Текст книги "Come to Me Quietly"

Автор книги: A. L. Jackson

Соавторы: A. L. Jackson
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

I kept stealing glances at my door, willing him to come.

To come to me.

To love me the way he had done last night.

Or maybe just lie with me, hold on to me while I held on to him.

Two hours passed, and still he didn’t come.

I wanted to go to him. Comfort him. Finally, when I could take it no longer, I did. I rose from my bed and padded across my floor. As quietly as I could, I pulled open my door. I looked out into the empty hall. Blackness seeped from under the crack in the bathroom door. I stepped out. To my right, Christopher’s door was closed. Silence hovered thick in the apartment, and I tiptoed out into the main room. The couch was empty, without evidence of blankets or pillows. My pulse raced in fear, before I noticed Jared’s keys left in a pile on the coffee table. I shuffled around the couch and pressed my face to the sliding glass door.

The night sky was turbulent. Sheets of lightning sliced through the heavens, igniting the world in bright bursts of light before it fizzled out. Furies of harsh wind pummeled the thin branches of paloverde trees, slanting them askew. Frantic, I searched the darkened balcony for evidence of the one who’d always set me off-kilter, the one who’d set the standard of my beliefs because he’d been the one who’d managed to touch me so deeply. The sky flashed. It cast the balcony in transient light.

Jared wasn’t there.

I took two steps back. I fisted my hands in frustration, my attention darting all over the empty room. For a second, I studied the front door, before I swallowed down the lump in my throat and found the courage to cross the room. Quietly I opened it.

Relief washed over me when I found him sitting by himself on the floor with his back propped up against the wall beside the door. That relief clashed with the pain, this overwhelming surge of feeling that crested and rose.

Like a partner to the storm, Jared rocked in agitation as he brought a nearly spent cigarette to his mouth. His bare chest expanded as he filled his lungs. Smoke swirled above his head. Thick chunks of his blond hair lashed with the wind, beaten and stirred. Aggressively he stamped out the butt. A twisted snarl bled from his lips, and he curled his lacerated knuckles and mashed them against his temples, as if he’d do anything to silence the demons whispering in his ear.

Just for tonight, I wanted to make it go away.

I felt the moment he registered my presence, the way his hands pressed harder to his head, his movements harsh as he severely shook it. His voice was hoarse, barely audible above the howling wind. “Just… go back inside.”

He knew me better than that. He knew there was no chance I’d turn away, just like I knew him well enough to know he would try to shut me out.

Thunder crashed, and I delved deep to find the same courage I’d uncovered in myself last night. Creeping forward, I kneeled in front of him, my knees scraping on the coarse concrete floor. Slowly I crawled between his legs, my hands resting on his knees.

Jared rocked his head back on the pitted stucco wall. He kept his eyes closed tight, shielding me from the hurt I knew he harbored there. “You shouldn’t be out here,” he forced through gritted teeth.

“Why not, Jared?” I demanded. “Why do you think you have to go through everything alone?”

Tortured blue eyes opened to me. They skimmed my face, like this painful embrace. “Don’t you see it, Aly? This is exactly what I warned you about. I’m a fucking disaster.” Reaching out, he touched my face, his head tilting to the side as he dragged his fingertips down my cheek, searching for understanding.

Flames burned beneath his touch, stoked the devotion I’d eternally hold for him.

Did he think he was somehow pushing me away, warning me, when all I wanted was more?

“I never wanted you to see me like I was tonight,” he said, “but it was inevitable… all of this is… inevitable. And still I stay because I don’t fucking know how to walk away from you. Last night… ” He wrenched a trembling hand through his hair. “Fuck, Aly… last night was the closest I’ve come to feeling something real in so long.”

With his admission, warmth flooded and pooled, filled me whole. My hands clamped down on his knees, my fingers burrowing in his skin.

Stay.

A fierce squall of wind pushed into the space, rippled with energy, stirring my blood, stirring my heart.

Stay.

Leaning in close to his face, I captured his gaze, spoke above the churning storm. “None of that matters to me, Jared. And it was just a fight. You were sticking up for Christopher. Sticking up for me. What is wrong with that?”

My hair thrashed around my face, and Jared twisted his finger in a wayward lock as if he were anchoring himself to me.

Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled.

I sucked in a breath, losing myself in his simple touch.

“You know it wasn’t just a fight.” Jared shook his head, his eyes narrowing severely as he opened his mouth in confession. “Christopher was right when he said I lost it. I lost it the second that asshole even looked your way. I wanted to… ” Hesitating, Jared dropped his gaze to the side, wet his lips, before pinning me with the full force of his stare. “I wanted to hurt him… I wanted to rip him apart. Just the thought of someone messing with you makes me insane.” He blinked, winding his finger tighter in my hair. “You make me fucking crazy, Aly. Dangerous. It’s like all I want to do is protect you even though I know I’m going to end up hurting you. And God, it kills me to think of hurting you.”

I grasped his face between urgent hands. “Then don’t.”

His mouth collided with mine, his hands frenzied as he possessively sank them into my hair. He kissed and sucked, mumbled, “Aly… ” as he gasped for air. He pulled back, my hair threaded in his fingers as he splayed them wide. His eyes grew earnest as he held my head in his hands. “Baby, I don’t want to… God, I don’t want to.” He drew me back, his mouth forceful as it overtook mine.

I pressed my chest to his, felt his heart pound. I struggled to meet his kiss, to bear part of this anguish eating him alive. My fingers curled around his jaw before I wrapped my arms around his head. “Jared,” I begged.

Pricks of pain bit at my knees as I rose, battling to get closer, desperate as my body sought his.

I just needed to feel. To know his heart in his touch. For him to know mine.

Jared hoisted me up in one swift movement. My back was suddenly nailed to the door, his body covering mine. All the breath left my lungs. I moaned, making a frantic play to bring him closer as I clung to his wide shoulders.

Jared took my face in his hands, pulled back to search my eyes. He wet his lips, the frenzy that had blazed between us abating to a slow smolder. He hesitated, wavering, before he returned to me with a gentle, closemouthed kiss. He rested his forehead on mine. “Aly, can we… will you just lie with me? I just want to feel you.”

My exhale was shaky, and I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, nodding against him.

Carefully he lowered me to my feet, fumbled with the knob, and let us into the silence of the darkened apartment. He led me to my room, quietly snapped the door shut, and turned the lock. In front of my bed, he pulled his shirt over his head, before he slowly removed mine.

“Aleena, you’re so beautiful,” he said as his eyes swept the length of my body.

Aleena.

Last night when he’d spoken my name like that, it had stolen my breath as he’d murmured it again and again. It made me feel beautiful. Made me feel loved, even when he couldn’t admit loving me was exactly what he was doing.

Lightning struck the same instant thunder crashed. A sudden torrent of violent rain pelted the window. I shivered, a rush of chills blanketing my skin. Jared reached out to caress them, fingertips light as they tickled along my collarbone.

He left us in only our underwear before he took my hand and guided me to the bed. He drew me near, his arms encircling me, his nose buried in my hair. The storm raged around us, so much like the man who held me in his arms. Violent. Unpredictable.

Beautiful.

Hours later, I listened as rain pattered lightly against the windowpanes, and thunder rolled in the far distance as the storm gave up its hold on the city.

For the longest time, I’d just lain on top of this sweet man who was so utterly hardened. It was difficult to reconcile the two. We’d said little, just held each other in the peace of the passing storm. After tonight, I knew that was really what Jared needed. Just to be held. His heart thrummed steadily beneath my cheek. He had me wrapped in his arms, his fingers playing along the skin of my bare back. He just stared at the ceiling, lost in thought.

I snuggled closer because I didn’t think I could ever get close enough. His fingers found their way into my hair, massaging up the back of my scalp. Contentment warmed me as it spread through my veins.

“This feels so good.” Jared’s hushed voice broke into the silence.

I trailed my fingers up his chest and to his shoulder. “So good.”

I didn’t want to ruin the peace we found ourselves in, but the question had sat quietly in the back of my head since that first morning when he’d confronted me in the kitchen and then stumbled into the apartment later that night with bloodied knuckles. Seeing him at the bar tonight had pushed my worry back to the forefront of my mind, where it plagued and nagged me. “Can I ask you something without you getting upset?” Timidly, I traced the dying rose that rested over his heart. I kept my head down because I couldn’t look him in the eye.

Humorlessly, he chuckled and toyed with my hair, lifting thick chunks and letting them fall in waves down my back. “That sounds like a loaded question, Aly. I think the better question would be if you can ask it without getting upset. Because I won’t lie to you, but I’m not sure you’ll like the answer.”

I swallowed. “It’s not like that. It’s just something I’ve been wondering about and you’ve never mentioned.” Okay, worrying about. Jared was right. I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d handle his answer.

“All right, then,” he prodded.

I paused, searching for some way to frame the question without sounding as if I were accusing him of something I really didn’t know all that much about. Because it wasn’t an accusation. I just needed to know. “I heard what they found in your locker when you were expelled… ” Knew what I had seen. My heart thudded a little too hard.

Jared sighed with impatience, but he didn’t seem all that surprised or angered by the question. “You want to know if I still use? If I’m an addict?”

I cringed at the bluntness of his words.

Jared sighed again, but this time it sounded like an apology. “Hey, look at me.” He nudged me. I lifted my head and he placed a warm hand on my face. Sincere blue eyes locked with mine. “Yes, Aly, I’m an addict because I’ll never forget how easy it is to slip into oblivion, and I’ll never stop wanting to go there. There are days when I think I’ll go crazy because I crave it so much and other days when I don’t think about it at all. But using is the easy way out. I tried that route, and it didn’t take long for me to realize this life wasn’t going to be easy. I haven’t used since the night they sent me away. I learned then I don’t get an escape.”

“Jared – ”

“Don’t, Aly.” He ran his thumb over my cheek. “You think I can’t feel this? How badly you want the things I can’t give you? That’s why it makes me sick that I’m doing this, because I already warned you… you can’t fix me, and you can’t say or do something that will change my mind or fill up the void in my soul.”

There was no anger in his words. Just sadness.

He increased his hold on my face and I nuzzled closer to him, wishing I could disappear inside him. Wished I could fill that void.

“I know that. I just care about you,” I whispered seriously.

A wistful smile quivered around his mouth, his eyes gentle, and I knew he cared about me, too.

“I know you do, Aly,” he admitted before his blue eyes dimmed. “Just be careful that you don’t care too much.”

I pulled his hand from my face, kissed across the numbers tattooed on the ripped and torn knuckles of his left hand: 2006. Death.

The year he’d lost it all.

I prayed that somehow he could again learn to live again.

The next day, I had to get up early because I was scheduled to work both the breakfast and lunch shifts. Jared had crept from my bed sometime in the very early morning hours, but not without leaving me another glimpse into his thoughts.

The foul spoils the beauty.

His words both touched me and saddened me.

I’d left him with a token of me, a tender kiss I’d placed just below his ear. He’d smiled, his sleepy eyes flickering open to look at me as soft words rasped from his hoarse throat. “Hi, beautiful.”

I’d left feeling good. Alive. As if maybe Jared and I had stumbled upon some kind of understanding, as unstable as it was.

I blew the bangs back from my forehead and began to tap an order out on the computer. Sundays were always busy, which I loved because it meant time passed quickly. I peeked at the clock on the wall. Only half an hour until I could go to him.

“How are you holding up, Aly?” Karina asked, popping her head through the swinging door.

I smiled at her. “I’m all caught up. It’s finally slowing down out there.”

“Looks like the rush is over. Why don’t you go ahead and finish up your last table and then you can cut out of here?”

“Thanks, Karina.”

“No problem. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Sure thing.”

The door swung closed behind her, and I turned my attention back to the computer and put in my last order of the day.

Two seconds later, the door swung open again. I glanced to the side to see another waitress, Clara, standing there staring at me, a question framing her set mouth.

I frowned and tucked my order pad back in my apron.

Suspicion tipped her head to the side. She was in her late twenties, bleached blond, wore too much makeup, and was one of the hardest workers at the restaurant. She once told me that being a single mom gave you a whole new work ethic.

I couldn’t help but like her.

“What?” I asked, a smile wobbling at the corner of my mouth. I just couldn’t help it. Happiness had that way about it.

I grabbed two glasses and began filling them with ice as I glanced over at her.

She shifted her weight back and crossed her arms over her chest, her expression glimmering with smug humor. “So, Aly, my friend,” she drew out, “do you care to explain to me why there’s a crazy-hot, scary guy asking for you out at the hostess podium?”

My hand tightened on the glass I was filling.

Jared.

Warmth flooded my face, spread down to wind through my heart. He was here.

Laughing, she edged forward and started filling glasses with ice and tea. She knocked me with her hip. “And I’m guessing by the look on your face you know exactly who I’m talking about.”

I bit my lip and rocked my head noncommittally. “Maybe.”

She chuckled low but lifted her chin to study my face. “Just be careful, okay? There’s something unnerving about him.”

Defensive needles prickled along the back of my neck, and heat burned the rims of my ears. “You don’t know anything about him. And I would have thought better of you than making judgments based on a few tattoos.” The words came out harsher than I intended.

She scoffed. “Come on, Aly, you know me better than that… . I wasn’t talking about his tattoos. I was talking about his eyes.” She stepped back and looked at me seriously. “And you’re right. I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him and I know it’s not really any of my business.”

Her voice softened. “But I like you, and believe me, I’ve been there before. There are just some boys who are so broken they can never be tamed, and in the end, they just end up breaking you.” Old wounds creased the corners of her eyes. “I don’t want to see that happen to you.”

Her words hurt because they rang with truth. Doubt fluttered in my consciousness, but I shoved it off. “I know, Clara. I appreciate it. But it’s… ”

She just smiled knowingly and finished the thought I never would have been brave enough to say. “But it’s already too late.”

Too late had come a long time ago. “Yeah,” I admitted softly.

She forced a soft breath from her nose. “Well, then, why don’t you let me take your last table and you get out of here?”

“Are you sure?”

She brushed off my worry with a wave of her hand. “Yep. I could use the money, anyway.”

Appreciation edged my mouth. “Thank you, Clara.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I handed her my table’s drinks, which she arranged with hers on a tray.

She walked across the kitchen and began to back out the swinging door. She peered out the small crack she made. She turned her attention back to me, lifting her brow in playful observation. “Good God, Aly. I don’t blame you for a second. I’d be lost, too. And did you say a few tattoos? Have fun memorizing those.”

Laughing, I threw a wadded-up dish towel at her. “Shut up,” I said, unoffended because Clara’s intentions were only good.

Of course, memorizing Jared’s ink was exactly what I intended to do, but for entirely different reasons than she assumed. I wanted to explore each one, to know the story behind it, and to understand the wound that had inspired it.

She ducked out of the way, grinning as she backed farther out the door. “Be safe,” she called out before it swung shut behind her.

Yanking off my apron, I grabbed my purse and headed out into the dining room. Jared stood near the wall just at the entrance, his hands stuffed in his pockets while he shuffled his feet. My heart sped, trying to keep up with the thrill I felt at seeing him here. I loved that he had sought me out. That he was taking a chance of exposing us here and not just keeping us hidden away in my room.

As if he felt me, he lifted his head as I approached. Self-consciously, he smiled and brushed a hand through his hair before he ran it down the back of his neck. He was nervous. And I couldn’t help thinking it was the cutest thing I’d ever seen him do.

I was grinning as I walked up to him. “Hey… what are you doing here?”

His smile widened, and he waved his hand toward the dining room. “I just hadn’t had lunch yet and heard this was a good place to eat.”

“Really?” I said, planting my feet on the floor, dubious.

He chuckled sheepishly, then reached for me, his hand at the back of my head as he pressed his cheek to mine, murmuring near my ear, “I fucking missed you, okay?”

We found a table in the back, near the curve of windows that faced the street. Jared and I talked, and he held my hand under table, the circles he traced with his thumb on the back sending these little shots of joy down my spine. There was no urge to pull away when he shifted and ran it along the ridges of the scar on the outside of my left hand.

Because I was his.

“What happened here?” he asked casually as he ran his fingers over the long-healed skin.

I shrugged. “I just burned myself.”

Claire appeared at our table, her grin wide and knowing as she asked what we’d like.

Jared and I ordered, and we ate together, Jared’s smile easy, his words kind and free. We laughed. And it was natural. Exactly the way we were supposed to be.

SIXTEEN

January 2006

Aly hated the way things had gotten. As they had grown, so had the distance.

It’d been cold out the last couple of weeks, too cold to find escape in their empty field, not that they would be out there, anyway.

Her dad called her a tomboy, teasing that she always wanted to be outside, playing in the dirt and climbing trees.

But really, she just wanted to be near him.

She quieted her feet as she flattened her back to the wall and slid farther down the hall. It was wrong, she knew, eavesdropping on Jared and Christopher as they talked in her brother’s bedroom, but she didn’t know how to stop herself. Shielding herself from the conversation happening on the other side of the door seemed impossible because she felt drawn. As if she had to hear. As if she had to know.

Still she’d never believed hearing something could cause her so much pain.

For years she’d imagined being thirteen would make her feel mature. Grown-up. She’d studied herself in the mirror as her body had begun to change and thought maybe Jared would begin to notice her in the same way she noticed him.

But now that she was just a few months from turning fourteen, the only thing she felt like was a stupid little girl.

On the carpeted hall floor, she slid her bare feet a little farther down, coming right up to the outside of Christopher’s door. Anxiety twisted her stomach into heavy knots that made it hard to breathe. Or maybe it was the pain in her chest that made her feel as if she were suffocating. She couldn’t tell.

She only knew it hurt.

She swallowed over the pain that lodged in her throat and tried to still her shaking hands.

Christopher’s door was barely cracked open, but she could make out the back of her brother’s head from where he sat on the floor in the middle of the room. Loose sheets of homework and a textbook were spread out in front of him. Every few seconds, Aly would catch a glimpse of Jared’s face whenever Christopher leaned to the side.

She inclined her ear, keeping herself hidden as she subjected herself to their hushed words.

“Oh man,” Christopher said through suppressed, envious laughter. “In her parents’ bed? Dude, that is messed up.”

Jared chuckled as if the whole conversation was absurd. Aly saw him press his hands to his face, then drop them to his lap with a one-sided shrug. “I don’t even know what I was thinking. It was weird, anyway… . I don’t even like her.”

“She’s hot, though,” Christopher pointed out.

Suggestive laughter fell from Jared’s mouth. “That she is.”

Those knots tightened in her stomach, and she was sure she was going to be sick.

“What about you and Samantha?” Jared asked, resituating himself as he pulled a textbook to his lap. “That girl is wound up so tight I don’t know how you’re ever going to undo that.”

Christopher shook his head, his shaggy black hair brushing over his shoulders. “Nah… Samantha is cool. She wants to wait until she turns sixteen… six weeks.” He laughed almost as if he were embarrassed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I like her a lot. I mean, like, a lot.”

Christopher lowered his head, and Aly caught sight of Jared’s curious expression.

“Yeah?” he asked, completely without ridicule.

“Yeah.”

“That’s cool, man. I want that someday.” Then Jared cracked a smile, wide and cocky. “Just not when I’m sixteen.”

Christopher crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it at his head. “Fuck you.” He laughed, unrestrained. “You just can’t stand it that I have to drive your sorry ass around all the time and I have an awesome girlfriend.”

“Hey, man, two weeks and I’m free.” Jared looked up with a grin.

“Yeah, and I bet the second you get that car your parents are giving you, you’ll have Kylie in the backseat.”

Aly felt sad, a sadness she didn’t know how to deal with. It was as if this disease crawled over her flesh, pressing down, seeping in, taking hold. She wanted to scrape the feeling from her skin, purge it from her mind.

She wasn’t one of those girls. She’d never been able to understand the packs of girls gathered around one another in the bathroom while one girl cried because the boy she liked didn’t like her back. Inevitably, she liked a different boy the next week and suddenly the world was right.

It wasn’t as if Aly really thought badly of them. Most of them were her friends. She just didn’t understand the shift, the distraction from one boy to the next in the matter of seconds, the fleeting attraction that never lasted. Because the only boy she’d ever wanted had been one and the same. She forced out a ragged breath from her lungs and tried to blink away the pounding in her head.

Aly froze when Jared suddenly lifted his face and caught her eye as she stared at him openmouthed through the sliver in the door.

He kicked Christopher on the sole of his shoe to get his attention. “Shh… ,” he hissed in warning. He announced her presence to Christopher with a gesture of his chin. “Your little sister is right there.”

She stepped back, shaking, hating that she’d managed to make herself the fool.

“Aly?” her mom called from the living room.

She hurried to the end of the hall before she allowed herself to speak. “I’m right here.”

Her mom both smiled and frowned. “I thought you were running to your room to get the picture? Helene is dying to see your first-place winner.”

Jared’s mom, Helene, twisted around her seat, smiling at Aly from across the room. “I knew you’d do it, Aly, baby.” Her blue eyes shone with warm affection, her long natural blond hair pulled to one side and flowing down her slender shoulder. “I’ve never seen anyone who can draw like you… ever since you were just a tiny thing… always drawing.” She smiled knowingly at Aly’s mom.

“Let’s see it, sweetheart,” her mom said.

“I couldn’t find it,” Aly lied, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She’d been too busy spying on Christopher and Jared. “Let me look a little more.”

Aly rushed to her room, slammed the door shut behind her, and rested her back against it as she fought against the tears.

Jared’d had sex with some girl and she’d never so much as held a boy’s hand.

She’d been waiting for him.

Anger pulled at the knots in her stomach, knitting them tighter. She stomped across her room, knew she was acting like a baby, like one of those stupid girls at school with a stupid crush and even stupider tears, but she couldn’t stop them. They flooded down her face. She just wanted to curl up in her bed and die.

Instead she jerked up the hem of her shirt and used it to harshly dry her eyes.

He’d promised her he’d never leave her behind.

But he did.

“Stop it. Just stop it,” she scolded herself below her breath, drawing air into her tight lungs. “Stop being dumb, Aly. He’s almost sixteen.”

What did she expect? That he would actually want her?

She had to pull it together, forget about this, shove it aside.

She dropped to her knees and dragged the portfolio from under her bed, retrieving the large charcoal drawing that had been awarded first prize. She’d felt proud when they gave her the ribbon, proud when they gave her the check to put into her savings account for college.

It was a landscape, the mountains stretching up to kiss the horizon as the sun sagged behind the mountain, distorted, as if the two were melting into each other.

But this art wasn’t her treasure.

Her treasures were the faces she kept safe, bound up in sketch pads that she’d never show another person.

Now she knew why. She’d been right.

Jared would have laughed.

She swallowed down the humiliation and rushed back down the hall. At the brink of the living room, she slowed, her movements guarded as she made her way to Helene. Jared’s mom was so beautiful… as beautiful as her own… but different, the woman somehow both exotic and plain. Aly wasn’t exactly sure how that could be, but she’d drawn her face so many times she knew it was the truth.

With shaky hands, she gave Helene her offering.

Helene quietly gasped. “This is incredible, Aly. Absolutely beautiful.” She smiled up at her, reflective tears simmering in her eyes. “You did good, baby girl. So good.”

“Thank you,” Aly whispered, feeling heat on her cheeks and warmth in her chest as she took her drawing back into her hands.

“What’s that?”

Aly jumped when the voice that haunted her thoughts came from directly behind her. She jerked to look over her shoulder and came face-to-face with the boy who stole her breath. Her stomach ached again, but this time in a different way. Her mouth went dry, her mind completely blank except for the fact that he was standing less than foot from her. “It’s nothing,” she finally managed to force out.

“Nothing?”

He touched her shoulder, gently prodding her to turn, and took hold of the top of the large image while she held the bottom. For a long moment, he said nothing and just stared at the thick paper separating them, before he lifted his face. “Aly, did you draw this?”

Blue eyes searched her face, and it hurt and stung and soothed, and again, Aly wanted to cry. “It was just a stupid art project I had to do for school.”

“That ended up winning the state championship,” Helene was quick to add. “It’s really beautiful, Jared, isn’t it?”

He didn’t look away from Aly. “Yeah, it is.” Admiration filled his soft smile. “Is this the kind of stuff you keep in your sketch pads?”

Aly swallowed and shook her head. “No,” she admitted with her eyes pinched shut tight.

“Can I see one of those drawings?” he asked.

Helene tsked, her smile light. “Jared, that’s as bad as asking a girl if you can read her journal. You should know better.”

He stumbled through a chuckle and stepped back. “I guess so.”

A timer sounded in the kitchen. Aly’s mom got up and disappeared through the archway. She popped her head back out a minute later. “All right, time for dinner. You kids get washed up.”

Augustyn and Courtney abandoned the cartoon they were watching in the family room and rushed down the hall.

Their families ate together the way they always did, a jumble of people scattered about the room, their parents at the dining table, Jared, Christopher, and Aly at the nook, and the little kids on stools at the bar.

As soon as dinner was over, Jared and Christopher announced their departure.

“You two be careful,” Aly’s mom ordered, wagging her pointed finger at the two of them.

“Of course, Mom,” Christopher promised, jingling his keys at his side.

“I don’t want to hear any more excuses about being late for curfew, Jared Zachary,” Helene warned. “You be home on time tonight.”

Jared just smiled and nodded, quick to head for the door.

“And just because you’re getting ready to turn sixteen doesn’t mean you’re too old to give your mom a kiss good-bye,” Helene called out.

Jared laughed and rushed back up to Helene. He dipped down to kiss her on the cheek. “Never. Love you, Mom.”

“Be good, bear,” she said with nothing but affection.

Aly focused on her plate as Jared passed behind her. She felt a tug on a thick lock of her hair. Her eyes dropped closed because he hadn’t done that in so long. Quiet and subdued, his words came from behind her. “I’m really proud of you, Aly Cat.”