Come to Me Quietly

“Shit,” I whispered, trying to calm my reaction to him. But I couldn’t help the way he’d made me feel. Part of me wanted to lash out at him for treating me like I was nothing, while the stronger part of me wanted to reach out and trace the lines that were etched across his body, to feel them because I knew in every single one there was a memory, that each projected a feeling, symbolized a moment in time that meant something to him. He was right. I wanted to get inside him.

Tears welled up in my eyes. They fell, and I wiped them away. Was it pity I felt? Was it pity that had created this emotion that had been born in me that night, pity that had woven itself through my heart and left it aching for him all these years?

I had to believe it was more than that.

Shaking it off, I found my strength and my footing. I went into the bathroom and turned the showerhead to the hottest setting, letting the steam fill the room as I tried to make sense of someone I didn’t know.

But underneath all his armor, I did know him.

Beneath the anger, I recognized the boy I’d known so long ago.

I was pretty sure it was Jared who didn’t know himself.

FOUR

Summer 1997

“Come on, Christopher, just let her come. She’s not hurtin’ anyone.”

Jared stood facing away from her at the end of the sidewalk. Aly hung back by the front doorstep, wondering why Christopher hated her so much. She was always nice and she never told when he did something bad. It wasn’t her fault that she was only five.

Christopher dragged a fat stick along the pavement where he walked in the middle of the street in front of their house. It clattered along the pebbles. “Fine,” he said with an annoyed sigh. “But if she acts like a baby, I’m gonna make her go home.”

Jared looked back at her with a smile. “Come on, Aly,” he said before he turned away.

Ahead of her, Jared darted up behind Christopher and flicked him in the back of the head. Jared laughed and took off running. Christopher chased him. “You’re gonna pay for that one, Jared.”

“Only if you can catch me.”

Aly didn’t worry too much. Christopher wasn’t really mad. They always acted like this.

She trailed them, pushing her little legs as fast as they could go to keep up. Christopher and Jared ducked through the hole in the wooden fence that blocked the neighborhood from the empty land behind it.

“Wait for me,” Aly called, feeling a little stab of fear that she would find herself alone.

Jared peeked back through the hole. “Don’t worry, Aly Cat, I won’t leave you behind.”

FIVE

Jared

I gripped my head in my hands, kicking at nothing while I stormed in small circles in the middle of the parking lot, trying to make sense of what the hell had just happened upstairs.

Aleena Moore was like a fucking trigger.

I hadn’t been prepared for her. I rasped a snort as I yanked at my hair. As if I could have done anything to prepare myself for her.

In what felt like a small miracle, I’d dozed off last night, drifting along the fringes of sleep as my mind swam through a dreamlike state. The pain had come, but it’d ebbed as I floated, this calm coming over me before my eyes had popped open in awareness.

And the girl standing over me was some sort of goddamned vision.

Waves of long almost-black hair fell down around her face, so close I imagined them brushing along my chest. Her chin was sharp and her cheeks high, although a distinct softness pulled at her full lips.

But it was those penetrating green eyes that had shot through me, bolting me straight up to sitting.

Once my sight adjusted, my eyes had raked over the perfect curves of her slender body. She wore shorts and a little red tank top, and the straps of a bathing suit peeked out to wrap around her neck. Her smooth olive skin glowed golden in the dim light. The girl was all legs and undeniably the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Yet there was something about her that appeared delicate and soft.

It’d taken a few seconds for the awe to wear off, for me to come to my senses and realize it was Aly. I found myself whispering my confusion. “Aly?”

Then she’d mumbled some kind of apology as if she was intruding on me when I was the one camped out on her couch. She stumbled into her room, the sharp click of her door shutting me out, leaving me completely unable to comprehend that the gorgeous girl who’d just stood in front of me was the same one who’d clung to my shirttails for the better part of my life.

I palmed the back of my neck and lifted my face to the sun. Even at nine in the morning, the heat was scorching, searing my skin. My lids dropped closed to shield my eyes from the blinding light, and I harshly shook my head.

Motherfucking trigger.

She’d triggered memories, ones I didn’t want to remember. Memories of when I was happy and free. Memories that taunted me with what I could no longer have.