Heartbreak Lover (Broken Hearts Academy #2) - C.R. Jane Page 0,25

as I tried to unlock my door. Letting out a growl of frustration, Jackson grabbed the keys from my hand and quickly unlocked the door to reveal a blissfully Melanie-free room.

“You can go now,” I muttered as I made my way to the bathroom so that I didn’t have to look at him. I thought I heard rustling and the sound of drawers opening through the door as I went to the bathroom and washed my hands, but when I got out, Jackson was sitting on my bed.

“Why are you still here?”

“Just get in your bed, and then I’ll leave,” he responded calmly, rolling his eyes.

I looked around the room suspiciously, trying to see if anything looked out of place…but everything looked normal. Melanie’s half of the room looked like a bomb had gone off, per usual, and her things were bleeding into my perfectly organized side of the room…also per usual.

Just wanting him to leave, I crutched over to the bed and almost let out a sob of relief at how good it felt to lay down. All my aches from falling down the stairs were seeping into my muscles beyond the more noteworthy injuries that already hurt.

Add in the sleepless, emotion-filled night I’d had, and I was ready to sleep for forever.

I turned my back towards him, ignoring how good it felt for him to brush his lips across my cheek before he quietly left the room, shutting the door behind him.

What did it mean that I felt lonelier than ever the second I couldn’t hear his footsteps?

There was nothing I could do to fix what had broken between myself and Jackson Parker.

Then why the hell was my heart saying otherwise?

9

Jackson

Her journals burned my skin as I smuggled them out of her room. The idea had come to me last night. Everly had been a dedicated journaler since she was a little girl. Evidently, a therapist had suggested it after the whole thing with her father blowing his brains out, and she’d kept it up.

If she wasn’t going to tell me what happened that summer, I was going to find out myself. I barreled down the stairs, half-expecting her to come out of her room, screeching for me to come back at any moment.

But thankfully, I was able to make it out of the dorm building, Everly-free.

I drove like a madman back to my place, not even thinking for a moment about attending classes when I had years’ worth of her journals to go through.

Maybe I should have felt some kind of guilt for what I was about to do, but Everly James was a mystery that I had to solve, in any way possible.

And like I’d said from the beginning, I’d long ago stopped feeling guilt for my out of control reactions when it came to her.

I turned the corner to get on my street, and I let out a low curse when I saw Caiden’s silver Range Rover parked in my driveway. He was leaning against it, typing on his phone. The car had been a “thank you for being alive” present from the parents, and Caiden was all about it.

I nodded at him as I opened the garage and pulled in. He was waiting for me by the garage door when I got out.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I told him. For some reason I didn’t want to identify, I left the journals in my truck, not wanting Caiden to see them and ask about them. I was sure he would’ve recognized Everly’s writing right away.

“Just wanted to see if you’ve heard how Everly was after last night. You never answered my texts,” he said casually as he followed me into my townhome.

This was my brother, the person I’d shared a womb with…yet the concept of him sharing my space right now was making me itchy and uncomfortable.

“I just dropped her off at her dorm actually. She came over last night so that I could watch after her.”

Caiden abruptly stopped following me and cleared his throat. I opened the refrigerator, not wanting to see his reaction to what I’d just said.

And because just the thought of last night made me hard. Those lips…the sounds she made when she was right on the cusp of coming…

Who needed porn when they had Everly James?

“I thought you guys weren’t exactly getting along,” he said. I could tell he was trying to sound like he was disinterested, but I knew Caiden. He was hanging on the edge