felt . . . home and warmth and all these f**king emotions I’d so long repressed.

I didn’t know her anymore.

Not at all.

Wasn’t sure if I ever could.

But she felt so familiar and good.

Gently I pulled back and brushed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m sorry,” I whispered at her skin before I set her aside and swung my leg over my bike.

Heartbreak flowed from her as she hugged her arms across her chest. Our father rushed up to take her side. Agony twisted his face, and he curled his arm protectively around her waist.

And it stung and bruised and bled, but still, I took some kind of comfort in it, knowing these two had somehow found their way back to each other.

At least one thing was the way it was supposed to be.

I kicked over my bike. The engine roared as I revved the throttle. For a fleeting moment, I sat there, submerged in the past.

I met my father’s eyes and hoped he could see how truly sorry I was.

Then I turned and fled.

TWENTY-FOUR

Jared

Fatigue weighed down my body. Closing my eyes like a shield, I flipped the switch just inside the door. Light blazed against my lids. Reluctantly, I opened them to the desolation of the empty hotel room.

Cold sank all the way to the marrow of my bones. I’d ridden through the streets of the city for hours, mindless, without a destination. Finally I’d given up the fight warring in my mind and headed in the direction of where I’d come. Cold air beat against my skin as I’d opened my throttle and barreled into the long, silent night. When I could ride no further, I pulled off the freeway and checked into a crappy motel.

Motherfucking story of my life.

On a heavy sigh, I tossed the keycard to the small round table under the window and scrubbed my palms over my weary face.

God, I felt so lost.

I missed Aly more than I could ever imagine.

This longing was different, though. Different from those months I’d lived without her when I’d been wasting away in Vegas, when the days had blurred and bled and spun in an endless oblivion of pain. When I’d filled my veins so full of any substance I could get my hands on I’d believed it’d somehow have the power to erase her memory that had been scored into my heart and mind.