Come to Me Recklessly

by A. L. Jackson

  Her frown deepened, but it seemed more in confusion than anything else. “Why, Christopher? Why me?”

  “Because I like you,” I chanced, going for honest, because I realized I didn’t have all that much more to give.

  She hesitated before she huffed out a breath of surrender. “Hold on a second.”

  She disappeared behind the drape. A sharp, short gust of wind sent it billowing into her room, stretching out, like it was seeking her in the same way I was.

  Relief hit me hard when she popped up, now wearing a black tank top over the flimsy piece of material she’d been sporting earlier, the white straps still peeking out from under the scoop neck. She hoisted herself up and over the windowsill, a second’s distress tripping her up when she landed on her feet on the ground. She glanced behind her, then warily back to me.

  “My dad’s gonna kill you if he finds you out here with me.”

  “I’m willing to take the risk.”

  “You haven’t met my dad.”

  Grabbing her hand, I hauled her back through her front yard and onto the sidewalk, getting her away from the possibility of prying eyes, all the while relishing the feel of her hand in mine. I gave it a squeeze. “No, you’re right, I haven’t, because you haven’t invited me over.” I gave her a teasing hard look. “Maybe we should fix that.”

  She barked out a laugh, then clamped her free hand over her mouth, her blue eyes going wide. She jerked her attention back over her shoulder and toward her house, looking for any sort of movement her outburst had stirred within. She turned back to me, those stormy eyes going wild, as if she couldn’t believe for one second she’d just pulled this stunt, couldn’t believe she was getting away with it, couldn’t believe she was out here with me.

  Guess I was pretty surprised myself. Part of me expected her to tell me to get lost.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” I urged, breaking into a run, dragging her behind me. At the end of her street, Samantha started laughing. This uncontained, near-hysterical sound that bubbled up from her stomach, only to grow as it was freed.

  Like maybe something inside of Samantha had been freed.

  “Oh my gosh…” She bit down on the soft flesh of her bottom lip, the biggest smile bursting from under it. “You really are crazy.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  “It’s not like I’m whisking you off to elope or somethin’.”

  She laughed again. This time it wasn’t so carefree. “Oh, this is worse… way worse. Me sneaking out in the middle of the night with a boy?” She shuddered. “You don’t even know.”

  “Then tell me.”

  Mellowing, she leaned into my arm as we walked under the cover of night. We rounded the corner and headed up the next street. All the while I kept her hand secured in mine. “I’m not even allowed to date, Christopher. If I got caught sneaking out with you? I’d probably be grounded for the rest of my life.”

  “You’ve never had a boyfriend?”

  “Nope.” She peered up at me, and the moonlight lit up her face in a way that made my breath get locked up right in the center of my throat.

  God. She was pretty. Beautiful, really, because I was coming to understand the difference. Beauty radiated, and it was surrounding her like some kind of halo of light.

  “Don’t you already know that, though?… The stuff those girls say about me?” There was both sadness and defiance in it, the way her voice hardened the slightest fraction as she slowed.

  “I don’t listen to a word that pack of bitches say, Samantha. Not. A. Word. You shouldn’t, either, because everything that comes out of their ignorant mouths is nothin’ but bullshit and lies.”

  She flinched at the harshness of my tone before she settled her weight a little deeper into my arm, like maybe she found some sort of comfort in the outright hate I felt for all of them.

  Especially Jasmine. Should’ve known better than to have gotten mixed up with her.

  “Whether they’re right or not, that doesn’t change who I am,” she emphasized, so clearly trying to convey something to me, something that was already so obvious.

  “Think I already have a pretty good handle on who you are, Samantha.”

  “Do you?” She looked to the ground, letting me guide her across the street and into the family park that took up the space between our two neighborhoods. Here, the grass grew thick, and tall, lush trees lined the lot, all of it well kept, mowed and shaped right up to the sand that filled in the playground.

  Not a soul was around, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been dying to get her alone.

  And not for the reasons I knew everyone would place over my head like some kind of presumed verdict. I wasn’t half as bad as everyone chalked me up to be, but I didn’t waste my time trying to deny it, because God knew I was guilty of the other half.

  We stopped at the fringe of the playground. Samantha gravitated to me, coming to face me, her expression shifting so fast I couldn’t latch onto one emotion. I lifted our hands between us. Samantha gasped and I felt her pulse pick up when I pinned them between our chests.

  I tilted my head, searching the intensity in those sincere blue eyes. “I know you’re supersmart. I know you’re sweet and kind. I know you’d go to the end of the earth to protect and defend your family, because I’ve seen it myself.”

  With my free hand, I rubbed my thumb along the hollow beneath her eye, and her mouth parted on a sigh as I stared down at this girl who was undoing something inside of me. “I know you’re sad.”

  I saw it there. There was no missing it. And fuck if it didn’t make me sad, too.

  A choked sound strained in her throat, and she reached up and wrapped her hand around my wrist, like she couldn’t allow me to get any closer but she refused to let me go. “I am,” she admitted through a pained whisper. “So sad.”

  “Your brother?”

  I knew all about that. The whole school did. We might live in a big city, but that didn’t mean the gossip didn’t fly here just as fast as it did in some small-time town.

  She nodded. “I can’t stand it, Christopher. Seeing him that way. Hurting and scared. It kills me.”

  Emotion ran hard and fast in my veins. I pulled her into my arms, her face buried in my chest while I just held her. I pressed a tender kiss to the top of her head. “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t say anything, just pulled away, and I knew she was warring with something inside of herself when she kept her attention on me as she slowly wandered around the playground. She ran her fingers over the metal chains of the swings, pitching them in a slight sway. The whole time I stared at her, wondering just how hard and fast this girl could cause me to fall.

  At the last swing in the row of four, she took hold of both chains, her face framed in them as she pinned her honest gaze on me from across the lot. “You scare me, Christopher.”

  “Why?”

  Rough laughter ripped from her, and she dropped her head, shaking it, before she cut her stare back up at me. “Because I don’t know how to handle someone like you. More than that, I don’t want to be one of those girls.”

  I didn’t want her to be, either.

  Didn’t she get that?

  “You could never be one of those girls, Samantha. I promise you that. I just want to be with you. And yeah, I know I have a reputation, but that doesn’t mean I earned all of it.”

  Her brows dropped down in a probing scowl. “What about what Jasmine said the other day? About…” She trailed off, clutching the chains tighter.

  I swallowed over the lump that suddenly got lodged at the base of my throat. “That was true,” I admitted.

  Thing was, my fame had preceded itself, and what Jasmine had tossed out was as far as I’d ever let things go. I never confirmed or denied any of the rumors because it wasn’t anyone’s fucking business who I’d been with, even if I hadn’t really been with anyone.

  Frustration infiltrated her long, hard blink. “That’s what I’m talking
about. I don’t know what you want from me… because if that’s it? You’re after the wrong person.”

  Did I want her? Yeah. For sure. I was a sixteen-year-old boy. No one could blame me. I wanted her. Really wanted her. This wasn’t about me getting my cock sucked by some girl I could barely stand. This was different.

  “I want whatever you’re willing to give me.”

  Releasing the swings, she moved to the slide and slowly began ascending the steps, like each one she put her foot to answered another question posed somewhere in the recesses of her mind. At the top, she just stood there, hanging on to the handles while she stared down at me. The moonlight had her all lit up again, showcasing all her modesty, maybe showing off the woman who wanted to work her way out.

  Edging forward, I waited at the bottom of the slide.

  She lowered herself, gave a little shove, and slid down. I stopped her descent at the bottom, her back pressed into the metal. I grasped the sides, holding myself up, my nose an inch from hers as I hovered in her space. Her eyes were doing that wild thing again, a raging sea that churned with all that shyness, but flamed with bold strikes of courage, a storm that didn’t know which way to turn.

  “Anyone ever kiss you before, Samantha?” I murmured low, letting my nose do a little exploring along her jaw.

  She shook her head no.

  “Didn’t think so,” I whispered, before I took a chance I was pretty damned sure was worth taking, and brushed my mouth against hers. And was I ever right. She tasted like sugar and all things sweet, like a spoonful of pure honey. A remedy.

  Her kiss was every kind of timid, cautious in her inexperience, but it didn’t take a whole lot to convince me that this kind of kiss was my favorite.

  I let her get accustomed to me, to the way my lips pressed and pulled, opened then closed over hers, just savoring this second. When a little moan rumbled up her throat, I let my tongue graze along the rim of her bottom lip. In a blink, her hands were in my hair, desperate to draw me nearer, and she was suddenly kissing me like that storm had taken an abrupt turn and hit land.

  I kissed her back, going for soft and sincere, but I was unable to hold back the quick lashes of my tongue against hers.

  I wanted to eat her whole.

  My hands cinched down on the metal. It cut into my skin, but there wasn’t a chance I was letting go because there was no way I was pushing her, and I was pretty sure if my hands got free they were gonna have a mind of their own. No way would I let my actions even skate in the direction of affirming the fears that had been keeping her back.

  The bad news was I was gonna have a case of near-fatal blue balls for days. But there wasn’t a chance in this godforsaken world that I’d go looking for a cure for this growing issue in someone like Jasmine. Not anymore. Not ever again.

  Turned out my mom was right, after all, encouraging me to hold out even when I might not want to, because there was going to be a day I wished I had.

  Today was that day.

  And I knew it down deep. It didn’t matter at all that we were nothing but kids. Didn’t matter that she was scared and I was stupid.

  Nothing else mattered except for the way this felt.

  Finally I pulled back. Samantha licked her swollen lips, then let go of a lazy smile and traced her fingers down my face.

  “So that might have won me over, crazy boy.”

  I coughed out a laugh.

  Yeah.

  Crazy.

  All kinds of crazy for her.

  EIGHT

  Samantha

  I knocked lightly at the door, cracking it open at the same time. “Stewart?” I called quietly.

  I peeked inside to find my little brother asleep in the middle of his small bed, on his side and facing away. At the sound of my voice, he slowly stirred, groaning as he rolled over. He blinked incoherently before he sat up and rubbed his sleepy eyes. When he dropped his hands, he quirked up the most radiant smile. “Samantha.”

  It didn’t matter how terrible I was feeling inside, there was no stopping my smile, which spread out to match his. Stewart was my happy place.

  I pushed his door open the rest of the way and stepped inside and set the bags of three different kinds of fast food down on his messy desk. I’d made a mad dash, doing rounds through the drive-throughs of all his old favorite places.

  Taking the four steps to bring me to the side of his bed, I dropped a swift kiss to his temple, ran my hand over the top of his bald head. “Hey there, Stew. Sorry to wake you.”

  He didn’t hesitate to lean into me, hugging me fiercely around the waist, or as fiercely as Stewart could in his weakened state. I wrapped my arms around his frail shoulders. I was both swept away in sadness and bolstered in spirit.

  My little brother just had something about him, something magical and kind, as if he understood things long before they happened, as if he knew when someone needed an extra smile or a tighter hug.

  He must have known it now, because he held on to me for the longest time while I clung to him.

  “Nah,” he mumbled softly, “I’m just bored out of my mind. I don’t have anything better to do, so sleep it is.”

  I winced, knowing it was only half the truth. On the phone this morning, Mom had told me his last round of chemo had really knocked him flat, zapping him of all his energy, and he’d either been sick in the bathroom or curled up in bed for the last three days.

  He released me, and I edged away, but not far enough away that I couldn’t cup his cheek. I searched his face. “How are you feeling? I mean, really feeling? Not what you tell your doctor and Mom and everyone else you don’t want fretting over you.”

  A short chuckle rocked from him, and for a second, his blue eyes gleamed with mischief. “Like shit.”

  “Hey, watch your mouth,” I warned through a giggle.

  He pressed his lips into a thin line, trying not to laugh outright. “What? You asked for the truth, and the truth is that I feel like shit. There’s no other word for it.”

  I knew I sheltered him too much, treated him as if he were years younger than his seventeen. But it was so hard to let that little boy go, because he’d missed so much of his childhood that it seemed impossible he was almost eighteen.

  “We need to get you past that, don’t we?”

  His face fell a little, flattening into something too bleak for my taste. “Hope so.”

  I forced a bigger smile. “Know so,” I promised.

  He reached up and squeezed my hand, which was still on his face, a silent conversation transpiring between the two of us. I knew he was scared and just all around sick of being sick, but he also didn’t want to waste his days complaining about it. We both smiled knowing smiles, before we seemed to let go of a heavy breath, putting all of this aside.

  Which would have been a whole lot easier for me if I wasn’t still reeling from what had happened last night. If I wasn’t feeling raw and wrong and completely unsettled. Inhaling, I made a valiant attempt at tucking all of those unbearable thoughts into the quiet corners of my mind. Because this was Stewart’s time, and I didn’t want to waste it on my stupidity and foolishness, on that reckless and impulsive move I’d made that set me on a collision course with a man I would have done well to have long forgotten.

  I gestured to the greasy bags sitting on his desk. “Are you hungry?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe later. Mom made me drink one of those milk shake things a couple hours ago. Not sure I can force anything else down right now.”

  I nodded, though I hated to hear it.

  He rested his elbows on his knees, his legs crisscrossed in front of him. “So tell me something… anything… I need gossip… drama. I’m about to lose my mind here. It’s pretty sad when I have to live vicariously through my twenty-three-year-old sister, who acts more like a forty-seven-year-old crazy cat lady.”

  My mouth puckered in offense, and his deep laughter ricocheted around his room.

  “You are such a punk,” I accused through a tease,
before I went for a look of sophisticated arrogance. “I’ll have you know I went to the store three times this week. And I drank an entire bottle of wine. By myself.”

  Did I leave out all the stuff about Aly? About Christopher? About how incredibly pathetic and sad and heartbroken the whole situation made me feel? Yes. Yes. And yes.

  I wasn’t about to go there with him. It wasn’t prudent and it most definitely wasn’t important.

  Or at least that’s what I was trying to convince myself.

  “Really… three whole trips to the store, huh? You are such a rebel.” He considered me when I fidgeted, and his blue eyes narrowed. “You sure there isn’t something more exciting you want to share with me?”

  “No. Of course not,” I hurled out way too fast.

  In an attempt to hide the cringe that pinched my face with that blatant lie, I turned away from him and crossed my arms over my chest as I studied the rows and rows of wood shelves that were bracketed on his walls. All of them showcased his prize possessions, trinkets, memorabilia, and character dolls from all his favorite video games and books. My chest tightened when my attention landed on his most cherished keepsake of all – the signed copy of his favorite childhood book.

  I’d never forget the day it’d arrived in a padded package all the way from the UK. Mom and Dad had both been skeptical when a deliveryman had shown up needing a signature for something that was from out of the country and addressed to Stewart.

  Forever I’d cherish the expression that had taken over Stewart’s face when he’d ripped into that box and came to realize the significance of what he held, that it was signed to him with an inscription telling him to Never stop believing in magic.

  It wasn’t just happiness.

  It was a deep-seated joy, something so precious to him that it’d stolen his breath and sent silent tears streaming down his face.

  It was a survivor’s prize.

  God, I was so thankful he’d been given something so special, the gift so thoughtful that it’d crumbled the last bits of my resistance.

  After I’d asked around, Ben had admitted he’d been the one who had it sent, and it was that book that had finally won me over.