by C. R. Jane
I kept my hands to myself and just watched him, waiting to hear what he was thinking so hard about.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he muttered to himself.
I traced his features with my gaze, memorizing everything just in case this was the last time I ever got this close to him again. His hair looked more silver than gold in the moonlight, casting him more as the dark, mournful prince than the golden king he was by the light of day.
He turned to me all of a sudden. “Why were you so scared tonight?” he demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“Why was Caiden the first person you thought would push you down the stairs? Why were you so scared?”
I gaped at him, my mouth opening and closing, no words coming out. Not once in all these years had he ever come even close to asking me for my version of what happened. Not once had he ever asked me about Caiden.
“Did you feel like he would do something to get back at you because of that summer? Because Caiden’s not like that. He was asking about you as soon as he could. He misses the hell out of you.”
That feeling that had begun to wind its way through my veins, the one that felt suspiciously like hope…it evaporated in an instant, leaving nothing but ash and disappointment.
We looked at each other for a moment, and I registered the confusion in his gaze as he saw what must look like utter devastation in mine.
I fixed my clothes and then turned over so I could get away from that stare of his.
He didn’t say another word.
Despite what had just happened, the pain medicine and how heavy my head felt made it easy to fall back asleep.
The next time I woke up, it was to heat, a veritable inferno that covered every one of my limbs. Jackson surrounded me, his large legs and arms enclosing me tightly. I didn’t know how it was possible for me to feel so sheltered, so secure…even after everything…but I did.
“You didn’t think he would push you to get back at you, did you? You were just scared,” he said hollowly, and somehow, I knew that he hadn’t slept at all. I stiffened, and he pulled me against him so that I was lying against his chest, his steady heartbeat keeping me grounded in the moment.
“Because I’ve been thinking about it, going over the night of the accident and tonight over and over again these last few hours…and I can’t get that look you had out of my head. It was like you’d experienced evil. You were scared down to your soul.” He idly traced down my spine.
He sat us up abruptly, making me look at him as he held my face with both hands. “What haven’t you told me?” His tone was harsh and demanding. And it pissed me off.
How. Dare. He.
How dare he demand answers when he wouldn’t let me have even one answer all those years ago? How dare he demand answers when I had to recover from my injuries all alone? Memories of how excruciating PT was, how I had to relearn how to walk…how painful my surgeries were barreled through my mind. My head hurt so fucking bad right now, and once again, it was the Jackson show. It was all about what he wanted.
This night was giving me whiplash with how soft he was in the beginning. But this…this was the Jackson I knew.
I tried to lash out and slap his face, but the pain of moving was too much. Jackson was holding me in place anyway. He pulled me back against his chest, and it was a testament to how in pain I was that I didn’t even bother struggling.
His body was shaking as he held me tighter, as if he was having an internal debate.
This time, I didn’t fall back asleep.
By the time daylight cracked through the window, I felt even more like shit than I had the night before. And Jackson didn’t look any better. He had held me the rest of the night, not letting me move an inch. The intensity of his thoughts barreled against me. It was like he was trying to see inside my head and uncover my secrets.
Strangely, the urge to blurt everything out wasn’t there. There had been a time for Jackson to believe me.
And it had passed.
In the light of day, it was easy to remember why I’d said goodbye in the library stacks. Because there had been a time for Jackson to be my hero. And he had failed, a million times over.
I didn’t think it was possible for him to make that up to me.
“I need to get back,” I told him hoarsely when he still hadn’t let go, and I could tell by the light that was coming in from the window that it was getting later and later in the day. I didn’t have any intention of going to class, but I at least could get a little bit of sleep while Melanie was in class.
“Fine,” he said stiffly as he got out of bed. I carefully averted my eyes from his too beautiful form as he disappeared into the bathroom.
I grabbed my crutches that Jackson had brought in while I was asleep, and hobbled into the hallway, looking for another bathroom, found one, and then promptly gasped when I saw myself in the mirror. My eyes looked like a raccoon’s, and my hair looked like squirrels had taken up residence in it.
I can’t believe Jackson actually kissed me looking like this…
I felt around the back of my head and neck to see how it was faring, and winced when I happened upon a particularly sensitive area.
I felt pretty pathetic in that moment. The woman staring back at me in the mirror looked haunted, exhausted…hopeless.
Is this how it would be forever?
My thoughts drifted to that feeling of terror as I’d begun to fall down the stairs. In the light of day, it didn’t seem as clear that someone had pushed me on purpose as it had last night. Was I just being paranoid? The house had been crowded after all.
And what did it mean for me if it had been on purpose? Who was targeting me?
“Everly?!” Jackson’s voice sounded down the hallway. It was a little panicked.
I took a deep breath and crutched my way out of the bathroom. “I’m right here,” I called out, and he appeared around the corner, looking relieved to see me.
“You shouldn’t have gotten up without me,” he scolded me. I just rolled my eyes. I’d had to do a lot of hard things without him. This was easy compared to those things.
Jackson helped me back down the hallway, and I actually paid attention to his place this time. Everything was decorated in muted greys and blacks. It was austere…perfectly neat. Everything looked like it had been placed there on purpose.
It looked more like a museum than a home. Although saying that…what did I know about a home?
“Nice place,” I commented as he opened the garage door for us to leave.
“Yeah,” he grunted, evidently back to responding to me in monosyllables, even after what we’d shared last night.
He helped me into his truck, and then we were off, heading back to campus.
We went through a coffee shop drive-through, and before I could give him my order, he told the barista my exact drink.
It was so bad how happy it made me that he still remembered that detail. So bad.
The barista handed him our drinks, and he gave me mine nonchalantly, as if I wasn’t having a freak-out in the passenger seat next to him.
We continued to drive quietly.
“Do you still journal?” he suddenly asked.
It was a really random thing for him to say. “Um yeah, every day, just like always,” I responded quietly, thinking about the spot under my bed where I’d moved them to after keeping them in my car for the first part of the semester.
He nodded, evidently not having anything for follow-up.
We pulled to the front of my dorm, and he shut off the truck and proceeded to open his door.
“What are you doing?” I asked, panicking for some reason.
“Helping you inside of course.”
“I don’t need your help,” I spat at him, irrationally angry, even as I hung on to the coffee he’d just purchased for me so perfectly.
“Why are you fighting me so hard?” he snarled, turning towards me.
I gaped at him. “What part of ‘we’re
done’ did you not hear?”
“We’re never going to be done. It doesn’t matter what you say. You’re poison, but even if I have to die to taste you, that’s what I’ll do.”
I laughed bitterly, even as his words did something crazy to my insides.
“And what about your brother?” I goaded him.
“What about my brother, are you going to start sleeping with him again?”
My face paled as we just stared at each other. The words hovering in the air between us, highlighting the damage and broken shards that was our relationship in glowing letters that couldn’t be ignored.
“Fuck,” he muttered, pulling at his hair. I took a deep, quivering breath and then opened the truck door, practically falling out as I tried to balance my crutches and my coffee.
He got out of the truck and hurried after me as I clumsily made my way up the dorm steps, inside, and up to my room.
I was sweating by the time we got up there, my head throbbing like someone had taken drum sticks to it.
My hands shook as I tried to unlock my door. Letting out a growl of frustration, Jackson grabbed the keys from my hand and quickly unlocked the door to reveal a blissfully Melanie-free room.
“You can go now,” I muttered as I made my way to the bathroom so that I didn’t have to look at him. I thought I heard rustling and the sound of drawers opening through the door as I went to the bathroom and washed my hands, but when I got out, Jackson was sitting on my bed.
“Why are you still here?”
“Just get in your bed, and then I’ll leave,” he responded calmly, rolling his eyes.
I looked around the room suspiciously, trying to see if anything looked out of place…but everything looked normal. Melanie’s half of the room looked like a bomb had gone off, per usual, and her things were bleeding into my perfectly organized side of the room…also per usual.
Just wanting him to leave, I crutched over to the bed and almost let out a sob of relief at how good it felt to lay down. All my aches from falling down the stairs were seeping into my muscles beyond the more noteworthy injuries that already hurt.
Add in the sleepless, emotion-filled night I’d had, and I was ready to sleep for forever.
I turned my back towards him, ignoring how good it felt for him to brush his lips across my cheek before he quietly left the room, shutting the door behind him.
What did it mean that I felt lonelier than ever the second I couldn’t hear his footsteps?
There was nothing I could do to fix what had broken between myself and Jackson Parker.
Then why the hell was my heart saying otherwise?
CHAPTER NINE
Jackson
Her journals burned my skin as I smuggled them out of her room. The idea had come to me last night. Everly had been a dedicated journaler since she was a little girl. Evidently, a therapist had suggested it after the whole thing with her father blowing his brains out, and she’d kept it up.
If she wasn’t going to tell me what happened that summer, I was going to find out myself. I barreled down the stairs, half-expecting her to come out of her room, screeching for me to come back at any moment.
But thankfully, I was able to make it out of the dorm building, Everly-free.
I drove like a madman back to my place, not even thinking for a moment about attending classes when I had years’ worth of her journals to go through.
Maybe I should have felt some kind of guilt for what I was about to do, but Everly James was a mystery that I had to solve, in any way possible.
And like I’d said from the beginning, I’d long ago stopped feeling guilt for my out of control reactions when it came to her.
I turned the corner to get on my street, and I let out a low curse when I saw Caiden’s silver Range Rover parked in my driveway. He was leaning against it, typing on his phone. The car had been a “thank you for being alive” present from the parents, and Caiden was all about it.
I nodded at him as I opened the garage and pulled in. He was waiting for me by the garage door when I got out.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I told him. For some reason I didn’t want to identify, I left the journals in my truck, not wanting Caiden to see them and ask about them. I was sure he would’ve recognized Everly’s writing right away.
“Just wanted to see if you’ve heard how Everly was after last night. You never answered my texts,” he said casually as he followed me into my townhome.
This was my brother, the person I’d shared a womb with…yet the concept of him sharing my space right now was making me itchy and uncomfortable.
“I just dropped her off at her dorm actually. She came over last night so that I could watch after her.”
Caiden abruptly stopped following me and cleared his throat. I opened the refrigerator, not wanting to see his reaction to what I’d just said.
And because just the thought of last night made me hard. Those lips…the sounds she made when she was right on the cusp of coming…
Who needed porn when they had Everly James?
“I thought you guys weren’t exactly getting along,” he said. I could tell he was trying to sound like he was disinterested, but I knew Caiden. He was hanging on the edge of his seat…metaphorically speaking.
“I wanted to make sure that she was all right. The only other option she had was that blue and pink haired chick’s dorm room floor. Didn’t sound comfortable after you were pushed down the stairs.”
“Pushed down the stairs? She said she was pushed?”
I finally picked a soda from the fridge and turned around to study my twin.
It was amazing really…how fast one could recover from a years-long coma. Caiden looked like the epitome of health. He had been working hard to get ready for next year’s football season, and I had a suspicion he was already getting lucky with the ladies.
What if he’s gotten lucky with Everly?
The words twisted inside of me, weaving their way insidiously through my brain, even though I knew the idea was next to impossible. I was always watching Everly, couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I would have known if Caiden had moved in.
Right?
Just like I’d known back then?
“Yep, she’s had some really weird things happen to her since starting at the academy,” I told him. I’d only played a part in the snake incident. It was supposed to be a “get the fuck out of here” prank, since I knew she was terrified of snakes, but she’d held on.
The other stuff though…the stuff that I’d dragged from Lane once I’d heard whisperings of it from the football team…that was someone else. And I wasn’t happy about it.
And now someone had pushed her.
“Did anything happen when she was over here?” Caiden asked, studying me just as hard back as I was studying him. I reared back at the question, since I felt like it seemed a little odd that he had moved on from the fact that Everly had been intentionally pushed down a flight of stairs so quickly.
Did anything happen…
“Because I really don’t think either of us should go there again,” he continued, still staring at me.
My heart dropped.
He pushed his hair out of his face. I still wasn’t used to how long he wore it now. “I loved her, man. I fucking loved her more than anything. I think it would kill me if something started up between you guys now, after everything that’s happened. I’m trying to move on. But it’s hard, ya know? She won’t even talk to me. She won’t give me any kind of fucking closure. It’s like I don’t exist.”
Her face as she looked at him with terror last night flashed through my mind. My stomach was in knots as guilt threatened to eat all of my internal organs while I listened to what my twin brother was saying.
How was I supposed to tell him that giving up Everly wasn’t an option for me anymore? That despite what she’d done, she was inside of me? A vital part of me just like my lungs or my heart. Except there wasn’t a surgery that could get her out. She couldn�
��t be transplanted.
Fuck…was he crying?
“Caid…” My words drifted off. What could I say? I was a terrible person, the worst in fact.
“Let’s both skip and hang out today. I have the new Madden game,” I told him, clapping him on the shoulder before he did something terrible like make me promise not to get close to Everly. I didn’t want to have to lie outright.
I was hoping the journals would help kill whatever had taken root inside of me.
“Sounds good,” he told me as he took a deep breath, shooting me that trademark Caiden grin.
We headed into my living room, where I turned on my Playstation and away we went.
Hours passed, and for once, it was like nothing had happened. We played videogames, ordered pizza, even had a few of our teammates over to hang out.
And I didn’t think once about those journals.
Everly
I had been tempted to skip classes again, but creative writing was today and it was my favorite.
Professor Brady was the best professor at this school. I would fight anyone about it. The passion he had for his subject and his students…it couldn’t be matched. I’d become ten times the writer I’d been when I started the class because of him.
It also helped that he was really nice to look at.
Really nice.
It was also thankfully Jackson-free now because of him not wanting intense classes while he was helping Caiden recover…or at least that’s what I’d heard his reason was for dropping the class.
Professor Brady looked up in alarm when I walked through the classroom door, right at the bell, hobbling in on my crutches.
“Everly, what happened?” he exclaimed as my cheeks flushed from the fact that everyone in the classroom was watching me.
“A tumble down some stairs,” I told him, of course leaving out the fact that I’d tumbled because I’d been pushed.
