Heartbreak Lover (Broken Hearts Academy #2) - C.R. Jane Page 0,32

room. I picked up my coffee table and flipped it over, the glass vase that my mother had decorated it with crashing to the ground and shattering everywhere.

The bookshelf was next, and then the TV. I destroyed everything in the living room before moving on to the kitchen.

And after I’d destroyed that room, I grabbed a butcher knife from off the counter and held it to my chest, thinking of how good it would feel to slice through the skin and bones and end everything right now.

I didn’t deserve to live.

Caiden didn’t deserve to live.

The thought had me throwing the butcher knife to the ground with shaking hands.

I sank to my knees and started to weep.

And then there she was, sinking to her knees in front of me.

“It was all Caiden, wasn’t it?” I choked out. “He did everything. He hurt you that night.”

She stared at me, her beautiful green eyes watery and unfathomable. The truth was there in their depths. The confirmation that every word she’d written was true.

The confirmation that I didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.

There wasn’t a difference between a broken heart and being in a prison, I decided.

The darkness took over after that. And I hoped it would keep me forever this time.

Everly

He didn’t answer when I knocked.

I huffed as I crossed my arms and looked through the windows, trying to see if I could find any sign of life.

There was no movement through the side windows, but on a closer look…everything looked…destroyed.

I knocked on the door again frantically, thinking Jackson had texted me because his house had been robbed. When he didn’t answer again, I tried the doorknob, and the door opened up quietly.

The house was completely still. But you could feel the violence in the air, feel how it had sunk into the walls of the house, and this place would somehow never feel the same.

I walked through the front foyer hesitantly, finally thinking about the fact that if he had been robbed…the robber could still be here. What if Jackson had texted me for help and I was supposed to have called the police?

I shook my head at the ridiculousness of my thoughts. Jackson would obviously have called the police first before “texting” the cripple he fucked on occasion.

I heard movement from the next room, and I continued to walk deeper and deeper into the house, despite the alarms blaring loudly in my head that I needed to retreat and get away from here as soon as possible.

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Jackson.

I frowned when I heard his phone ringing in the next room.

I went as fast as my bum leg and crutches could take me and then stopped short as I noted the utter destruction of the living room. The foyer had stuff knocked over…but this… There wasn’t a single thing in this room that had been left unscathed.

A cry sounded from where I remembered the kitchen was located, and I stumbled towards it, stopping suddenly when I saw the pile of journals that had gone missing from my room.

Jackson had taken them.

He knew.

Looking around the room, I realized that the damage here wasn’t from a robbery.

It was from Jackson finding out the truth about the past.

I’d carried the burden of the past for a long time, I knew how heavy it felt.

Jackson was kneeling on the ground, his body racked with sobs. Utter destruction littered the floor around him.

I walked slowly towards him and then knelt in front of him, ignoring the pain in my leg. All I could focus on was his pain and how much it called to me.

He lifted his head and met my gaze, black orbs where blue was usually found.

He’d gone black.

“It was all Caiden, wasn’t it?” he asked me in a sorrow ridden voice. “He did everything. He hurt you that night.”

I couldn’t answer. For so long, I’d dreamed about telling him the truth, and then I’d let that dream go, deciding to let the past lie there because it couldn’t be changed, no matter how much I prayed.

And now here it was.

The truth didn’t taste as good as I thought it would.

And then Jackson was gone, taken to wherever the darkness called him to.

My heart broke all over again those next few days. I couldn’t examine how I was feeling about the truth finally being out, because Jackson was falling apart at the seams in a way I’d never seen another person do, not in my entire