Come to Me Quietly

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.