Christopher held me a little closer. “It’s okay, Aly… Come on, you can make it.”
Inside, the apartment was too quiet, echoing with what I’d lost.
Every part of me hurt, an ache so deep I felt it in places I didn’t know existed.
He was gone.
Nausea turned my stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick.” I ran to the bathroom and fell to my knees, purging the riot tearing through my insides.
Ravaging.
Pillaging.
Ruining.
He’d promised me he would.
I dropped my head, crying toward the floor, the hard floor digging into my knees.
I knew he would.
Christopher followed me in and latched the door behind him. He dug through the bottom cabinet for a washcloth and turned on the faucet, getting it damp.
Then he kneeled down at my side. “Here.” He wiped my mouth and the sweat drenching my forehead. His face was a mess of sympathy and anger and the remnants of Jared’s violence. Blood had dried in smeared streaks where he’d wiped it. One side of his mouth had already begun to swell, and a bruise was forming on the outside of his right eye.
He got up and rinsed it and then handed the cool cloth back to me.
“Thank you,” I mumbled quietly. On my side, I slumped all the way to the hard floor.
Christopher sank down across the cramped room, slouching up against the closed door with his legs lying limp out in front of him, staring at me, his body just as beaten as my heart.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, clutching the cloth to my mouth, searching for comfort where none could be found.
He dropped his gaze and shook his head, then raised it again, his gaze pinning me with a portion of the anger that had spurred his intrusion into my room fifteen minutes before. “How long was it going on, Aly?”
I swam in my shame. Not of the fact of Jared and me, but for keeping it from my brother. Yeah, I was twenty, and Christopher had no right to tell me I couldn’t. But the way we’d gone about it was wrong. “A month… ”
The answer couldn’t even penetrate the thick air because I think both Christopher and I knew it wasn’t true.
“Longer, I guess,” I finally said, my fingers wringing the washcloth as if it would give me courage to speak. “He started coming to my room a couple of weeks after he got here… but at first we would just talk.” This slow sadness seeped through my veins. “Over time I think we both became something neither of us could live without.”
And I had no idea how I would live without him now.
Christopher drew up his knees, propped his forearms on them. “Why didn’t you just tell me? You don’t think I would have understood?”
I frowned. “Would you have? Because it didn’t seem that way tonight.”
Groaning, he released a heavy breath toward the ceiling. “I don’t know, Aly… Maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe I would have flipped out like I did tonight.” He looked straight at me. “Either way, keeping it from me was wrong. I heard the two of you fighting when I was walking down the hall… and shit… I knew something was going on between the two of you. I mean, I fucking point-blank asked him, Aly, and he swore that you were just friends, said he only cared about you and was looking out for you. And here I invite the asshole into our apartment, and he’s the one taking advantage of you.”
“He wasn’t taking advantage of me, Christopher.” My voice strengthened as I denied Christopher’s assertion. “I love him.”
I loved him so much.
And he was gone.
A sharp pain stabbed me in my gut, deep, deeper than any place I’d ever felt before. I shuddered and wheezed.
“Yeah, well, you made that abundantly clear tonight.” Sarcasm wound its way through the words, before he blinked, and his expression filled with sympathy. “You always have, haven’t you?” It wasn’t a question, just a realization that finally latched on to his consciousness. As if disillusioned, Christopher rubbed his battered face, a choked sound forced from his throat. “Shit… I’m such an idiot.”
Remorse seemed to hit him, and he wrenched both hands through his hair and spoke toward the floor. “God, Aly, I can’t believe I hurt you like that. I really am sorry. I had no right to react like I did. I just… lost it.”
“None of us were thinking straight,” I whispered.
There was no justification for anything that had happened tonight, but I knew he’d never purposely harm me, and it hurt too much to be angry with my brother. I’d already been stripped bare, every place in me left raw. I couldn’t deal with Christopher now. I was too consumed by this unbearable void suddenly prominent in the middle of me.
He sighed and focused on me. “I know you care about him, and I care about him, too, but he’s messed up, Aly. Dangerous. It’s best that he’s gone.” He shook his head. “I heard what you said… what he said, and you deserve better than that.”
My body shook, recoiled at the words.
I’d known I shouldn’t say it, that the love I held for Jared should only be shown and never spoken. But listening to him talk about his mom was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, hearing the hatred that had poured from his mouth, feeling the blame he harbored so close. Worse was knowing how the guilt had destroyed him ever since that day. I wanted to take it away, show him he was worthy of being loved – that I loved him and I always would. I didn’t even know how to regret saying it. Even with him gone, I still needed him to know. To take that piece of me with him that I could never give to anyone else, because I would always belong to him.
“He’s really gone, isn’t he?” I whispered.
Grief gripped me by the heart.
“Yeah, Aly, he’s really gone.”
TWENTY-ONE
February 3, 2006
Aly crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her face to the cool winter sky. Evening approached. Pinks were strewn across the deepening blue, twilight casting a striking chill in the air. Aly tugged her sweatshirt a little tighter to keep herself warm. After school, she’d gone to Rebecca’s house to hang out, one of her best friends who lived in the next neighborhood over. But she was supposed be home before it got dark.
Her backpack bounced on her shoulders as she hurried. Turning right on the street where her family lived, Aly jogged across the street and up the sidewalk to the front door. She opened it, rushing in, the announcement of her arrival poised on her tongue.
Then she stumbled to a stop.
Her hand shot to the wall for support, and a chill so much different than the one she’d felt outside trickled down her spine like a rush of frigid ice. She shook and crept forward, canting her ear to the sounds coming from her mother in the living room.
She was crying.
No.
Not just crying.
Aly had only heard her mother sound like this once before – the day Aly’s grandma died.
She was weeping.
The cries slithered along the floor, crawled up the walls, pierced Aly’s ears. Fear and panic struck her heart. It pounded hard. She felt along the wall, her back pressed to it and her eyes pinched shut as if it would protect her from whatever had done this to her mother. She stopped at the archway to the living room, holding her breath as she risked peeking inside the room.
Her mom was on the floor, on her knees. Her dad kneeled over her, rubbing her back, trying to calm her. But her mother sobbed toward the floor, completely inconsolable.
“Shh, Karen… I’m right here… I’m right here.”
“Dave… ” She said his name as if maybe he could take away whatever was hurting her.
In some sort of daze, Aly wandered out into the middle of the room and stood there gaping at her mom falling apart. The ball of dread sitting like a rock in her stomach promised her something was very, very wrong.