by C. R. Jane
He would understand.
“He’s just sleeping, son,” my father said, walking over to where I was trying to comfort my mother and clapping me on the shoulder. For a second, it almost looked like he was going to hug me. I would have known things were really bad then. Since the moment that I’d received my bipolar diagnosis, I hadn’t received another hug from my father.
I had come to peace with that.
I breathed out a sigh of relief that my mother’s hysterics didn’t seem to match the situation.
Just asleep. I could work with that. Whatever Caiden needed, I would be there for him. Physical therapy, driving him around, bringing him food…whatever he needed.
Except her, a voice laden with guilt whispered in my head.
My father extricated my still sobbing mother off of me, and I pulled out my phone, frowning when I saw that Everly hadn’t responded back to me yet.
This wasn’t like her. Sighing, I sent her another text before returning my phone to my pocket and turning my attention back to Caiden and my parents.
“What’s wrong with him? What happened? Why was he driving in the storm?” I asked, the questions falling out of me quicker than they could answer.
My mother’s sobs abruptly stopped, and anger crashed over her features. She opened her mouth to say something, and then we heard a low groan.
Caiden was waking up.
My mother and father hovered around his bed, gazing at him hopefully. I took a step forward to join them but then stopped, something making me hesitate. I gazed at the picture the three of them made, the adoring parents with their golden son. It was a little ironic that I was the one that had inherited the golden looks. It had been the three of them since my issues had started, with me standing on the outside looking in.
I shook off the sick feeling I had and forced myself to walk to Caiden’s bedside.
He groaned again. His eyes slowly blinked open, and my mother started crying again, this time hopefully tears of relief.
His gaze flicked over to mine, confused, and I let out the breath I’d been holding since I’d heard the news. He was awake. Everything was going to be all right if he was awake.
Something flickered in Caiden’s gaze as he stared at me, something I’d never seen there before…something that looked a lot like hate.
But he couldn’t know what I’d done last night. There was no way. And he would understand once he did know. He would want me to be happy. He would want her to be happy.
I just knew it.
“Caiden,” I breathed, brushing my hair out of my face with a shaky hand.
He was giving me that look, and then it was like a jolt of lightning struck him. He sat straight up, groaning as he did so, a look of panic plastered across his face.
“Everly!” he screamed frantically. “Where is she?” He looked all over the room as if we were hiding her in a closet. “Everly!” he screamed again.
My parents had jumped up and were trying to get him to lay back down, but I was frozen in place, trying to understand why he was calling her name like that.
“Caiden, I’m sure she will be here soon. I left her a few messages. She’s probably just sleeping.”
“Everly!” he screamed again as he suddenly punched my dad full in the face, knocking him down to the ground as he struggled to unhook the wires and tubes.
I finally came to my senses and grabbed him, holding him down to the bed as my mother rushed out of the room to call the nurses for help.
“She’ll be here soon, bro. You need to calm down,” I reassured him through clenched teeth as he landed a hit to my left ribs.
“She was in the car,” he cried out, panicked. “She was in the car.” I’d never heard him sound like that.
It took me a full minute to grasp what he was saying, and when I did, my blood ran cold. And now it was me panicking.
“Everly was in the car?” I gasped. “What do you mean? Where is she? Is she okay?” The questions rushed out of me just like when I’d been asking my parents about him.
I felt sick to my stomach when he shook his head and a tear rushed down his face. “She was in the car, Jackson. Please just find out how she is,” he begged me.
“Stay in this bed,” I snarled out to him before letting go of him and rushing out of the room. My mother was screeching at the nurses in the hallway, telling them they needed to get “their asses” into the room and help her son.
I ignored her and ran over to the desk where a nurse was sitting, rolling her eyes at my mother’s antics.
I didn’t blame her.
But I was going to be making an even bigger scene if someone didn’t tell me where Everly was…and fast.
“Everly James,” I told her, tapping my fingers nervously on the edge of the counter. “Is she at this hospital? What room is she in?” Tears got caught in my throat, and for a second, I was a little ashamed that I didn’t have any tears for the guy I shared a womb with, but one mention of Everly possibly being hurt and I was a goner.
“Slow down, son,” she said soothingly as she began to type on her computer. “Is she the girl who came in with Mr. Parker?”
“I think so,” I told her quickly, although now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t understand why Everly would have been in the car with Caiden. Why would she leave my bed to go be with him? It didn’t make any sense.
“Hmmm,” she muttered, jarring me from spiraling thoughts.
“What?” I asked desperately.
“It says here she’s in surgery. Critical condition in fact.”
“Critical condition.” I repeated the words slowly, not understanding them.
The nurse nodded sympathetically, obviously seeing the devastation written all over my face. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything. But she doesn’t look good, sweetheart,” she said softly.
I suppose I should’ve backed off and just gone and waited, grateful for the information that she’d given me when she didn’t have to give me anything. But I couldn’t. “Please, tell me what her injuries are,” I begged. A cry slipped from my lips. It felt like I was dying. I needed to be with her. She shouldn’t be alone. “Please, she’s everything to me.”
The nurse looked conflicted, HIPAA rules and all that weighing on her mind, I was sure. But I didn’t think it was often you saw a guy my size, weeping like a child. She looked around her, I assumed to make sure that no one was listening, and leaned in.
“I can only go by what’s on her chart, but at least preliminarily, she’s been diagnosed with a broken femur, a broken arm, a ruptured spleen, punctured lungs, and a traumatic brain injury…and severe lacerations to her face. She arrived at the hospital unconscious. I’m so sorry, honey.”
I swayed on my feet, the air in my lungs feeling like it had disappeared. “Is she going to live?” I asked hoarsely. The edges of my vision were starting to shrink in. I was either having a panic attack or an episode, neither of which I could afford at the moment.
Little angel. The words flowed from my thoughts to my lips until I repeated them over and over again nonsensically.
“Someone get a hospital bed. He’s about to crash,” the nurse yelled as she peeled herself out of her seat.
The next thing I knew the world had disappeared.
Little angel.
I woke up to my parents’ heated voices nearby.
“It’s all that slut’s fault,” my mother was raging.
“Does she have a cunt made of gold?” my father retorted.
It took me a second to get it, and then I was the one raging when I realized who they must be talking about.
“Don’t fucking talk about her like that,” I spat. My parents abruptly stopped talking, and then my mother appeared at the foot of my bed, wringing her hands.
“You’re awake,” she remarked calmly, because evidently, it was only time for hysterics when her perfect child was unwell.
“Any updates on Everly?” I asked as I heaved my legs to the side of the bed
in a mimicry of Caiden’s previous movements. Unlike with Caiden, both my parents just kind of watched as I disconnected the IV and got out of bed.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” came my brother’s rough voice. I belatedly realized they’d set me up on a hospital bed right next to him.
“What I want to know is how she is. The nurse…” My voice caught. “Her injuries weren’t good. The nurse didn’t know if she would make it.”
Caiden closed his eyes, and tears started to stream down his face. He clenched his lips together, and I could see a pulse in his cheek. “Fuck.”
“Everly is in surgery still, boys,” my father tried to say calmly, even though I could see that it took a ridiculous amount of effort. My parents had always hated Everly because of her parents. Evidently, Dad had a business partner who had lost a little bit of money to Everly’s dad, and my father couldn’t ever get over it. Nothing was more important than the money in his and his friend’s bank account, after all.
“Can you guys go get me something to eat?” Caiden asked pathetically. I rolled my eyes as my parents nodded and rushed out of the room, obviously not seeing his request for what it was…a desire to talk to me alone.
My gut clenched in desperate worry for Everly. I didn’t have time to listen to Caiden. I needed to find out where Everly was in surgery. I could just hover in the halls, send moral encouragement, prayers, good thoughts. I would do anything.
“I know she fucked you,” Caiden announced suddenly, and I was immediately paying attention. He was staring at the wall in front of him, not sparing me one glance, even though he had to have known that his words were literally bullets to my chest.
“W-what?” I stammered, not prepared for this conversation. “Look I can explain…”
“She played both of us. We’ve been having sex all summer. She just decided that I wasn’t enough.” Emotion crashed through his words. “She called me right after you fell asleep, wanting to meet up. We had sex in the car, and then she told me that she’d fucked you. She was fucking bragging about it. And that’s why I crashed.”
He clenched at his hospital sheet fiercely before his dark gaze finally connected with mine. “I love her,” he told me brokenly. “I love her so fucking much. I don’t know how she could have done this.”
There was a darkness spreading through my blood. It was thick and poisonous, moving through my arteries and then my veins, pumped through my body by my dying heart.
There was a faint buzzing in my ears.
Caiden was still talking, but I couldn’t hear anything that he was saying. It was like my body had shut down with the news that I’d been betrayed by the girl that I’d pledged my fucking soul to. My skin felt itchy and tight, like you could touch me and it would shatter into a million pieces. What went wrong? How did the girl that I’d fallen in love with as a child become a monster? How did we get to this point, where the person I thought I’d known better than anyone could turn around and stab me in the back? I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, I thought bitterly, thinking of how Everly James could have given her father a run for his money.
I’d never been able to tell without looking at my eyes when the blackness was descending, but here in this moment, I could feel it. And I welcomed it. Because it meant that I wouldn’t have to think, that I wouldn’t have to feel.
“Jackson,” my brother said sharply, my hearing suddenly returning. But I just smiled crazily, glad that soon this nightmare would be over.
Caiden kept calling my name, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t even know if I was breathing anymore.
And I welcomed the blackness that I’d always detested with every fiber of my being. In that moment, it was my most prized possession.
Caiden bribed a nurse for some fentanyl while I was gone to the void inside of me. I didn’t know if he was trying to kill himself, or if he just wanted some fucking relief.
As a family, we never really acknowledged what he did. It was always her fault. The bitch that had wrapped herself around both Caiden’s heart and mine, and then squeezed until they both burst open and bled out.
So no, I didn’t know why my brother took that drug.
All I knew is that he didn’t wake up.
He didn’t wake up…until now.
CHAPTER TWO
NOW
Jackson
It was a bit surreal to see my brother sitting up and laughing with my parents, who suddenly looked like they were ten years younger.
I’d haunted this room for the past few years, prayed to its walls and wished that it was me. And now…it was almost like it had never happened. Sure, Caiden was a ghost of himself, his limbs shrunken with disuse, and I’m sure I would find out soon what else was wrong with his body… But his laugh, my parents’ smiles? They took me back.
To a time when I could smile too.
“Jackson!” Caiden cried when I finally knocked on the doorway hesitantly, once again feeling awkward about ruining their picturesque family tableau.
“Caid,” I quietly responded in a choked-up voice as I hurried to his bedside and sat down in a chair beside it. My parents looked almost annoyed to see me, even though they’d been the ones to call. I avoided looking at them anymore and just paid attention to the miracle I had in front of me.
“How do you feel?” I asked, trying to hold back the traitorous liquid that was threatening to fall. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry anymore. I’d done my fair share of crying for my brother…and for Everly.
And I’d vowed to myself it would stop.
I guessed I’d lied to myself just as much as everyone else around me.
Caiden brushed a hand through his hair that was badly in need of a trim. The staff had given him regular haircuts, but there must have been something about being comatose that just gave you a sort of homeless look.
“I mean, I just found out I’ve lost two years of my life. How would you feel?” he answered, but surprisingly, the words didn’t come out bitter. My brother was way better than me. I was bitter down to my core, and I wasn’t the one who’d been in a coma.
“Dad…Mom…can you guys go ask if I can have something to eat?” He held up the feeding tube that had been keeping him alive these past years. “I’d love to get something a bit more solid.”
My parents immediately agreed and rushed out of the room. Something in my stomach clenched at the easy way he’d manipulated them.
It reminded me of that night. The night that I did my best not to think about anymore.
Especially because…
Fuck. How fucked up was I that I missed her, even as I sat next to my brother, the boy she’d ruined?
Really fucked up.
I was missing her right now.
My brother waited for them to leave and then for their footsteps to fade away before he leaned close to me.
“They won’t talk to me about Everly. Have you seen her? 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, E
verly, 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.
