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I crushed her to me and buried my nose in her hair.
But it was just that.
A dream.
I don’t get to have this.
Aly shifted to her elbow, and sincere green eyes opened to me. “I was worried about you.” Her voice was all scratchy as she searched my face in the dimness of her room. “I tried to call you.”
I blinked hard, trying to shun it all, this pain I didn’t know how to deal with. “I hate that you worry about me.” I stared up at her, knowing it was both a lie and God’s honest truth.
Aly snuggled back in the crook of my arm. It was impossible not to find comfort in her warmth. For a few seconds she held me close, soft fingers playing along my bare chest. She seemed to waver before she slowly climbed to her hands and knees, caging me. She just hovered there, looking down at me like maybe I meant too much, like when she looked at me she saw things she shouldn’t see.
I mean, fuck, to her, I knew she did. I knew it. I knew she saw things that really weren’t there.
Her eyes stayed fixed on mine as she gradually leaned down, her lips gentle as she pressed them to the rose at the center of my chest. “You miss her,” she whispered.
I wheezed for the air her words knocked from my lungs. My heart squeezed so fucking tight, and I struggled to breathe under the pain crushing my chest. The memories I’d fought to block out all day came flooding through, unrepressed. Aly had destroyed all the barriers I fought so hard to keep in place, leveled them with the touch of her hand.
A trigger I was powerless against.
And I thought maybe I should be pissed off at her, saying something so ridiculously obvious. But I wasn’t. Because in her words was everything I kept concealed. It wasn’t pity or some fucking lame attempt at sympathy that I didn’t even begin to want.
Aly understood.
Locking her to me, I fisted my hands in her hair and drew her face close to mine because I needed to see her.
I needed her. Every fucking second of every fucking day.
Fear lifted in a flurry of nerves. My mouth was so dry, but the words that had festered for years sought release from my tongue. I couldn’t stop myself from talking, from telling Aly because I just needed someone to know. “I have no right to, Aly, but I do. I miss her so much. I would do anything… give anything… to take it back.”
Sadness swept across her features, and I hated that I put it there. How many times had I warned her that she didn’t need my shit? That I had nothing to give and everything to take? I fucking took and took and took.
And here I was again, ruining the good.
When would I ever stop?
Emotions rushed, guilt and anger and fear.
Aly dipped down and kissed the rose again. I gritted my teeth, my hands like vises in her hair as she caressed over the imprint of my sin, covered it wholly with her nose and her mouth and her breath, showering me in everything I’d never deserve.
She rose up, and unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m here for you, Jared. You know that, don’t you? You can talk to me. You can tell me,” she murmured almost urgently. “Please talk to me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Visions flashed.
Aly took me by the face, forcing me to look at her. “It’s okay… You can trust me.”
I couldn’t look away from the eyes that watched me so earnestly, like she really believed it would be.
Because it wasn’t fucking okay.
That was the problem with Aly. With her, I was always pretending it was. Pretending that it was okay to feel this way, pretending it was okay to care about her so much. Pretending that maybe someday all of this really might be okay.
And I couldn’t fucking stop.
She swept her lips across mine. “Talk to me… please, Jared… I’m here.”
I clung to her a little harder, my tongue darting out to wet my lips, my voice ragged. “I was so reckless, Aly… so fucking reckless. Just a stupid punk kid.”
Just like the assholes I constantly beat down in juvie, ungrateful for everything they’d been given.
Mindless.
Shameful.
Unforgivable.
That hatred flared, thrashed as it clamored through my spirit.
Deep inside, that warning system was blaring, a merciless siren that could never be silenced. It was shouting at me to shut my mouth before it was too late. Before I couldn’t take it back.
But with Aly, it was already far too late.
My eyes dropped closed, and I grated out the words “I was so excited that morning.” My body jerked as I completely freed the memories I’d suppressed for so long. It was kind of shocking how I could still remember exactly the way I felt. But after so many years, it was there, like this glaring reminder that promised I had no chance. “I thought I was on top of the world.”
I tucked my chin to take in Aly’s expectant eyes. They just watched me, comprehending too much. With a shaky hand, I reached out and fused myself to her, winding a lock of her hair around my finger. I turned my attention to the motion, fixed on it, as if holding Aly this way could somehow keep her from slipping away.
“I remember her coming up behind me while I stood at the mirror getting ready for school that morning. She’d wrapped her arms around my waist and told me it didn’t matter how old I got, I would always be her baby. The whole week before I turned sixteen, whenever I walked into the room, she’d stop what she was doing to take me in. Her gaze would drift over me like she saw something fading away. She just kept saying she couldn’t believe how quickly time had passed.”
And I’d never suspected time was getting ready to end.
My tone hardened. “She picked me up after school in that fucking car my dad had promised me as long as I got good grades and stayed out of trouble.”
Saliva pooled in the back of my throat. I swallowed hard, lines denting my brow as I got lost in that day.
“She drove me there, telling me stories the entire way.” I flinched, remembering how soft, how sweet, her voice had always been. “She kept peering out the windshield up at the sky. She had this look on her face, Aly… almost like she was a little bit sad. She told me that day felt almost exactly the same as the day I’d been born. That the sky was blue and the air was cool.”
I remembered it so clearly.
“I was so anxious for you to come,” she said, her somber eyes brimming with affection. “I kept thinking you were going to be born early because I was huge.” She laughed, slanting a knowing smile over at me. “But your grandma told me not to worry, I’d know when it was time. Your dad and I were sitting outside when I felt you, and I knew I was going to meet you that day. It feels just like yesterday.”
A ragged breath wheezed into my lungs. Aly’s fingers trembled along my jaw, her touch overwhelming amid the sickness clawing at my spirit, surging up, pressing down.
“She took me to my driver’s test. Afterward I walked out of that building with my license thinking I was the coolest fucking thing in the world.”
Revulsion boiled under the surface of my skin. Searing. Burning. Blackening.
“She tossed the keys at me, and she said, ‘I think these belong to you.’” I almost sneered. I’d never forget the pride that had filled her voice.
Aly exhaled, shaky and hard, her attention jumping all over my face like she had no idea where to look, and still I continued. “When we got in the car, she said she wanted to take me out to eat… to celebrate… just the two of us. But all I cared about was myself, Aly. All I cared about was the party your brother had pla
If I’d just slowed down… if I had taken one goddamned hour and given it to her, then I wouldn’t have taken it all.
“I told her I had a big project that was due on Monday and I had to go to this girl’s house to work on it when I knew I was going to be spending the night partying with my friends.”