Heartbreak Lover (Broken Hearts Academy #2) - C.R. Jane Page 0,71

leather couch pushed against one of the walls. I immediately started to struggle again, until Caiden slapped his hand harshly on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“I’m not going to hit you,” Caiden said calmly, the anger he was hiding displayed in the tick in his cheek. “You’re expecting me to hit you, and I’m showing you that I’ve changed so you’ll finally forgive me and we can be together.”

I stopped my useless movements and stared at him in shock. His eyes were slightly out of focus, and there was a flush to his cheeks.

“We can’t be together, Caiden,” I told him, even though I knew it would just make him mad.

“You keep saying that,” Caiden said with a chuckle. “You just needed to get away from Jackson. He’s been controlling you, warping your mind. You’re forgetting how good we were together.”

Oh, Caiden.

I decided to try and reason with him. “Caiden, you were sleeping with Melanie the whole time we were dating. We weren’t good together. I wasn’t giving you what you needed.”

“You’re the only thing I need,” he snapped harshly before taking a deep breath and pushing a hand through his hair as he struggled to control his temper. “Melanie didn’t mean anything. I just needed an outlet because I didn’t want to push you to do something you weren’t ready for. I was being a good boyfriend. I couldn’t care fucking less about Melanie. You are the only thing I care about.” His voice was emphatic, like he was desperate for me to believe him.

“What about your brother?” I pleaded with him. “You can’t keep this up. Don’t you care at all about him?”

“I don’t want to hear you talk about him, do you understand me?” he snarled, and I pushed back against the couch, fear snaking through my insides.

All right…talking about Jackson was not the right approach in this situation.

Caiden pulled a gun out from a bag on the coffee table and then sat in an armchair across from me and began to polish it, whistling that same tune that I’d heard him hum at my dorm. It was the perfect soundtrack for a madman. I tracked the gun as he moved it around, terror clenching at my throat.

“What are you going to do with me?” I asked quietly, giving up trying to get away for the moment.

“I once read about Stockholm syndrome. It’s a real thing, evidently. If I keep you with me long enough, you’ll fall back in love with me. You were in love with me once, you can be in love with me again.” He said all of this in a mild, reasonable voice that didn’t fit with the craziness he was spewing.

I shook at his words, tears beginning to stream down my face.

“Caiden, please. Don’t do this. Just think about what you’re doing,” I begged him, searching his face for some kind of sanity.

“I have thought about this. I’ve thought about this since the moment I met you when we were just kids. I thought about how much I loved you. How good our lives would be together.” He shook his head as if the memories were too much, clenching his teeth together like he was in agony.

He stood up, set the gun down, and pulled a small box from his pocket. My heart thudded out of my chest as I watched him open it up, revealing a beautiful diamond ring. He held it out to me, a cruel offering of a desperate love that I never wanted.

“I bought this that summer. I thought maybe it could be a promise ring until we were older. I carried it around with me everywhere, waiting for the right moment. And then you fucking broke up with me.”

He stared at me desperately. “I love you, Everly James. I love you more than life itself. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for us. Why can’t you just love me back?”

Love. What a strange concept. The greatest sins of humanity had been done in the name of love, yet we all craved it, were desperate for it. Myself included.

Caiden’s version of love had become so disfigured that I didn’t know what you could call it anymore.

Eyeing the gun that he’d set down on his armchair, cold realization filled me.

Caiden was going to kill me because of that love.

Jackson

My knee bounced anxiously as I listened to my coach and my agent talk about the NFL scouts that had inquired about me. Coach wanted to know how many