Come to Me Quietly (Closer to You) (4 page)

I tiptoed into the kitchen and rummaged through the refrigerator to find the container of orange juice. I stood on my toes to get a glass from the top shelf of the cabinet, filled it halfway, and took a sip. It was cold as it slid down my dry throat, and I closed my eyes as I swallowed, listening acutely as the faucet turned off and the door creaked open. A fever of nerves raced through me, my senses keening when I felt him emerge behind me.

I was still trying to reconcile the memories of my brother’s childhood friend, the one I’d fancied as my own even if I had only been a delusional little girl, with the man I’d caught a glimmer of as I stared at him in the dark last night. I tried to make it all add up, the real man who was here with the fantasies I’d played out in my mind over the last six years, the images I’d conjured of Jared as he’d grown and I’d wondered and prayed that one day our paths would cross again. With just the glimpse I’d caught, I knew my imagination hadn’t even begun to come close.

His movements were slow as he inched around the bar and into the kitchen. For a moment, we stood in awkward silence, tension radiating between us. He finally mumbled a low “Good morning.” His voice was thick, hoarse. My stomach knotted in anticipation as the sound slipped across my skin.

“Good morning,” I whispered back. I took another sip of orange juice as I steeled myself. Then I finally gathered the nerve to look over my shoulder.

And I froze when I was able to finally really see him.

God.

Flickers of memories flashed through my vision, pictures of an almost white-haired boy who had spent so much time at my house when we were growing up that he might as well have lived there. The way he was always laughing and the constant tease poised on the tip of his tongue. But above all that, he’d had the biggest heart of anyone I’d ever met. I could never forget the way his sharp ice blue eyes still managed to appear gentle when he spoke to me, or the way he was so interested in everything happening around him, his curiosity extending to the leaves on the trees and even the bugs that crawled along the ground.

Now…

His hair had darkened a shade or two, the blond touched by the slightest of browns. It was short on the sides, and the top was just barely long enough that he managed to run his fingers anxiously through it as he stared back at me, while I stared in shock up at him. He wasn’t as tall as Christopher, but tall enough to tower over me.

My hand clenched around my glass as my eyes widened. Then wandered.

Stubble coated his jaw, which was clenched tight as he worked one side of his mouth, nervously grinding his teeth. He smelled of peppermint and the faintest hint of cigarettes, this combination that was intoxicating and not the least bit unappealing. I couldn’t stop myself from studying him, from taking in every inch of this man who held me in the palm of his hand without the slightest awareness that he did.

He stood in my kitchen in only his jeans. His waist was narrow, his shoulders wide. Sinewy muscle flexed down his arms. Strength rippled with even the slightest movement, and his jeans clung to hip bones that jutted out just above his waistband. My attention drifted down his legs to where he stood barefoot on the tile floor of the kitchen. Even his feet were sexy.

I blinked away the stupor. No. The images my mind had conjured had definitely not done him justice.

But none of those things were what I really saw. Instead my attention went to what I hadn’t fully made out last night. Almost every exposed inch of skin was covered in ink, these intricate designs that bled and wept, wound together to create an allusion to death. They all blended so none were distinct, just sweeps of color and innuendo that blurred from one horror to the next. Flames licked up along his entire right arm, a pair of bright blue eyes staring out from their depths, seeming to beg as if they were eternally damned to this raging fire. My attention was drawn to his hands, where the designs dripped down over his wrists and leaked onto his fingers. The knuckles on one hand had numbers that read 1990. The knuckles on the other were marked 2006.

Sickness coiled in my stomach as I realized the significance of the statement he made.

This boy was painted in his pain.

Tentatively, I dragged my gaze back to his face. Those gentle eyes were no longer gentle, but harsh as they pinned me with a completely different kind of intensity than had shattered me last night. This intensity raved with anger and hinted at disappointment.

He lifted his arms out to the side with his palms up, as if he were some kind of offering, although a sneer transformed his gorgeous face. “Go for it, Aly. You want to get inside me, too? Let’s hear it.”

I spun the rest of the way around so I was facing him. In the same motion, I floundered back. The sharp edge of the counter bit into the back of my hips as I instinctively moved away from the agitation curling through his body. “I didn’t say anything,” I said, the words chaotically tumbling from my mouth.

A shot of disbelieving laughter escaped him, and he shook his head as he turned away, his hands laced on the back of his head as he seemed to struggle with what to say. He whipped back around. “Yeah, well, you didn’t have to. I get it. I don’t need your fucking pity, so do us both a favor and pretend like I’m not here, all right?”

He shocked me by closing the space between us. His head cocked to the side as he nailed me with narrowed eyes. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he sucked in frantic breaths. My back bowed over the counter as he hissed in my face, “I don’t need your shit, and I promise you, you don’t need mine.”

He released a bitter grunt as he leaned back, then stalked away.

I stood there trying to stop my head from spinning while he disappeared around the other side of the bar and out into the living room. He left me with a pounding heart and a cutting sense of disillusionment.

I heard him shuffling and digging through his things. I only caught a glimpse of him as he rushed out the door pulling a shirt over his head. He slammed the door shut behind him.

Oh my God. What the hell just happened?

I turned and pressed my palms into the counter for support. Dropping my head, I tried to work through the aftermath of the storm that was Jared Holt. How had we gone from a mumbled
good morning
to all-out war in three seconds flat? My pulse sped, and I pulled in even breaths, trying to calm myself and the panic that had built up in my nerves.

Guilt tugged at my consciousness because I knew part of it was my fault, the way I’d devoured every inch of his body as if he were some sort of exhibit on display. My thoughts had shot between blatant desire and heartbreak, mixed and merged into this thick emotion that had filled every crevice in my chest.

But what did he expect? That I wouldn’t look? That he could stand before me in nothing but jeans and my eyes wouldn’t wander and seek him out?

“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.

“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.”

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.

But worse than that was what she’d triggered in my body. I could blame it on leaving Lily behind at the bar after I’d planned on spending the night burying my aggression in her, but I’d be a liar. No one had ever caused a reaction in me like Aly had.

Last night, I’d lain awake for hours, fighting it, berating myself that I’d even for a second allowed my brain to trip into those types of thoughts. She was Christopher’s little sister, for God’s sake. And she’d been like a little sister to me. I’d dug out my journal, intent on hashing out my disgust on its pages, but ended up writing some fucking cheesy shit about a Siren’s call.

When dawn had finally crept up to the windows early this morning, I had stepped out onto the balcony for a smoke and watched the sun slowly rise. By then, I’d gotten it under control, had chalked it up to my surprise at how the passing years had changed her, at the fact that Aly was no longer a child.

Then that trigger hit me just as hard when I slipped up behind her in the kitchen. Messy waves of black hair flowed down her back, and she wore a pair of tiny sleep shorts that exposed her long legs, and all I could think about was propping her ass up on the edge of the counter, my hands on her knees as I pressed them apart, my palms on her thighs.

A wave of guilt had flooded me just as soon as that fantasy had popped into my head. I’d whispered a regretful “Good morning,” knowing I had to get my shit together because there was not one single thing kosher about the way I was looking at her.

But then she’d looked at me. No. Not looked.
Gawked.

Judged.

Stared at me as if I were some kind of freak show.

That was the trigger to a different gun. It provoked the roiling anger that was always smoldering at the ready in every cell of my body. Hate had slipped through my gritted teeth as I unleashed it on the girl, although really, it wasn’t directed at her at all.

The only person I hated was myself.

Still she had no right to look at me like that. I didn’t come here for her pity, for her eyes to wash over me as if she understood. As if she
cared
. No one cared. People just liked to make themselves feel better with their meager shows of compassion.

And I sure as hell did not care.

My fists clenched at my sides.

Shit
.

But I couldn’t elude the nagging that tugged at me somewhere deep inside. I hated seeing her that way, shaking and nearing tears. Hated knowing I’d caused it. I’d scared her.

But it was for the best. I wasn’t lying when I told her she didn’t need my shit. And after the reaction she managed to work up in me, I most definitely did not need hers.

I hunched over the desk, filling out what felt like the hundredth application I’d worked on today. Most of my day had been eaten up racing from one construction company to another, chasing jobs that didn’t exist in this suck-ass economy. Next to no one was hiring, and I’d spent half the day questioning my sanity. Who the fuck just left their home and a decent job without any plans? Dumb-asses like me, that’s who.

I finished the application and stood.

“You done?” The owner, Kenny Harrison, sat behind a large desk on the other end of the room, rocking back in a grungy fabric office chair.

“Yes, sir,” I answered as I crossed the room, passing the application to him. Of course I hoped for a position similar to the one I’d left in New Jersey, but I would take just about anything.

He scanned my information, suddenly turning his face up to me. “You originally from around here?”

I just nodded, couldn’t speak.

“Hmm,” he continued, “your application looks good. We don’t have a lot going on right now, but I could maybe fit you in somewhere. You’re not going to be close to making what you were at your last job, though.”

Disappointment hit me, but I shook it off. “That’s fine.”

Kenny laughed. “Desperate, huh?”

I shifted my feet, feeling uncomfortable and on display. I forced myself to stand still. “You could say that.”

“All right, then. Why don’t you come back here Monday morning and you can fill out some paperwork to get you started?”

“Thank you, Mr. Harrison.”

“Call me Kenny.”

I shook his hand and began to back away, mumbling my thanks once again before I headed out his door.

I knew I should feel relieved, grateful, but the only thing I felt was the anxiety that had ramped up during the day. I felt it buzzing under the surface of my skin. I jumped on my bike, slipped onto the freeway, pegged the throttle, and hoped to outrun it. Hot air blasted my face and whipped through my hair, stirring the aggression higher. I darted in and out of cars. Ran.

Today the adrenaline from the speed didn’t do. It only wound the anxiety tighter through my chest, made it hard to breathe as I pushed harder and faster. As the late-evening sun began to set, I cut across rush hour traffic and took the exit not that far from Christopher and Aly’s apartment. I found I couldn’t go back, but I was incapable of going far.

I ended up behind a deserted building with a bottle of Jack. I figured if I couldn’t run from it, I’d drown it. I tipped the bottle to my lips, welcomed the burn as it slid down my throat and coated my stomach. I brought it to my mouth again and again, rested my head back on the coarse stucco of the old building, and listened as the night began to crawl through the streets of the city.

I never understood why sounds became more distinct at night, why I could hear the churn of an engine from miles away, the rustle of birds as they settled in the trees, the echo of an argument happening behind closed doors down the street. It all penetrated and seeped, bled into my consciousness as if each sound belonged to me. What some would consider peaceful felt entirely overwhelming. Tonight, those old cravings hit me hard, the intense desire for complete numbness, a moment’s reprieve. I just wished that for one goddamned night I could block it all out. I drained the rest of the bottle. My head spun, and I squeezed my eyes shut tight.

But I could never outrun it. Could never drown it.

I would never forget.

My hand tightened on the neck of the bottle, and I staggered to my feet. I roared as I chucked the bottle across the lot. It shattered. Glass burst and pinged as it scattered across the ground. The sound stoked the memories, and all I could hear was glass breaking as it rained down all around me.

I spun and my fist connected with the building. Skin tore from my knuckles as it met the jagged, pitted wall. The tissue whitened and blanched before blood seeped to the surface. I welcomed the frenzy it created inside me.

I slammed my fists into the wall again and again and again until I was panting and the blood dripped free, wept from my skin in the way it should have instead of hers. Rage curled in my chest and erupted from my mouth.

It should have been me
.

It should have been me
.

Exhausted, I dropped my forehead, pressed my palms to the wall as I gulped for air. Heat rushed down my throat and expanded like fire in my lungs. My head rocked and my body shook as the aggression finally spiked, broke, and the effects of the alcohol brought me to my knees.

“Fuck,” I groaned, slumping onto my stomach with my cheek pressed into the hard ground.

I never should have come here. It was all too much, this place that echoed my past and thrummed with familiarity. I refused to take comfort in it. Most of all, I fought against the desire to
stay
.