Heartbreak Lover (Broken Hearts Academy #2) - C.R. Jane Page 0,3

my size, weeping like a child. She looked around her, I assumed to make sure that no one was listening, and leaned in.

“I can only go by what’s on her chart, but at least preliminarily, she’s been diagnosed with a broken femur, a broken arm, a ruptured spleen, punctured lungs, and a traumatic brain injury…and severe lacerations to her face. She arrived at the hospital unconscious. I’m so sorry, honey.”

I swayed on my feet, the air in my lungs feeling like it had disappeared. “Is she going to live?” I asked hoarsely. The edges of my vision were starting to shrink in. I was either having a panic attack or an episode, neither of which I could afford at the moment.

Little angel. The words flowed from my thoughts to my lips until I repeated them over and over again nonsensically.

“Someone get a hospital bed. He’s about to crash,” the nurse yelled as she peeled herself out of her seat.

The next thing I knew the world had disappeared.

Little angel.

I woke up to my parents’ heated voices nearby.

“It’s all that slut’s fault,” my mother was raging.

“Does she have a cunt made of gold?” my father retorted.

It took me a second to get it, and then I was the one raging when I realized who they must be talking about.

“Don’t fucking talk about her like that,” I spat. My parents abruptly stopped talking, and then my mother appeared at the foot of my bed, wringing her hands.

“You’re awake,” she remarked calmly, because evidently, it was only time for hysterics when her perfect child was unwell.

“Any updates on Everly?” I asked as I heaved my legs to the side of the bed in a mimicry of Caiden’s previous movements. Unlike with Caiden, both my parents just kind of watched as I disconnected the IV and got out of bed.

“Don’t you want to know what happened?” came my brother’s rough voice. I belatedly realized they’d set me up on a hospital bed right next to him.

“What I want to know is how she is. The nurse…” My voice caught. “Her injuries weren’t good. The nurse didn’t know if she would make it.”

Caiden closed his eyes, and tears started to stream down his face. He clenched his lips together, and I could see a pulse in his cheek. “Fuck.”

“Everly is in surgery still, boys,” my father tried to say calmly, even though I could see that it took a ridiculous amount of effort. My parents had always hated Everly because of her parents. Evidently, Dad had a business partner who had lost a little bit of money to Everly’s dad, and my father couldn’t ever get over it. Nothing was more important than the money in his and his friend’s bank account, after all.

“Can you guys go get me something to eat?” Caiden asked pathetically. I rolled my eyes as my parents nodded and rushed out of the room, obviously not seeing his request for what it was…a desire to talk to me alone.

My gut clenched in desperate worry for Everly. I didn’t have time to listen to Caiden. I needed to find out where Everly was in surgery. I could just hover in the halls, send moral encouragement, prayers, good thoughts. I would do anything.

“I know she fucked you,” Caiden announced suddenly, and I was immediately paying attention. He was staring at the wall in front of him, not sparing me one glance, even though he had to have known that his words were literally bullets to my chest.

“W-what?” I stammered, not prepared for this conversation. “Look I can explain…”

“She played both of us. We’ve been having sex all summer. She just decided that I wasn’t enough.” Emotion crashed through his words. “She called me right after you fell asleep, wanting to meet up. We had sex in the car, and then she told me that she’d fucked you. She was fucking bragging about it. And that’s why I crashed.”

He clenched at his hospital sheet fiercely before his dark gaze finally connected with mine. “I love her,” he told me brokenly. “I love her so fucking much. I don’t know how she could have done this.”

There was a darkness spreading through my blood. It was thick and poisonous, moving through my arteries and then my veins, pumped through my body by my dying heart.

There was a faint buzzing in my ears.

Caiden was still talking, but I couldn’t hear anything that he was saying. It was like my body had shut down with the news that