Come to Me Quietly(148)

It’d been truth.

Was I scared of everything my returning stood for?

Yeah.

Because this was real.

Not some f*cked-up fantasy like I’d convinced myself to believe.

Slowly Aly slid the pad from her lap and onto the bed. She blinked, green eyes acute as she watched me with uncertainty. “Jared.”



With the sound of my name on her lips, I broke. In two long strides, I crossed the room and dropped to my knees in front of her.

I was giving in. I was ready for her.

A soundless gasp parted her mouth when I took her face in my hands. Her knees jutted out just over the bed, digging into my sides like a reluctant embrace. Her hair tumbled down my arms in a wave that I wanted to get lost in as I looked up at her. I ran my thumbs under her eyes, capturing the tears that fell.

I struggled to pull a breath into the well of my lungs, and my tongue darted out to wet my lips. I tilted my head to the side, caught in her unwavering gaze. Devotion poured from her. Even after all the shit I’d put her through.

“You saved me,” I whispered, drawing her left hand to my mouth. I kissed along the scar where my life had made its mark. I ran my nose along it, then pressed my face into her palm because I just needed to feel.

God, I needed to feel.

It was warmth and good and the girl. And f*ck… if it wasn’t everything.

Aly started trembling as awareness took hold. Slowly she unwound her legs, and I moved back a fraction so she could drape them along my sides.

“How did you know?” I asked.

I felt her pulse accelerate, and she hesitated. “Jared… I… ” She blinked through something that looked like fear.

“Baby, talk to me,” I softly prodded.

She released a weighted breath and slipped both her hands over the tops of mine, which were rested on her thighs. I squeezed her in reassurance. “I never told anyone about that night… maybe because it’d impacted me too much, I don’t know. I mean, I’d tried to tell my mom, but I guess I was just scared.” She kind of shrugged. “That whole week after you got expelled from school, I’d been… ” She frowned. “… unsettled. Everything was so messed up. Your family was wrecked and mine was coming apart at the hinges. I felt like I was losing every single person I cared about.”



I went rigid. I destroy everything I touch.

In silent encouragement, Aly reached out and smoothed her thumb up the line that dented my brow, like she knew exactly what I was thinking, like she knew me. She didn’t stop talking as she did. “There was this knot building in my gut.” She shivered. “I kept getting this overwhelming feeling that something really bad was going to happen. That night, I couldn’t sleep. Mom had finally made me turn off my light a little after eleven since I had school in the morning, but I had a little flashlight that I used so I could draw at night.”



Aly drew back and inclined her chin to where her sketch pad sat wide open at her side. She traced her fingers along the lines she’d forged on the page.

My heart stuttered with the image looking back at me.

The drawing was beautiful, just like the girl, only because it’d been rendered by her hand. But it was my face on the page, all hard planes and angles, my arms and chest exposed, her own interpretation of my sins swirled and shaded across my skin. And my eyes… she recognized so much in me that I couldn’t see.

“People, Jared… that’s what I keep in my books. Only the ones I love.” She ran her thumb from the bottom page of the pad to the top, lifting them one by one to expose them, image after image of me.