I edged up closer to her and held her by the jaw, my voice cracking. “I’m here. Baby, I’m here.”
Aly grimaced a smile, holding on to my wrists like she was clinging to life. “It was always you, Jared. Always. I can’t remember a day in my life when I didn’t love you.”
I tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, then slid my palms down to cup her neck.
A faint blush seeped across her cheeks, and she dropped her face and chewed on her lip. “You were my first crush.” She sobered, her voice strained as sincere green eyes slanted up to me. “And my only love.” Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, almost painfully. “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”
Her words penetrated my blackened soul. And I fucking got it, this innocent girl who I’d taken.
She’d always been mine.
I inclined my head up to capture her attention, to make sure she understood. “I’m so fucked-up, Aly, and I’m always going be. I warned you that you can’t fix me, and you can’t. I’m never going to outlive or outrun this shit.”
All that I had left were pieces, and even those were broken. But those pieces belonged to her, and just maybe we could find a way to make a life from them.
“I wasn’t lying when I said you make me better. You make me want to be better. Truth is, I can’t outrun you, either, Aly. I can’t be without you anymore. The last three months I spent without you have been the darkest I’ve ever had.”
Slowly I ran my hands down the delicate skin of her shoulders. Goose bumps lifted in their wake. I trailed them all the way down, squeezing her hands, then brought my palms to rest flat on her stomach. My throat tightened and I forced down my fear.
“But I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been going through without me here.”
Aly closed her eyes, tears slipping free. “I needed you.”
“It makes me sick that I left you.” Emotion pulsed in my chest, in the deepest places of my spirit, a tumble of confusion and apprehension of what I’d never thought should be vying to be freed. “I’m terrified of this, Aly. I don’t know how to do this.”
Hopeful, subdued laughter fell softly from her mouth. Her teeth tugged at her bottom lip as she dropped her gaze to my hands, and she traced her fingers over the numbers marring my knuckles. “Do you think I’m not? I have no idea how to do this, either. But I know I want to do it with you.”
Sliding my hands up the outside of her thighs to her hips, I tugged her to the edge of the bed, because I needed her near. I brought her flush, and she wrapped her legs around my waist. Those little sleep shorts pressed into my stomach, and I dug my fingers into the supple flesh.
“Aly,” I mumbled through a groan, my face buried in her chest. I raised my head to place a gentle kiss under her jaw, breathing her in, the life and the good. “I missed you.” I ached. It’d been too long since I was lost in her, too long without her touch.
Soft fingers played in my hair, traveled down to my neck and back up again. Chills crawled down my spine. Need coiled and spun with adoration. Fuck, I was in so deep. But now I knew it was the only place I wanted to be.
Easing off the floor, I climbed onto the bed, dragging her up to the middle of it with me. Aly clung to me, legs and arms and body and soul. She ran her nose along the sensitive skin behind my ear. “I missed you,” she murmured, “so much.”
I laid her down and sat back to take her in, my hands gripping her knees. Those long legs were bent, her back bowed. Her hair was all a mess, billowing out around that face that had become the only thing I could see.
“You are so beautiful, Aly.”
Perfect.
I raked a hand through my hair in an attempt to get myself under control because I was dying to consume her. Maybe the way she consumed me.
Wholly.
I forced myself to go slow as I crawled between her legs, propping myself on my hands and knees. I looked directly down on the girl.
Aly’s mouth parted.
Holding myself suspended with one hand, I held one side of her face, my thumb caressing along her flushed skin. “What do you see in me?”
For a moment she just looked at me, intensity pouring from her, before she drew me down to bring us chest to chest. Her breath came as a whisper across my ear. “I see beauty and pain. Joy and sorrow. I see the good and I see the bad… and I love it all.”
I sucked in a rattled breath.
I dipped down and covered her mouth with mine. Months of pent-up desire rushed from my chest and pooled in my stomach. Twisted in the tightest knot. Her tongue was all tentative, soft and slow, tangling with mine as she whispered out these little words that I felt rather than heard, utterings of love and fear that came straight from her heart. I sucked her top lip into my mouth, turned to the bottom, dove in again. And I was singed. Burned.
Hers.
Without breaking our kiss, I found the hem of her shirt with my hands. I slowly inched it up, my palms flat as they traveled her curves. I pulled back enough to lift it over her head.
A pensive smile curved her mouth as Aly tugged my shirt free. Hungry eyes roamed over me, as if she’d missed every inch of my body as much as I missed hers.
Aly lost her breath when she found the mark covering my heart. Fingertips flitted over my skin. She tipped her chin up to me, her voice rough. “Is this me?”
“Yes,” I murmured, “I never could forget you, Aly. Never. You haunted me just as much as the rest of the sins lining my body.” I held her hand closer, over the knowing green eyes that would forever watch over me from their spot on my chest. But now I realized she wasn’t there because she was sin. She was there because she saved me.
This was the mark her life had left on mine.
Leaning back, I edged her shorts and panties from her hips, slipped them down her legs. My gaze traveled her length, every inch of this girl like a dream. I palmed her knees, pressed them apart. This time it was my turn to lose my breath. Every cell in my body strained. “Fuck,” I wheezed. “You’re so gorgeous, Aly,”
This slow blush started at her stomach, traveled up her chest, kissed her cheeks. “I love you, Jared. With all of me. I am yours.”
My blood pumped hard and joy leaped up in me.
Real joy. Not a hint or suggestion.
This joy was real. Overwhelming. Something tangible that Aly had shown me was still possible to feel.
My eyes locked on hers as I slowly leaned down. I feathered a kiss just above her pelvic bone where our child grew. Another mark my life had made when I’d believed I wasn’t living at all. Wisps of anxiety curled, twisting with my spirit. I didn’t know if I could ever be enough. But God, I was going to try.
I climbed over her, looked down at the girl who changed everything. The one who’d given me another chance at life.
Soft fingers caressed my face, green eyes intense. “Stay,” she whispered.
I wound my arm under her back and brought it up to hold her head. The other trailed from her shoulder and down the length of her arm. I wove my fingers with hers and brought her knuckles to my mouth. I brushed my lips over them. Our flesh so different, the pure and the impure. Yet now I knew we fit.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Emotion rumbled thick in my chest, pushing and pulsing. I swallowed hard, my chest so fucking tight as I let myself finally feel, feel what I’d been fighting since I walked through Aly’s apartment door six months ago.
“I love you, Aly.” The words shook, but rang with truth. Our truth.
I never believed I’d get to have this. But somehow I’d found myself with it.
It scared the hell out of me, but I was done running.
I wound a single finger through a lock of her inky hair. A bond. It felt like home.
It was time I built another one.