Come to Me Quietly (Closer to You)

by Jackson, A. L.

  And to know he’d been angry that he’d failed?

  Confusion and hurt and fear saturated my spirit because I couldn’t help worrying he’d try again.

  I tried to swallow the lump wedged in the middle of my throat. “Maybe it turned out the way it was really supposed to be.”

  Hard laughter rocked from his chest. “Nothing turns out the way it’s supposed to, Aly. And even if it did, I would only ruin it. You need to remember that. I warned you that you’d regret doing this… .” His fingers twisted deeper in my hair and he shifted to palm my neck with the other hand. He squeezed to emphasize our friendship, so hard it almost hurt. But it was my heart that hurt.

  “How could I regret you?” I brought my hands to his face, held them there, gave in to the smolder singeing my skin. “I missed you, Jared. So much. They sent you away, and I thought I’d never see you again. Do you know how much that hurt?”

  But I knew he really could have no idea.

  How could he?

  “I thought about you every day,” I admitted, burrowing my head farther into the bed, farther into his warmth. We skirted along the edges of an embrace, his hands on my face, mine on his, the expanse between us so great I wasn’t sure we’d ever be able to cross it. “What was it like?” I asked, lifting my face to his.

  He paused, his breath palpable in the room. “I don’t know, Aly. It sucked, I guess. People were always telling us what we could and couldn’t do, all the while they were calling it a rehabilitation center. There were some really good guys there, ones who just did some stupid stuff. I always hoped that maybe it did them some good. Most of us there were hopeless, though. It wouldn’t matter what punishment we had, there was no chance of coming up with a different result.”

  Hopeless. I blinked, trying to understand, to make sense of the tone in his voice. “You felt you were like that?”

  Sadness swelled in the room, a thickness that made my skin crawl with goose bumps.

  “They let me out when I turned eighteen, Aly. Eighteen.” His voice cracked. “How fucking ridiculous is that? As if I’d paid my dues? As if spending two years of my pathetic existence behind bars would make up for what I’d done?”

  Anger rushed from him, these waves of rage that pounded and fought against my spirit. Jared’s body jerked, and I could feel him trying to hold it back, to hold it in. His face contorted as if he were trying to block it all out. “What kind of bullshit is that? She was worth so much more than that.”

  “Jared – ”

  In a blink, he shot off my bed and onto his feet.

  Shocked, I twisted around and scrambled onto my hands and knees as I faced the man standing in the middle of my room. Agitation spun through him, twitching his muscles. My breaths came heavy and strong, mixed with the hostility seeping from Jared’s pores.

  Jerking both hands through his hair, he glared down at me, his eyes frantic. “Just don’t, Aly.” He touched his chest with a fisted hand, then dropped it. “Please don’t say something that means nothing.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Please. Not you, too.”

  When he opened his eyes, the walls were down, everything bared to me.

  Devastation.

  It was the only thing I saw.

  My heart twisted, this pain slicing me through to the core, cutting to the place where Jared had been a fantasy in my mind. There I’d imagined he had somehow still been whole and not what I saw now, a mess of the few mangled pieces of himself that now remained in the wake of his ruin.

  “Jared,” I whispered, my hand fluttering out in his direction, silently begging him to take it. Seeing him this way killed me. It reminded me too much of those months when I could do nothing but watch him fade away. Some part of me had held on to the hope that time had healed some of those pieces.

  Now I was certain it had not.

  He stumbled back to the door, recognition flashing in his eyes. “You can’t fix me, Aly.”

  I winced and dropped my chin as if I could conceal the place where he attempted to extract my thoughts. “I know that,” I whispered.

  “Then don’t try.”

  ELEVEN

  Jared

  Fuck.

  I stood with my back to her door and tried to reel the evening in. My hands fisted in my hair, and a scream locked in my throat.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Because I didn’t fucking know how.

  Being in Aly’s presence had proven that.

  How had I allowed this to completely spin out of control?

  Aly.

  Damn it. Motherfucking trigger.

  She was slowly driving me mad. Insane. Constantly pushing me up against a wall there was no chance of breaking through, needling her way into my thoughts and mind, invading places I couldn’t allow her to go.

  Still she managed to sink her fingers under my skin.

  Urges slammed me harder than they had in years.

  Addiction was a bitch like that. No matter how many years passed, it never let me forget the temporary escape it gave. The moment’s euphoria. The only place where I could forget. Well, maybe not forget. It just numbed me to the place that I couldn’t feel.

  Crossing the room, I fumbled out of my sleep pants and pulled on the jeans I’d worn earlier. I shoved my feet in my boots, grabbed my keys from the coffee table, and bounded down the stairs. I turned my bike over, the loud roar of the engine coming to life. Power vibrated under my hands and feet. I kicked it free of its stand, rolled back, put it into gear. Slowly, I wound around the complex and slipped out one of the side gates.

  As soon as I hit the street, I flew. Heat blasted my face. Lashes of hot, angry air tore at my shirt and whipped through my hair. I had no idea where I was going, no destination.

  Motherfucking story of my life.

  But I couldn’t stay there with her sweet eyes and tender hands. Couldn’t allow myself to slip into her false comfort, to settle into her warmth.

  God, I wanted it.

  Craved it.

  Craved her.

  She was doing things to me I couldn’t allow. Fuck, I’d even let her touch me, her fingers like fire as they sketched along the lines that marked my skin with my sins. She’d traced those lines as if she’d drawn them in the pages of one of her books. I’d opened my mouth and let things pour free that I’d never once uttered out loud before.

  I let her take a little of what I wasn’t willing to give.

  I pinned the throttle as far as it would go. The street blurred below me, and I shook with the speed, shook with the anger.

  Stupid.

  She admitted that she’d thought about me. Missed me.

  On some level, I’d missed her, too. Too much to admit.

  But it was on a level that no longer truly existed, just a hollowed-out place that echoed the joy I once had and what might have been. The fucked-up thing was she inhabited that space like she was made for it.

  There was no need denying it. I cared about her. But I couldn’t care about her the way she’d want me to. Couldn’t love her the way she deserved to be.

  I refused to ever love anyone again.

  I was done destroying the things that were important to me. It hurt too much when they were gone.

  Resentful laughter tumbled from my twisted mouth when I noticed where I’d ended up.

  Of course. Directly across from the old neighborhood.

  Shocking.

  I was drawn here just as strongly as I’d been drawn back to Phoenix. Just an empty ache that called to me. Taunted me. I came to a rolling standstill, easing my bike off the side of the street just opposite to the spot that had been my everything and where I’d tried to end it all.

  The field used to be open. There had only been a wooden fence that separated it from the old neighborhood that bordered it to the right. The expanse of vacant land had once seemed to go on forever, even though there was another neighborhood off to the far left. But to us, this empty field had been our refuge. We’d play here for hours as if it were t
he only place in the world that existed.

  Now a new fence rose at the front of the street, blocking off the area. NO TRESPASSING was boldly stamped on a black sign. Undoubtedly, that sign had been placed there because of me.

  I just stared, pinned to my bike, my hands kneading on the handlebars. Memories hit me like the worst beating I’d ever gotten in my life, pummeled me as they fell. And it fucking hurt because so many of them were good.

  My lips twitching with an unshed smile, I was barely able to make out our tree in the distance. I wanted to go to it, but I couldn’t bring myself to. It’d once seemed so tall, building it an incredible feat we’d achieved with the brute strength of our hands and the imagination in our minds.

  So much time was spent there.

  That place inside me expanded, pushed as it struggled for freedom against its confines.

  Shit.

  I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes as if doing that would somehow blot out the pictures that spun through my head. For a second, I just wanted to forget. But this was my life.

  I’d take death over it, any day.

  But I would live it as a penance for what I had done.

  TWELVE

  Aleena

  The next morning when I crept out of my room before dawn, his space on the couch was empty. But I already knew that. I’d heard him leave right after he’d fled my room, and I hadn’t heard him return.

  Sleep had eluded me the entire night. All I could do was wonder where he had gone and worry if he was okay.

  I’d pushed him too hard. Too fast.

  Work passed in a dazed blur. My vision seemed to bleed in and out, and I mumbled as I approached each table, moving through the day in a stupor.

  It killed me to think I might not ever see Jared again. That he was gone. Stabbing pain sliced through my middle at the thought. I reached to the wall for support and squeezed my eyes to shut it all out.

  Karina lightly touched me on the back, and I turned and opened my eyes to my boss. She was older, and the top of her head only came to my shoulders. Worry creased her kind face. “You don’t look so good today, Miss Aly. Are you feeling okay?”

  I shook my head. “I’m kind of sick to my stomach.” It wasn’t a lie.

  She glanced around the dining room. The small round bistro tables filling the space were dotted with customers, but it wasn’t extremely busy. It was late evening, and the customers sat along the curved bank of windows that overlooked the street, sipping from coffees or enjoying a sweet dessert. “I think we can manage without you for the rest of the night. Why don’t you go on home and get some rest?”

  She patted my shoulder, and I smiled down at her in appreciation. She had always been a great boss. She’d opened the restaurant years before and made it successful with her own hands. She always treated her staff like family. “Thanks, Karina. I think I’ll be past all this tomorrow.”

  By past, I meant I’d be either devastated or out of my misery. But whichever I faced, I knew I had to get home.

  It was relief that washed over me when I pulled around to the front of our building and saw Jared’s bike sitting at the far end of the lot.

  Easing my car into my spot, I sat for a moment to gather my thoughts. When I got out of the car, I crossed the lot, my legs sluggish as I took the stairs up to our apartment. I could feel it, this unease that had accumulated in the air, built up, and bound itself to my heart.

  It was confirmed when I opened the door to an even denser sense of tension inside. Jared was here, but instinctively I knew things were not the same. He sat on the couch watching TV by himself, but he barely looked in my direction while I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. I heard Christopher shuffling around in his room. A few seconds later, he came out of his room and rushed down the hall.

  “Hey, Jared, you feel like going out tonight?” he asked as he ran his hands through the messy locks of his black hair.

  Jared looked up at him with something akin to a grimace. “Nah, man, I had a long day at work today. Think I’m just going to hang out here and relax.”

  “Ah, that’s too bad.”

  Christopher grabbed his keys and tucked his wallet in his back pocket. “Did you have a good day at work, Aly?” he asked with a casual smile as he gathered his things. He didn’t seem to notice the well of emotion that had broken between Jared and me, or how our movements had slowed to match the weight in our chests.

  “Yeah, it was fine,” I said.

  “Cool. Well, I’m going to get out of here. Give me a call if you need me.” Then he shut the door behind him without a second thought.

  Jared barely acknowledged me when I said I was going to grab a shower, just obliged me with a small nod as he turned back to the television in the same motion.

  I turned the shower as hot as it would go. Steam filled the small room, streams of scalding water assailing my skin. Redness seeped to the surface, and I wished the hot shower could somehow burn the questions from my mind the same way it burned the fatigue from my body. But those questions remained locked tight in the boy sitting out on the couch.

  Wrapped in a towel, I unlatched the bathroom door and looked down to the end of the short hall into the darkened living room. Flashes from the TV lit the end of the couch, and I could feel him there just as I knew he could feel me. Yet I sensed no movement, no shift in his presence.

  Out of respect, I left him there because I didn’t really know what to say. How could I take back last night? Because it was my heart. He was my heart. I didn’t regret the fact that I’d invited him to open up to me. I only regretted the reaction he’d had to it.

  In my room, I dropped my towel to the floor and pulled on a pair of sleep shorts and a tank, then curled up on my side on my bed to stare out the open window. Even though it had waned, the moon still shone bright enough to light up my room. My sketch pad lay on the floor next to my bed, but tonight I didn’t feel like drawing. It had always been my therapy, the way to work out my thoughts, fears, and desires. A way to show my love.

  But tonight I clung to those thoughts, let them tumble around in my head while I rested on my side in the soft glow of the moon. With my back to the door, I stared out the window. In the dull light of the city, I could only make out the few brightest stars. Time passed too slow and too fast because I longed for him and was entirely terrified of what hid inside him at the same time. I’d fallen a long time ago, had held tight to the remnants of his memory that he’d left in his wake. It’d been foolish then, but safe, because it was only an illusion. I’d given myself to him when he’d never even had me at all.

  Now my bones trembled with reality.

  I didn’t know if he would come, and many hours passed before he finally did.

  Tonight Jared didn’t knock. I tensed when the door creaked open, listened as it quietly snapped shut behind him. He said nothing as he inched up behind me. I sensed the hesitation in his steps, the heavy breaths he pushed in and out of his lungs.

  For a second he just stood there at my side, and I could feel his eyes burning into my body. Then the bed dipped behind me.

  I stilled myself as he settled, and his weight spread out over the surface of my bed. Tension radiated and poured out of him, so thick my mouth went dry.

  He exhaled toward the ceiling, his arm pressed up against the length of my spine. I could picture him lying there, flat on his back, staring into nothing. Waiting. Waiting for what, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what he wanted. All I knew was I wanted him to want me.

  I couldn’t take it any longer.

  Slowly, I turned. His arm dug into my ribs as I rolled over it, before I settled into the safety of his side. Tonight I erased the physical space that had always been left between us, but somehow I knew the distance to what I wanted – to what I needed – had never been greater. I buried my nose at the juncture of his shoulder and chest, breathed him in the second he gave in and pulled me into his arms. My hand twisted in the collar of his T-shirt, and the other burro
wed beneath his back.

  Every nerve in my body fired, my muscles straining as I clung to him, as I did everything I could to bring him closer.

  Nothing had ever felt better than being in Jared’s arms.

  Nothing.

  Under my arm his heart beat fast, and I slowly uncurled my fingers from his shirt and slid my flattened palm down to feel it pound beneath my skin. My stomach flipped and turned, pooled with desire and need and the affection I’d held for him for so very long.