by C. R. Jane
The Heartbreak Prince Duet
The Heartbreak Prince Duet by C. R. Jane
Copyright © 2022 by C. R. Jane
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, and except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For all the broken hearted girls…
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CONTENTS
Heartbreak Prince
Heartbreak Prince
Heartbreak Prince Soundtrack
Prologue
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Heartbreak Lover
Heartbreak Lover
Heartbreak Lover Soundtrack
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
The End
Epilogue - Jackson’s POV
Caiden POV
Get an additional Caiden POV
Acknowledgments
Preview of Remember Us This Way
Remember Us This Way
Prologue
Chapter 1
About C.R. Jane
Books by C.R. Jane
HEARTBREAK PRINCE
THE HEARTBREAK PRINCE DUET BOOK ONE
HEARTBREAK PRINCE
BLURB
Soulmates. I believe in them. I was lucky enough to have two of them at one point.
The only problem. My soulmates happened to be twin brothers.
Caiden was the light to Jackson’s dark. And after all that I had been through, the light was what I thought I needed.
When I chose Caiden, I lost Jackson.
Feeling like half a person after Jackson left, I barely survived when tragedy struck and I lost Caiden too.
It took me years to admit to myself that I had chosen wrong from the beginning. I’m ready to admit it to Jackson…only problem, he hates me.
I’m ready to fight for my happily ever after.
But there’s a reason they call him the Heartbreak Prince.
HEARTBREAK PRINCE SOUNDTRACK
Why Are You Here - Machine Gun Kelly
Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
Yours - No Love For The Middle Child
Breathe (2 AM) - Anna Nalick
Past Life - Trevor Daniel)
One Thing Right - Marshmello & Kane Brown
Happier - Marshmello & Bastille
Kiss Me - Sixpence None The Richer
Delicate - Taylor Swift
Never Be The Same - Camilla Cabello
Without You - Ingrid Michaelson
Portions for Foxes - Rilo Kiley
PROLOGUE
I lost my virginity to an angel...but my first and last kiss was with the devil.
And that’s everything you need to know about me.
PREFACE
Sometimes when it's really dark outside, and I feel particularly alone. I allow myself to remember us. It doesn't happen often, because I wouldn't be able to function otherwise, but I just wanted you to know that everything about us is like perfect Technicolor in my memory.
CHAPTER ONE
THEN
I was eight when we met. Do you remember that? I was in third grade. I was small for my age, and all the other kids picked on me. They had plenty of things to go after—who my father was, my slight lisp, how my clothes were all too baggy, and how I didn't have a running washing machine at my house, and so oftentimes my clothes weren't quite as clean as they should have been…because washing clothes in the sink could only go so far. All were fair game. My classmates had made my life a living hell all through elementary school. And I expected it to continue…until the two of you started school.
You started a new school that year. You and your brother had just moved into town. You were only a few months older than me, but you weren't scared of anything. And when you saw me on the playground, and you saw how some of the kids had picked up rocks from the ground and were going to throw them at me, you marched right in. And while Caiden was yelling at them to stop, you were the one who actually tackled Marshall, the biggest kid, who had been particularly awful to me for years. And you didn't even know me.
And when you got up after punching him several times, your lip was bleeding, but you gave me the biggest smile and told me it was all going to be okay.
Do you remember that?
Neither of us noticed the fact that Caiden was also looking at me.
Wasn’t it funny how a story like ours could happen like that, even at that young of an age?
We were best friends after you and Caiden defended me that day. Maybe the two of you were more than best friends to me, maybe you were my saviors. Because after years of living in hell, you made sure that school became my safe place.
Remember how Caiden always used to bring extra for lunch, and pretend that he wasn't hungry, but he would actually give it to me? I was in the free lunch program, but both of you thought the school lunches were disgusting and wouldn’t allow me to eat them. You never noticed how I snuck the cafeteria food in my backpack after I ate what Caiden brought because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have had dinner.
Do you remember how you would beg your parents to let me come over? And even though I was dirty and small, and your parents wished you had other friends, you told them that I was yours, and somehow, you got them to listen.
What you didn't know, or you refused to see, was that Caiden also begged your parents just as fiercely, and he also told them that I was his.
I just wanted you to know that if I had known how it all would've ended up, even at eight years old, I would've run as far away from the two of you as I could.
After I turned ten, Dorothy Miller announced to the whole school at lunch that she was going to marry you. So I punched her.
Do you remember that?
For some reason, the cool thing that fall was for everyone to pretend to get married. But you and Caiden were who all the popular girls wanted to marry.
You got jealous beca
use Caiden asked me to marry him first, so you went ahead and pretended to marry Dorothy, even though it made me cry.
Remember showing up at the pretend ceremony during recess? How Caiden stood there looking so serious—well, as serious as an eleven-year-old boy could—and he promised me he was going to love me forever and ever.
You laughed along with the other kids, who laughed because they all knew it was a joke that someone like Caiden would ever really love someone like me.
Remember when you found me crying afterwards, because it was the first time you’d ever laughed at me? Then you started crying because you felt so bad. You told me that even if Caiden loved me, you were going to love me forever and ever, too.
Then you told me you just wanted me to know that you would love me more, no matter what.
And even at ten, I wanted you to kiss me.
When I was twelve, things grew even worse at home. I didn’t tell you, because the whole thing was really embarrassing. But you saw bruises on me, and I knew you didn’t believe me when I told you I fell down at recess every day playing soccer.
You started walking me home every day after that first time I lied to you. That first day, your parents didn't know where you went, because you hadn't told Caiden, or asked permission. They found us halfway to my house. Your mom was shrieking, because she was so scared. You looked right at her and told her that you had to protect me.
Remember how Caiden got out of the car and hugged me because I was upset that you'd gotten in trouble? Remember how Caiden begged your mom to give me a ride home every day? Remember how she said that she couldn't because she didn’t know my mom?
That year was really hard. Maybe all the other years were hard too. But I think what stuck out in my mind about that year was that it was the first time I realized how big the difference between us really was. I had never seen your mom's Range Rover before. I think Mama had sold her car by then to help pay the property taxes on our home.
I told myself in that moment that no matter what, I would keep a small part of myself away from the two of you.
Then you pitched a big fit, and your mom agreed to drop me off that one time, and I realized how hard keeping myself separate from you was going to be.
I was thirteen when Caiden told me you kissed Marcy Thomas. I confronted you and told you that you had ruined everything. I screamed at you about doing it, and you tried to tell me that Marcy was the one that had kissed you. But I didn't care.
We were supposed to be each other's first kiss.
And so when Caiden kissed me under the bleachers a week later...I kissed him back.
It was a fumbling kiss, but still a really good one. And Caiden told me he loved me again, and this time it wasn't because of a fake marriage ceremony. I told him I loved him back, because I did.
But even then, I knew it probably wasn't the same kind of love that he was talking about.
When I got home that night, you don’t know this, but I cried. I cried because I wished the whole time that I had been kissing you.
CHAPTER TWO
NOW
Beeeeeep. Beeeeeep.
The sound of the hospital equipment ground on my nerves more than usual. Why did I do this to myself? Why did I come every week to sit by the bedside of my former boyfriend? Guilt?
After all, it was my fault he ended up here. It was my fault that the world would never see his wide smile, or the dimple that was only on one cheek.
I thought the guilt would fade in time, release itself the way that sorrow and loss often do. But that hadn’t been the case. It had been two years, five months, and eighteen days since I last saw his smile. And even then, the aftermath of what happened that night remained emblazoned in my mind, just as vivid as if it happened yesterday.
The memory of his smile had faded though. All I could remember now was the stark grief on his face now when we last spoke.
He should have been taken off the machine years ago, but his parents hadn't been able to do it. One thing was for certain, you couldn't accuse Caiden’s parents of neglect. This room was proof of that, more like a shrine than a hospital bed at this point.
I usually came on Fridays, a punishment of sorts, so I would make sure not to be too happy over the weekend. Which really was stupid, because being “too happy” had never been a threat in my life. I was here on a Monday morning, though, today. It marked a special occasion.
Because in just an hour, I would be starting at a new school, and in just an hour, I would see him.
Caiden had always known how to handle Jackson. That brand of darkness inside Jackson, unfathomable to so many, had never frightened Caiden. In a way, they were foils of each other. Fraternal twins and the exact opposites. It always caught people off guard though at how sunny Caiden’s disposition had always been. With his black as night hair and even darker brown eyes, he stood in sharp contrast to Jackson's sun god looks.
Maybe his Apollo-like aspect was what threw everyone off about Jackson. Going by his looks alone, he should have been happiness and light personified. So when he went black and savagely punched you in the head and knocked you out because you looked at him wrong...you didn't see it coming.
I fiddled with the blanket on Caiden’s bed.
“I think I have to stop coming here,” I said softly to his prone form.
For a moment, I almost expected him to answer me.
Of course he didn't. He wouldn’t answer me ever again.
At least, that was what the doctors thought. His parents still held out hope for a miracle.
“I think it's time for me to move on,” I continued. And it was a relief that he couldn’t answer back.
Because what people didn’t know about Caiden was that underneath his wide smile was a boy who couldn’t let me go.
He called me the loveliest kind of pain.
I called him a monster.
CHAPTER THREE
Jackson
I woke up from my nightmare sweating, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest as I tried to come down from the terror of my dream. It was always the same. Caiden locked in some kind of dark place, screaming and clawing to get out.
I rubbed my chest, trying to settle the ache tearing a hole inside of me.
The pain and my nightmares had haunted me since Caiden’s accident. Even though the doctors told me that it wasn’t the case, that he wasn’t locked in his mind in a never-ending hell as he tried to wake up…I didn’t believe them.
People didn’t understand what it was like to be a twin. Caiden had been my best friend since the moment of our creation. Well, my best friend until her, but I didn’t think about her. Or at least, I didn’t admit to thinking about her.
Because she was the one responsible for the fact that I would never see Caiden’s eyes again, never hear his laugh, and never hear his voice.
I hated Everly James more than I hated anyone else on the face of the Earth.
And the irony of it all was that I used to love her the most of anyone.
Everly
I stood staring at the new hell I found myself in. Not that it was meant to be a hell, or that it was a hell to most of the students residing within its walls.
But any place that held Jackson Parker would be hell for me.
Any place that didn't involve him being mine would feel like that.
Rutherford Academy was supposed to be my fresh start. It was a place I didn't belong, but had worked my ass off to get into. Starting junior year of high school, you could attend. The idea was that you would work hard so that you would be able to move into the college portion of the Academy after senior year. Rutherford was considered a cross between the most elite prep school in the country and an Ivy League college rivaling Harvard and Yale in rankings every year.
The people who attended this school would end up running the world. The buildings were named after families like the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers, but every year, five scholarships were given out to attend the prep school portion of Rutherf
ord. If those five scholarship students did well and were able to maintain an A+ average throughout the eleventh and twelfth grade, they would get a full ride into the college.
And a future filled with possibilities.
While the junior class was kept segregated due to them being underage, the senior classes were housed in the same building where most of the college freshman classes were held.
I had honestly thought twice about accepting the scholarship when I found out. It was doubtful I would be able to go without seeing Jackson. He had started at the school as a junior, right after Caiden’s accident. The nickname of Rutherford Academy had soon become Broken Hearts Academy with the way that he took over the school and left ruin and heartbreak among its female population in his wake.
