Aleena
Softly, the door clicked shut behind him, a complete contradiction to the violence that had claimed him minutes before.
Silence swallowed the room, a deafening stillness that screamed of all my fears.
Excruciating pain bore down on my chest. Squeezing. Suffocating. I couldn’t breathe.
I pressed my hand over my heart, as if it could somehow hold it together.
But my knees went weak and I buckled.
Body and soul.
I backed into the wall to catch myself from falling. Clutching my stomach with one hand, I pressed the other over my mouth and tried to hold myself up in this world that had finally beaten us down.
Jared.
Outside, his bike rumbled to life, roared to a thunder as he took it to the street.
Regret and anger and loss spiraled through me.
What did I do?
What did he do?
Oh my God.
It hurt. God, it hurt, and I wanted to take it back. I wanted to chase him and beg him not to leave even when I knew voicing it would be the biggest mistake I’d ever made.
Worse than the one I made when I cornered him, shoving the past he’d been running from in front his face without any warning.
Guilt throbbed deep, tangling with the overwhelming fear that I might truly lose this man.
I’d wanted him to know I searched for and found his father because I loved him, not because I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to know I looked and pried because he deserved to get back that piece of his life that was stolen from him that fateful day.
But I should have done it all differently. Handled it with the care he deserved. Gave heed to this fragile situation that I knew could so easily crack and shatter into a million pieces.
Despair clogged my throat as I looked around the room.
Shattered.
All of it.
This gorgeous house that had been created by his hand brought down by the same.
This heart that loved him through every frantic beat.
The faith he’d had in me.
But what else could I do?
I’d been backed into my own corner.
Because it was true. I couldn’t live this way. Waiting for the next explosion to be set off.
After what happened tonight with Gabe, I’d sat alone in our room, fisting the scrap of paper in my hand, coming to terms with what I had to do.
I knew I had to give it to him.
It was time. I couldn’t keep ignoring the way he suffered. Night after night, I watched Jared splintering, frantic and lost when he’d wake me from sleep. Like he was begging me for help but didn’t know how to ask for it.
Finding his family was the only way I knew how to help him.
The address wasn’t given as a manipulation, not as a way to coerce this man who I knew loved me with all of his tortured life into doing what I wanted. All I’d ever wanted was for him to heal, for him to find a way to forgive himself for what he’d done, for him to finally come to terms with the mistake that had stolen so many years of his life.
The same mistake still robbing him of his freedom now.
Never would I dangle that hope I held for him over his head.
But I’d felt this coming. A storm brewing in the distance, a steady buildup of destructive energy, a force that could not be contained.
Tonight was the culmination of it all.
I just never expected how vicious it would be.
Sorrow squeezed my spirit. Part of me felt as if I had failed him. I’d let him go when I promised to always stand by his side.
But his reaction here in the living room? The madness that had taken him over with the mention of his father’s name?
Even with how much I loved him, I refused to be partner to that kind of life, to raise my child in a house where violence reigned, madness triggered by words that evoked his fear.
In his parting expression, I knew Jared would never want us to live that way. He’d rather remove himself than subject the ones he loved to his rage.
My heart had to believe he didn’t want to live that way, either.
He just didn’t know how.
Drawing in a ragged breath, I crossed the room. I climbed to my knees, careful to dodge the shards of broken glass, nails, and splintered wood, and I began to clear away the mess that had been simmering for weeks.
My body ached, for him, for myself.
Tonight, I’d stumbled into the fray, too slow to get out of the way while I’d begged him to stop. My voice never had a chance at penetrating the rage that had taken over his heart and mind.
He’d lost control, and while I knew Jared would never willingly put me in danger, I wasn’t sure he knew how to stop or fully grasped how dangerous the anger he harbored inside really was.
But I did.
I had to be strong and fight for our family when he didn’t have the strength to do it himself.
Even if that meant letting him go.
The thought terrified me. Jared out there on his own. Alone. It broke me because all I wanted was for him to be here. Safe and protected from the ruin. Away from everything calling him back into destruction.
Sifting through the rubble, I brushed away the glass from the picture of us when we were kids. My heart swelled. I loved him. So much.
There was never any chance of letting him go, no breaking free of the bond we’d forever share. I couldn’t live without him any more than he could live without me.
I fumbled over a gasping sob.
I needed him.
And I prayed, breathed the belief I always had in him into the night. Whispered his name. Begged him to find a path that would lead him back to me.
The front door opened and Christopher froze when he stepped inside. His face fell. “Oh, Aly, come here, sweetheart.”