Come to Me Quietly(122)

I cried a little harder.

Christopher went rigid, one arm holding me tight around the back as he pointed somewhere behind me. “Why don’t you all go back inside and mind your own damned business? There isn’t anything out here for you to see.”



Christopher mumbled close to me ear, “Come on, Aly, we need to get you upstairs. I think we woke up the entire complex, and neither of us needs to deal with this shit right now.”



I was barely able to force a nod.

Christopher wrapped his arm around my waist and led me toward the staircase. I held on to the railing, listing to the side, trying to stand under the pain forcing me down. My feet dragged as I staggered up the stairs.

Christopher held me a little closer. “It’s okay, Aly… Come on, you can make it.”



Inside, the apartment was too quiet, echoing with what I’d lost.

Every part of me hurt, an ache so deep I felt it in places I didn’t know existed.

He was gone.

Nausea turned my stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick.” I ran to the bathroom and fell to my knees, purging the riot tearing through my insides.

Ravaging.

Pillaging.

Ruining.

He’d promised me he would.

I dropped my head, crying toward the floor, the hard floor digging into my knees.

I knew he would.

Christopher followed me in and latched the door behind him. He dug through the bottom cabinet for a washcloth and turned on the faucet, getting it damp.

Then he kneeled down at my side. “Here.” He wiped my mouth and the sweat drenching my forehead. His face was a mess of sympathy and anger and the remnants of Jared’s violence. Blood had dried in smeared streaks where he’d wiped it. One side of his mouth had already begun to swell, and a bruise was forming on the outside of his right eye.

He got up and rinsed it and then handed the cool cloth back to me.

“Thank you,” I mumbled quietly. On my side, I slumped all the way to the hard floor.

Christopher sank down across the cramped room, slouching up against the closed door with his legs lying limp out in front of him, staring at me, his body just as beaten as my heart.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, clutching the cloth to my mouth, searching for comfort where none could be found.

He dropped his gaze and shook his head, then raised it again, his gaze pinning me with a portion of the anger that had spurred his intrusion into my room fifteen minutes before. “How long was it going on, Aly?”



I swam in my shame. Not of the fact of Jared and me, but for keeping it from my brother. Yeah, I was twenty, and Christopher had no right to tell me I couldn’t. But the way we’d gone about it was wrong. “A month… ”



The answer couldn’t even penetrate the thick air because I think both Christopher and I knew it wasn’t true.

“Longer, I guess,” I finally said, my fingers wringing the washcloth as if it would give me courage to speak. “He started coming to my room a couple of weeks after he got here… but at first we would just talk.” This slow sadness seeped through my veins. “Over time I think we both became something neither of us could live without.”



And I had no idea how I would live without him now.

Christopher drew up his knees, propped his forearms on them. “Why didn’t you just tell me? You don’t think I would have understood?”



I frowned. “Would you have? Because it didn’t seem that way tonight.”