Heartbreak Lover (Broken Hearts Academy #2) - C.R. Jane Page 0,33

life. Finding out the truth had broken him.

He alternated between sobbing and screaming those first few hours, self-destructing spectacularly so that his pain was all I could see.

It was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen happen to someone I loved. And I’d seen my daddy blow his brains out on the sidewalk in front of my house.

I’d written all my professors my excuses, telling them my injuries from the fall were too much. And I stayed in that destroyed townhome tending to Jackson. My phone died by the end of the day. I didn’t bother charging it.

The days were a blur. Sometime after the first two days, one of his old roommates came by. He’d looked surprised to see me, but he’d taken one look at Jackson’s dark eyes and haunted appearance and he’d quickly left, not wanting to deal with Jackson in this state.

I didn’t blame him. Jackson had been inconsolable and in an almost constant state of rage. His mind was like a tornado on a rampage, and nothing was safe those first two days.

He slipped into something else entirely after that.

The rage burned off, and something much more sinister took its place. During that time, I’d never seen someone drink so much in my entire life and remain standing. Though sometimes, he didn’t do that either and I had to sleep next to him on either the bathroom floor or the kitchen floor, because he was too heavy to move. Once, we slept on the floor of his shower because he’d passed out in the middle of me washing him. Alcohol was a depressant, this I knew, but he used it like a tranquilizer for his manic behavior, and he gave himself dose after dose until he was out cold. Each morning, I lay with my body wrapped tightly around his and waited. I waited, praying and hoping that would be the morning I’d see blue eyes.

I didn’t.

We lay in bed. I’d managed to get him there the night before by stripping myself of all my clothes and offering myself to his demons. I did this because when he wasn’t out cold, he was on me. Not in the way he had been those few times.

This was different.

It was rough, needy, crippling, and terrifying. I was a vice, and like the booze, I was soothing. The very fabric of his sanity was stitched into the beat of my heart. Sometimes, he lay for hours with his head on my chest, just listening. I let him. I let him do whatever he needed to survive. I was propped up on my side, leaning over to look down at him. Jackson looked so lost, but he was in there. I knew he was. Cupping his cheek in my hand, I watched as he leaned into it for comfort.

“Jackson. Come back to me.”

Leaning down, I rested my forehead against his. His eyes were so haunting, his ghosts flickering amongst the black staring back at me.

“Follow the sound of my voice and come home.”

His eyes closed at my words, and a tear slipped out. I kissed him hard, pouring every piece of whatever this was that I felt for him into every swipe of my tongue, graze of my teeth, and movement of my lips.

I was crying by the time our kiss ended. “Come back to me, Jackson.” He didn’t answer. He rarely did.

After the anger had subsided, he rarely spoke at all. He would whisper my name sometimes when he slept, but that was it. He didn’t even say my name when we fucked. It was like this part of him was incapable of connecting with any of the feelings he knew when his eyes were blue.

I hated that for him. My tears fell onto his cheeks, but he didn’t hold me. His body lay practically unmoving in my arms, but his eyes never left mine.

I resorted to begging after a while.

“You aren’t allowed to be like this. You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself, Jackson Parker. You should have believed in me. You should have loved me the way that you’d promised all those years ago,” I raged at him.

Nothing. No reaction.

I grabbed his face and kissed him even harder than before, so hard I could taste my tears on his lips. Then I lay on his chest, holding him tighter than I’d held on to anything in my entire life.

I realized once again how in love with Jackson I was. I’d told myself that I wasn’t,