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“Oh?” Karen kind of frowned. “Well, I’m just glad you’re here.” Smoothing herself out, she took a step back, like maybe she’d just clued in on the fact that I was about to snap. She wiped under her eyes to rid herself of the evidence of her tears. A strained smile pushed to her trembling lips. “It’s been far too long. How long are you staying?”
Helpless, I could do nothing but cast a furtive glance in Aly’s direction. Of course, I got stuck there. She filled up my line of sight like a buoy bobbing in the water, just out of reach, while I slowly drowned.
I could barely speak through the fucking rock lodged in my throat. “Not long,” I said, and somehow I knew it was the truth, because I could feel it building. The destruction.
I don’t get to have this.
Because I owed my life.
I sat in the empty lot behind the same deserted building I’d found myself in almost three months ago the night after I’d first confronted Aly in the kitchen. I was slumped back against the coarse stucco wall, my head lolling from side to side. Alcohol soaked my senses, dampened them into a suffocating heaviness, like maybe I was being buried alive. But it did nothing to lessen the images, the pictures that had spun through my mind on an unending reel since the second Karen Moore had stepped foot through the door.
I rammed the heels of my hands to my eyes, desperate to blot it out. Colors flickered, visions streaming in this unbearably vivid light. I roared into the silence.
Motherfucking trigger.
Both of them.
Clutching the back of my head in my hands, I buried my face between my knees as I gasped for breath. “Fuck” scraped from my raw throat.
What had I expected, coming here? This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? To punish myself a little bit more? There was no other explanation for the fucking impossible draw I’d had to return to this place.
Unbidden, Aly’s face lit up like a flare that struck behind my lids. My lids were mashed together tight, but the image hung on like it didn’t want to give way to the ones that destroyed me. The girl was like a second’s relief amid the insufferable penance I served.
God, I wanted it to be her. It skirted along the brink of my reality, the idea that maybe there was more, because, damn it… maybe I really did want there to be.
I let my head rock against the wall and lifted my face to the haze of the night sky.
But that was just a fantasy – and not the fairy-tale kind.
I didn’t get the happily ever after.
Still I didn’t want to let the idea go. I needed to feel her. Just for a few more minutes I wanted to let her touch take the pain away.
I stumbled to my feet and made my way back toward the apartment.
It was late. The city slept, the dense silence only broken by the drone of semitrucks echoing from the freeway and the random car speeding down the road.
The hour Karen and Augustyn stayed at the apartment had been complete hell. Aly had suggested we all stay in to catch up instead of going out, so I’d sat down at the kitchen table with them all. I’d done my best at forcing smiles and tossing out bullshit answers to all the inane questions Karen asked. Clearly, she’d been tiptoeing around the questions she really wanted to ask. The entire time, I sat there itching to run. If I’d stayed in the confines of those walls for one more second, no question, I would finally have hit the edge.
It only made me feel worse that the entire time Aly had again offered me that comfort she so freely gave. Though this time, it wasn’t in her arms, but in the way her eyes constantly washed over me, and in the one gentle brush of her hand she’d hazarded under the table. Like maybe she was telling me it was okay and she understood the misery her mother brought with her when she walked through the door.
But like the asshole I was, I left the second Karen and Augustyn finally said their good-byes.
I knew Aly was dying to talk to me, but Christopher had been there, and there was little she could do, little she could say, although her plea radiated from every cell in her body.
Stay.
She should already have known I couldn’t.
Now, with my shoulders hunched, I stuffed my hands in my pockets and strode toward the apartment that was just a block away. The humid night clung thick to my skin. Lights from the city glowed against the blackened sky, dragging the heavens too close to the surface of my fucked-up world.
Before I’d ended up behind the vacant building, I’d spent the entire afternoon and most of the night at the Vine. Once again, I’d been foolish enough to think there was some way I could drown the past out. But it didn’t matter what I did. I could never outrun it. Could never hide from it. I could fight it all I wanted, but it’d never change who I was or what I’d done.
Incredulous laughter rocked from my hoarse throat. All these nights I’d been lying to Christopher, telling him that I’d been unwinding at the Vine, when really I’d been locked away in Aly’s room, lost in her comfort and her touch and everything I wished was real. If I just had stayed at the bar that first night, none of this would have happened. If I just had told Christopher no.
I never should have come. Not to this city. Not to their apartment.
And most definitely, I should never have come to her.
Now she was the only thing in this miserable life I wanted. The one thing I could never really have.
No doubt, it was time to leave. For good. But I’d never claimed not to be a fool, and I just wanted to take a little bit more.
Hoisting myself up, I scaled the towering apartment wall, swung my legs over, and jumped to the other side. I grunted when I landed too hard. Nearly the entire complex lay dormant, and I lifted my face to the muggy air and sucked in a rattled breath as I crossed the apartment parking lot.
I could sense it, the disturbance filling the air, a dark energy that covered me, demanding that I bleed back into nothingness where I belonged.
But I didn’t fucking want to.
Upstairs, I let myself into the silent apartment. Christopher’s bedroom door sat wide open. No question, he was on the hunt, doing what the guy did best.
Quieting my feet, I crept across the room. At her door, I paused and tried to make sense of what I really felt.
When I first came here, anger was all I knew.
Tonight, I just felt fucking sad.
And I knew it was her.
It was her.
I turned the knob and stole inside her room.
Night seeped between the slats at her window, shadows playing their secrets out across her walls. Aly lay sprawled out on top of her bed, her body twisted slightly to the side. She wore these little lace panties and a matching white camisole. The dark mass of her thick hair was bunched up high over her head, the long strands spilling down all around her.
And her face…
I rubbed at my chest.
She was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. So fucking sexy and perfect and good. Like this light that shone into the blackness, lit up something in me that had been dead for so long.
Locking the door behind me, I quietly crossed the room, careful not to wake her. I just watched over her as I slowly undressed down to my underwear.
I needed to feel her.
God.
I needed to feel her.
The bed dipped as I eased down beside her and took her in my arms. Relief broke over me in waves, like maybe for a few seconds I could come up for air.
A contented sigh murmured from her lips, and her cheek found its way to my chest. “Jared,” she exhaled, the word trickling out in her own relief. Gentle fingers crawled across my rib cage before they affixed to my opposite side.
I inhaled deeply, memorizing it all, the perfection I held in my arms. She consumed me in ways I never should have let her. The last month had been like a fucking dream I somehow had been given the chance to live.