Aflame (Fall Away #4)

“Jared.” My mother’s voice fell behind me, and I blinked, coming out of my thoughts.

I slipped my empty bottle into the cup holder on the recliner and stood up, grabbing my jacket and sliding my arms into it.

“I thought you’d grown up,” she said, sounding far from disappointed. She must’ve witnessed what happened with Tate. And with her stern eyes and tight lips, she was pissed.

I looked away, hardening my armor. “One of the many things I love about you, Mother, is that you’re absolutely clueless as to who I am.”

Her chin instantly lifted, and hurt flashed in her eyes, even though she tried to hide it.

I looked away, shame heating my skin. She didn’t show her anger, but she couldn’t hide the pain in her eyes. It’s not like my mom was clueless. She knew that she had burned some bridges with me.

And I almost always reminded her.

Her hand went to her stomach, and I looked down and exhaled, seeing her small frame carrying her new start.

“I’m sorry,” I said, barely able to meet her eyes.

“So is that going to be a recurring thing?”

“What?” I asked. “Fighting with Tate?”

“Apologizing,” she shot back.

Yeah, I did that a lot, too.

“You’re not a child anymore,” she scolded. “You have to start being the man you want your sons to be.”

I shot my eyes up. Sons.

She knew how to make a point, didn’t she?

“You’ve always bullied her.” She sighed and took a seat. “Always. You might’ve been nicer about it when you were little, but all you had to do, even when you were eleven”—she smiled—“was hook an arm around her neck and lead her where you wanted her to go. And she always followed.”

An image of eleven-year-old Tate riding on my handlebars as I had the bright idea to race up a ramp and try to fly through the air popped into my head. I’d broken a finger, and she’d needed six stitches.

“But you always protected her, too,” she pointed out. “You jumped in front of her, shielding her from a fight or from danger.”

I slid my hands into my pockets and watched her calm eyes look at me with love.

“But she was a girl then, Jared, and she’s a woman now,” she stated matter-of-factly, her tone growing harder. “A man who stands in front of a woman does nothing more than block her view. She needs a man standing next to her, so grow up.”

I stopped breathing, feeling as if I’d just been slapped in the face. My mom was never motherly. And she certainly had no business giving others advice.

But fuck me, she was sounding kind of . . . smart, actually.

Tate didn’t need to be handled. She was already so strong on her own, as she proved time and again. She needed someone to share things with. Someone to make her life better, not worse. Someone she could trust. Like a friend.

I used to be her friend. Whatever happened to that guy?

I shot my mother a look, never giving away that she’d gotten to me, and walked past her, up the stairs of the home theater.

“And Jared?” my mother called, and I stopped and turned my head back toward her.

“Her father is getting married,” she announced. “He called tonight to give me a heads-up to keep an eye on her.” And then she took a breath and looked at me pointedly. “Not that you’re ever aware of anyone else’s feelings but your own, but back off, okay? I’m sure she’s a little tender right now.”

James was getting married?

I turned around slowly as I searched my head for what that meant. He was selling the house. Tate was going to Stanford. He’d have a new wife when she came home for visits.

And where would her home be? What—or who—was the one thing, solid and constant, that she could count on?

***

I pushed open the fancy black curtains in my old bedroom in my old house—no doubt an upgrade Juliet had made once she and Jax took over the room after I’d moved out. Since they were still at Madoc’s party, I had the place to myself, probably all night.

I threw my leather jacket on the chair in the corner and dug my cell phone out of my pocket, gazing through the forest of leaves to her darkened bedroom. No light, no movement, and no sound came from the house, but she had to be there. Her car was in the driveway.

Dialing her phone, I instantly caught sight of a small light—like a flickering star in a black sky—coming through the tree from her room. Her cell phone.

I watched as it flashed on and off with my rings, and then it went to voice mail, unanswered.

I squeezed my own phone, her silence hurting more than I wanted to admit. Tossing the phone onto the bed, I took off my shoes and socks and lifted up my window, slipping out, one arm and one leg at a time. I pressed my weight on the tree limbs, judging their strength.

After the damage done by the attempted cutting, I wasn’t sure how weak the tree might be or how much heavier I might have gotten since the last time I’d climbed into her room.

Holding on to a limb above me, the familiar feel of the bark under my fingers comforting me, I stepped across the limb we’d sat on the first time we met each other and the limb she’d scraped her leg on when she was thirteen when she slipped.

Reaching her French doors, I swung them open, stepped on the railing, and leaped onto her floor.

She bolted up in bed, breathing hard, with fresh tears covering her face. She looked confused and shocked as she supported herself with her arms on the bed behind her.