Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(87)
Author: A.L. Jackson

“She sure seemed to,” he mused softly.

His tone sobered. “I have to tell you when Aly saw me, it just about brought her to her knees, Jared. If I didn’t know how badly I messed up seeing you last night, then I sure as hell found out today.”

My eyes jerked toward him. Did he really have the nerve to come here and lecture me? Judge me? He had no clue what was going on between me and Aly.

He caught my exasperated expression, his own deflecting, his eyes flashing with regret. Nervously, he rubbed his hand over his mouth, cocked his head so he could see me better. “Aly didn’t reveal a whole lot to me. She told me if you wanted me to know what was going on, then that was between the two of us to work out. But I could see how badly she was hurting.”

He shook his head. “God, if that woman isn’t ferociously protective of you. She was angry. No question about it. She didn’t even try to hide her disappointment in me. But there was no missing her compassion, either. How happy she was that I came.” He stopped for a second, lost in thought. “She was always that way, even when she was a little girl. She was always one of the sweetest, kindest girls. But she sure as hell never kept quiet if she believed someone was being wronged. Clear not a whole lot has changed.” He smiled a little. “She loved you back then, too, you know. Obviously she never stopped.”

My stomach twisted, tangled with all the emotions pushing out from the inside, vying for release.

For a moment we sat in awkward silence. Then he dropped his face in his hands, burying the desperation of his words in them. “God, I wish there was a way for me to make you understand the relief I felt when I saw you yesterday. Like the weight of this ugly world had suddenly been lifted from my shoulders.”

I shifted on the hard ground, doing my best to keep my cool. To listen. To really f**king hear. Because a huge part of me wanted to unload on him. Pretty sure he didn’t know the first thing about burdens.

He pressed on. “But then I saw the disappointment in your eyes when you made the connection that Mary is my wife. You looked at me as if I’d been unfaithful to your mother. It just about killed me, Jared. You took off without letting me get a word in and all that weight came crashing back. And I knew I didn’t deserve a minute of your time . . . I still don’t . . . not after the way I failed you. But I had to try. I’m tired of living with all this pain. That’s why I chased you back here.”

He stared at me, his gaze traveling all over me again, like he’d done last night. Only this time slower. Studying. Like he was reading the horrific story painted on my skin.

“Look at you,” he said, the words laced with pain. “I didn’t know it was possible for my heart to break any more. But seeing this?” He craned his head toward my scars, to the evidence of my sins exposed in vibrant color, all of them shouting out my guilt. His jaw visibly clenched.

“Don’t pity me,” I seethed, the old anger I didn’t know how to rid myself of breaking free.

The shake of his head was harsh. Disbelief narrowed his eyes. “Pity you? I pity myself. I don’t even know my own son. The boy I raised and loved with all my life is getting ready to become a father and I had no clue until I showed up at your door an hour ago. It makes me sick, Jared. Sick. Disgusted with the person I allowed myself to become. It took my son being man enough to come find me for me to be man enough to turn around and try to find my son. There’s something majorly wrong with that picture.”

Blood sloshed in my mind, and a wave of dizziness swept through me. I wanted to cover my ears, to scream at him to stop, while the little boy locked up inside me felt frenzied, frantic with the need to hear him say it.

To say what I heard bleeding from his voice.

His gaze caressed the stone, and his voice dropped, became slow and reverent. “No one saw things like your mother did. She had an insight about her like no one I’ve ever known.”

He rubbed his forehead, seemed to waver on what to say.

“She loved you and Courtney so much. At night before we’d go to sleep, she’d lie in bed in my arms, dreaming about what the future would hold for you and your sister.”

My heart squeezed.

God, this was unbearable and seemed vital all at the same time.

Incredulous, low laughter tumbled from his mouth, like it originated somewhere deep within him. “It was always you and Aly in those dreams, Jared. I thought it was ridiculous. I chalked it up to her having some romantic notion about her son marrying her best friend’s daughter. I humored her . . .” He shrugged, like he’d always been as helpless to the connection he shared with Mom as I was to Aly. “. . . because how could I not? Aly was so cute, the way she followed you around. Turns out I was wrong about that, too.”

Sadness fell over him, and he looked away, his eyes tracing over the letters cut deep into the stone that marked her grave. “Without your mom, we all lost our way. Every single one of us.”

Shame bowed his head. “Jared, I need you to understand how much I loved that woman. I didn’t know how to go on when she was taken from my life. Somewhere inside of me, I knew you and Courtney needed me and you both were scared and hurting, too, but I couldn’t see through the pain to the other side. During that time, I couldn’t feel anything but my own loss. Nothing else mattered except for the way I felt. With the trouble you started getting into, it was easier letting you take the fall for it than admit you needed help just as badly as I did.”

He choked over a sob stuck deep in his throat.

I squirmed, staring down at my fisted hands.

“The night you stole the Ramirezes’ car . . . I knew what you were trying to do, Jared.” He lifted his face to the sky, his eyes squeezed tight.

Something rocked through his voice. “My last memory of you was in a hospital bed, escaping death for the second time in months. God, you were so messed up, Jared . . . your eyes wild . . . but I saw you under it. Saw someone who was suffering as deeply as I was, and I couldn’t handle it. I just turned my back and walked away.” He touched his chest. “I betrayed my own son because I hurt so bad inside.”

That lump expanded. I choked over it. “I thought you hated me.”

“For a while, I thought I did, too,” he said, completely honest.

And f**k, it hurt, him coming right out and saying it. But I got it, understood being blinded by pain.

I’d been blinded by it for a long, long time.

Something heavy broke free inside of me. Sorrow gripped me tight. My eyes blurred. “I needed you,” I whispered.