Come to Me Softly

by A. L. Jackson

I’d just needed him to tell me it’d be okay.

  Tell me that he loved me even after everything I’d done, like he’d done when I was a little boy.

  Just once.

  He never had.

  Now, he lifted his head and stared back at me.

  Tormented.

  Maybe he was just reflecting my own expression.

  His wife had moved to the top stair. With her hand covering her mouth, she watched us. Tears streamed down her face, hot and fast. With some kind of twisted pity. Like she knew me.

  She didn’t know anything.

  “Jared,” he attempted again, taking a step toward me where I stood panting in the middle of their lawn while night crawled heavily across the sky, sinking down. Closing in.

  I felt caged.

  Fingers reached for me.

  I held both palms up in warning, backed further away, repeated on a pained whisper, “Don’t touch me.”

  I couldn’t handle it right now, making sense of everything I was feeling. It was too much.

  Turning, I jogged toward my bike, leaving behind everything that should have remained in the dark.

  I told her… I told Aly again and again to let it go, to let it die, because there wasn’t anything in this world that I could do to change the past.

  Now even those memories had been defiled.

  I was almost to my bike when frantic arms wrapped around me from behind, desperate as they clung to me. I flung around, ready to shove them off. But I froze with the long blond hair that was all over me, this girl burying her face in my chest, my tee soaking through with her tears.

  “Jared,” she exhaled through a sob. “It’s really you.” She squeezed me tighter. “It’s really you.”

  My arms lifted away from my body while she glued herself to it. They encircled her with a hovering embrace. My heart pounded so hard I was sure it would hammer a hole right through my aching chest. Then these blue eyes looked up at me, holding more sadness than I’d ever seen.

  This girl that was more like a women than a child.

  “Jared, please, don’t go. Stay.”

  God, she looked so much like my mom.

  My baby sister.

  Fucking beautiful.

  I was shaking when I tentatively wrapped her in my arms, touched her and felt… home and warmth and all these fucking emotions I’d so long repressed.

  I didn’t know her anymore.

  Not at all.

  Wasn’t sure if I ever could.

  But she felt so familiar and good.

  Gently I pulled back and brushed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m sorry,” I whispered at her skin before I set her aside and swung my leg over my bike.

  Heartbreak flowed from her as she hugged her arms across her chest. Our father rushed up to take her side. Agony twisted his face, and he curled his arm protectively around her waist.

  And it stung and bruised and bled, but still, I took some kind of comfort in it, knowing these two had somehow found their way back to each other.

  At least one thing was the way it was supposed to be.

  I kicked over my bike. The engine roared as I revved the throttle. For a fleeting moment, I sat there, submerged in the past.

  I met my father’s eyes and hoped he could see how truly sorry I was.

  Then I turned and fled.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Jared

  Fatigue weighed down my body. Closing my eyes like a shield, I flipped the switch just inside the door. Light blazed against my lids. Reluctantly, I opened them to the desolation of the empty hotel room.

  Cold sank all the way to the marrow of my bones. I’d ridden through the streets of the city for hours, mindless, without a destination. Finally I’d given up the fight warring in my mind and headed in the direction of where I’d come. Cold air beat against my skin as I’d opened my throttle and barreled into the long, silent night. When I could ride no further, I pulled off the freeway and checked into a crappy motel.

  Motherfucking story of my life.

  On a heavy sigh, I tossed the keycard to the small round table under the window and scrubbed my palms over my weary face.

  God, I felt so lost.

  I missed Aly more than I could ever imagine.

  This longing was different, though. Different from those months I’d lived without her when I’d been wasting away in Vegas, when the days had blurred and bled and spun in an endless oblivion of pain. When I’d filled my veins so full of any substance I could get my hands on I’d believed it’d somehow have the power to erase her memory that had been scored into my heart and mind.

  Difference was, I no longer wanted to forget.

  No longer wanted to run.

  For so many years, I believed I didn’t belong anywhere.

  Now I knew better.

  I belonged with Aly.

  I just didn’t know how to get back there, how to love her the way she deserved, how to be that man I felt like I’d almost become.

  Ghosts.

  My humorless laughter ricocheted around the walls of the barren room.

  Fuck, that girl knew me better than anyone. She’d been completely aware of what I was suffering all the while I was pretending the past couldn’t touch me.

  I’d run from it again, although in a completely different direction than I’d ever gone.

  I’d run for Aly. Which was a really goddamned good place to be.

  But I should have known it’d catch up to me.

  I got why Aly had been pushing me. She knew where it was headed, and maybe she’d been clinging, too, doing her best to stop something that was inevitable.

  I went straight for the bathroom. I didn’t bother with a light. I just turned the shower as hot as it would go. Steam filled the small space. I shucked my clothes and stepped into the blistering heat of the relentless spray.

  Waves of chills rolled through my body as it was pelted with the shocking warmth, a complete contradiction to the chilled air I’d sped into for too many hours. Sucking in a breath, I let my eyes fall closed.

  Green eyes stared back at me, and the girl smiled, full of gentleness and affection.

  With belief.

  I leaned my forearm on the cold shower tiles and dropped my forehead to it, pinched my eyes tighter as all these images rushed me, this girl who had me completely undone.

  And she was there.

  Aly.

  Like I could reach out and touch her. God, I missed her so bad. I didn’t think I’d ever needed her as badly as I needed her now.

  Every inch of me hardened, my body going rigid as my mind slipped into her hold, as I gave in to this girl who tore right through every wall I threw up.

  She’d changed me. Touched me in ways no other person possibly could. Because she was meant for me.

  Couldn’t stop myself when I gripped my cock.

  God, I just wanted to feel her.

  Wanted to touch her. Wanted her to touch me.

  My hand slipped up and down my length in a punishing rhythm, as if I could pump this need right out of me.

  With every stroke, the need only grew.

  The muscles in my stomach clenched, rippled and bunched, and a deep, guttural moan climbed up my throat.

  Aly.

  My mouth fixed in a wide, silent cry as I came.

  I banged my forehead repeatedly against my arm resting on the wall.

  What a joke. Like my hand stood a chance at substituting for my girl.

  It didn’t even scratch the surface of the need I felt for Aly.

  It just left me feeling more vacant. Hollowed out.

  Made me remember what I was missing and why I’d hauled my ass all the way to California, throwing myself on the mercies of a man I thought hated me.

  I’d gone seeking answers. Instead, I ended up with more questions.

  Exhaling, I scrubbed myself clean, turned off the water, and toweled dry.

  Never in the million thoughts I’d had of him over the last seven years had I imagined that
he would have moved on. It seemed impossible.

  Wrong.

  My chest ached because I didn’t know what to do with the information now.

  Didn’t know how to process how seeing him felt.

  In the dim light that spilled into the bathroom from the main room, I stared at the darkened silhouette of myself in the mirror.

  So much anger lived inside me, day after day convicting me of this unbearable guilt.

  Standing before him, I thought I’d feel ashamed.

  Instead I’d just been shocked.

  And sad.

  Unbelievably sad.

  Grabbing my phone from my jeans heaped on the floor, I shuffled back into the main room and flicked off the light. It plunged the room into darkness. Blindly, I flopped on my back in the center of the bed.

  Aly held fast to my thoughts.

  As if there was a chance of escaping her.

  It was close to two, but I couldn’t stop myself. I just needed her to know I was thinking of her because I couldn’t stand the thought of my girl imagining I’d walked out with the intention of abandoning her and our baby.

  Never.

  I tapped out a simple message and hoped she understood it was my truth.

  I miss you.

  Almost instantly, my phone chimed with a message. I pictured her lying awake, too, thinking of me, tossing and turning in a vain attempt to find sleep.

  I swiped the screen.

  I miss you… more than you could know.

  Two seconds later, another message came through.

  Please. Find a way back to me.

  Warmth spread through every cell in my body.

  Still, I knew her words weren’t an invitation for me to go running straight back to her, as much as I wanted to, like I’d done more than three months before. Without regard, without thinking about how messed up I still was inside. Using all that shit as an excuse to continue feeling the way I did, pretending like it wouldn’t cause me to stumble.

  Somewhere inside me, I knew I would.

  And I did.

  I fucked up the best thing I ever had in my life.

  Sleep never came. For hours, I lay in the silence of the room, listening to the world passing me by.

  Sunlight slowly climbed to the window. A thin strip of light bled through the small part in the heavy drapes.

  The day dawned on my twenty-third birthday.

  Sorrow spread, slowly taking me whole. Blood pulsed harshly through my veins, my body injected with a steady rise of fear.

  Because Aly had been right all along.

  It was time.

  Wind gusted across the winter ground. Leaves whipped around my feet.

  When I got back to Phoenix, I came straight here.

  I struggled and managed to draw a lump of heavy air down my raw throat. Unbearable weight pressed against my ribs. Crushing.

  Just like that day seven years ago.

  The moment when my world shattered. When everything I loved was spoiled by my ruin. When I sat helplessly and watched her light dim in her blue eyes.

  Screaming against the searing pain, I’d begged her to take me with her. It hurt so fucking bad, and all I wanted was to die.

  That pain had followed me through the years, amplified in the moments when I closed my eyes, when my lids would flutter shut and the images would invade. When the memory drew so close it was all I could see.

  All I could feel.

  This same fucking pain.

  Pressing my hand to my chest, I exhaled a jagged breath and forced my feet to move. My boots were silent as I treaded across what seemed an endless lawn. Nausea pooled low in my stomach, and sweat beaded on my brow.

  I’d made a thousand promises never to return here.

  The stupor of the day they laid her in the ground remained so distinctly clear, a photographic memory that somehow I hadn’t been present for. Like my eyes had been pinned wide open, forcing me to see what I’d done. But it felt as if I’d witnessed it from afar, my ear acutely trained to every cry that rippled through the grieving crowd as I watched on from a distance.

  At the same time, I could feel nothing.

  Excruciating numbness.

  Like I’d been removed from the mourning because I had no right to it.

  And God, I’d wanted to cry. I’d wanted to cry for her so badly, but it’d just locked up in my throat, wedged there forever because I didn’t deserve to weep for her when I was the one who brought all the tears to the endless sea of black surrounding me.

  Swallowed by the pain of the crowd, I’d sat staring into the void.

  Vacant.

  Lost.

  Lost in the spray of roses blanketing the shiny casket.

  I’d been unable to look away. Like I was locked to the beauty getting ready to be left forever in the cold, hard ground, willing them to wrap me up and somehow take me, too.

  It was the day I made a promise to her I would find a way to pay for the sin I committed.

  Even through the numbness of that day seven years ago, I still knew the exact spot.

  I slowed as I approached. Another wave of sorrow crashed into me. Overwhelming. Staggering. That physical hurt in my chest only intensified, and my breaths snapped in and out of my lungs. Weakness overcame me when I came to a stop in front of her stone.

  Helene Rose Holt.

  I sagged and dropped to my knees.

  An intricate rose was carved into the marble behind the deep imprint of her name, a reminder of the beauty that had been my mother.

  My fingertips brushed over the engraving.

  Memorizing.

  Guilt flickered around the edges of my consciousness, warning me I had no right to be here. But it was muted, nothing more than a fading burn replaced by an intense grief I’d never allowed myself to feel.

  I missed her.

  “Hey, Mom,” I whispered so low no one could hear, but my heart felt it deep. That rock of unspent emotion flared. A tingling sensation ran the length of my throat. I swallowed down the saliva gathered at the back of my mouth.

  I’d give anything for her to be able to respond, to talk to me and look at me with that smile that promised I was her world, for her to once again tell me it would be okay.

  But she was gone.

  Had I ever truly accepted that?

  Slumping back, I sat, planting my feet on the ground as I wrapped my shivering arms around my knees. Nervously, I tugged at the front of my too long hair.

  I didn’t know if I had. All these years had been spent wrapped up in that one singular moment. The disastrous choice I’d made. For years, I’d been stuck there. A prisoner to all the shame, regret, and hate.

  I never reached the point where I accepted I had to live in a world without my mother.

  All the muscles in my body went rigid when I sensed the tentative footsteps approaching from behind. Maybe he didn’t know if he belonged here any more than I did. I stole a wary glance over my shoulder.

  My father.

  Swallowing over the sadness that hit me at seeing him there, I turned my attention back to my mother’s grave. “You followed me?” I asked on a quavering voice, not knowing if I wanted to cry out in some sort of fucked-up relief at the idea or run as far as my feet would carry me.

  I stared at the date on my mother’s grave and buried my fisted hands between my knees.

  February 3, 2006.

  It was the day I’d begun the run.

  The race.

  Sprinting toward anything that would usher in my destined destruction.

  I’d been so strong, so convinced of that certainty. Of my conclusion. Paying for my sins with an empty life I could never truly give, hating each day I was forced to live.

  But God, I was tired, worn down, weakened now in that belief.

  I felt my father’s presence grow as he advanced from behind. Slowly, his head drifted to the side, weighted by his own sorrow as he edged forward. Passing by me, he knelt and swept loving fingers across my mother’s h
eadstone, even softer as he brushed them over the sacred ground.