Heartbreak Lover (Broken Hearts Academy #2) - C.R. Jane Page 0,5

Is she okay? All I know is that they’d told me I’d been in some kind of car accident and she was with me. I’m freaking desperate to see her. Can you call her? And get Mom and Dad to give me a break? They’re driving me crazy.”

I stared at him for a second, his words not making sense. Did he mean what I thought he meant?

“You don’t remember the accident?” I clarified carefully.

His breath rushed out in a whoosh. “I can’t remember anything, bro. Maybe our birthday party? I think I remember that. All my memories are scrambled, disjointed.”

My mouth opened and then closed again. I had no idea what to say. Was this normal? Would his memories come back?

Did I even want his memories to come back?

I thought the answer was fucking no. An evil thought formed in my brain, grasping onto all my brain cells and infecting me until there was no other path forward than the one I’d just thought of.

The one that was so wrong.

If I could prevent my parents from saying anything…and I never said anything…

Caiden, Everly, and I were the only ones that really knew what had happened that night.

A path had opened up to make Everly mine without all the consequences there had been before.

Even if she was the worst kind of devil, my body craved her and would gladly go to hell with her if it meant we were together. My lines had become blurred over the past few months, good and bad intermixing until I couldn’t tell which was which.

I no longer cared that Everly had a soul as black as death.

I only know that without Everly James, I was a dead man walking. She was the only one that could save me.

“Jackson?” Caiden pressed.

“Everly’s fine. Things are just a little different now. We had a little falling out after your accident, but everything’s good again,” I lied.

Everything would be good again, as soon as I was able to see her.

“Everything’s good?” Caiden asked. There was a tic dancing by his left eye, and I stared at it absentmindedly as I thought about how I was going to make things right with Everly. Maybe the tic was a byproduct of the coma.

“Or at least it will be good,” I admitted grudgingly, taking a step back as I thought about that night.

“Goodbye Jackson,” she’d whispered, shattering my soul in that way that only she knew how to.

She’d meant that goodbye, even if all her other words to me had been nothing but lies.

It would take some work to get her back.

“Well, can you call her? Tell her I’m awake?” my brother pushed.

My attention snapped back to him, and this time, I really looked at him. I saw his sunken eyes, his gaunt cheekbones, the waxy pallor of his skin. My brother’s body had been a shining example of what the male specimen was capable of achieving before the coma. Now he looked like he’d been on the streets starving for years, everything about him withered and worn.

I would make it right with Everly. But I needed to make it right with my brother before that.

Surely helping him recover would make up for stealing a girl he’d called the love of his life.

Or at least, that was another of the lies I told myself.

Because one thing was for sure. I loved my brother more than I loved myself.

But I loved Everly James even more.

3

Everly

Heartbreak was a sickness. It took over your entire body, and if you were lucky enough to recover from it, you were no longer the same person that you were before.

Just like my body wasn’t recognizable after my crash that night with his brother, the ending of whatever had been between Jackson and I transformed my soul into something I no longer recognized.

I was a stranger in my own body. And it was all my fault.

It’s been three months since I last really saw him.

I saw glimpses of him—the back of his head, the side profile of his face. I’d hear the sound of his voice…but then he was gone again, and I was left in this strange vortex where I was in love with a ghost.

I’d tried to rebuild my life.

But it was hard when he’d shown me colors I couldn’t see with anyone else.

It would have been hard enough just to lose Jackson.

But the news that Caiden had woken up? That was the nail in the coffin.

Every day was a waiting game. I looked for two people