by C. R. Jane
Melanie had tried to kill me.
I absorbed the sentences, letting them settle in until I could accept them as truth.
I hated that it was still my first reaction to deny that Caiden could do something.
By now it was obvious Caiden could do anything. And he had done everything.
I turned to look at Lane, who was staring blankly at the wall, shaking slightly as she came down from the adrenaline rush, I assumed.
“You saved me,” I whispered, tears of gratitude laced through my words.
Lane finally turned to stare at me. And then she burst into tears. Snotty, messy tears. She buried her head in my shoulder, and I softly stroked her hair and tried to comfort her, even though my head and my throat were killing me.
“You’ve got to stop almost dying on me,” she sniffed after a minute, pulling her head off my shoulder and looking at me with a watery gaze. “I’m going to have to start taking karate or get a weapons’ permit if this keeps up, and my mother will not be happy with me, since she’s firmly against violence.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” I told her with a small grin.
“You’re my best friend. You’ve got to stay alive,” she told me insistently, like I had a choice in all of this.
I nodded again, thinking how tired I was.
And how the fuck was I going to explain all of this to Jackson tomorrow evening when he came home?
Lane dragged her bedding from downstairs, saying that she was going to spend the night and make sure I didn’t die. We stripped off Melanie’s bedding, and then Lane unceremoniously dumped it out the window, both of us watching as the sheets fluttered to the ground.
Looking at the sheets just reminded me of her and Caiden, and I grimaced and pulled away, crawling into my bed wearily.
Lane got into her bed and we said goodnight, even though by this point, it was three in the morning.
I was exhausted, my brain ready to call it quits, but I kept thinking of Melanie’s story and the fact that Caiden was out there somewhere on campus.
And I just knew he was biding his time.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I opened the door, and there he was. Sometimes, I didn’t know if I dreamed Jackson up or not. And then he would appear, and I’d wonder how something so beautiful could ever belong to me. It seemed like it was just yesterday that I was furious at him, and now somehow, he’d succeeded in making his arms feel like home to me. I was enthralled with the sense of bliss I found myself in, even though the real world…and Caiden waited just behind him.
“I’ve been thinking the whole ride home about our first kiss,” he told me with no preamble as he stepped into my room. Lane had left a few hours earlier to catch up on some school work with Brad, so it was just him and me.
“Excuse me?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
“The first kiss we should have had. The one that was stolen from us.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed at just the mention of my kiss with Caiden.
“I thought we could have a redo. We could have a new first kiss, one that we always could go back to. We could replace those other kisses with a kiss like it should have been.”
I eyed him doubtfully. He looked so hopeful though, standing there in the fading light from the window in the hallway hitting his hair just perfectly, gilding his features, turning him into the angel I’d begun to imagine he was again.
I nodded, because I didn’t know if I could say no to him about anything anymore.
He cupped my chin. With the lightest of pressure, he tilted my head gently back and slowly lowered his face closer to mine. “This should have been your first kiss, Everly.”
My belly filled with fire, and my cheeks flushed with heat. I could barely breathe from his whispered words. As if a breeze, his warm lips brushed against mine. Jackson’s hand trailed feather-soft fingers down my neck, making my skin tingle with what felt like flames. The outside sounds of the activity in the rest of the dorm grew faint, and all I could hear was our quick, shallow breaths as his mouth moved against mine. Heat traveled down my neck and across my chest, tightening my skin and coiling my muscles. I never knew such a feeling existed in such a simple touch of lips.
“What the fuck is this?” Jackson growled suddenly, breaking the spell he’d cast around us.
The fingerprints. Right. The concussion. Right.
“It’s been an eventful weekend,” I told him.
Jackson was trembling, still eyeing the marks on my neck.
“I need you to stay with me when I tell you what happened,” I begged. “I need you here with me.”
Jackson shook his head violently. I didn’t think it was possible for him to control his episodes, but I was wishing on a thousand stars right then that it was.
“What the fuck happened, Everly?”
I told him everything then, leaving nothing out. Jackson let out a string of curses when I told him about Caiden and Melanie and then our interaction in the hallway. But he really went crazy after he heard what happened with Melanie the night before.
“Why didn’t you call me, text me, call the emergency contact number for the camp?” he roared, the loud noise sending pangs through my fragile head.
“I didn’t want to distract you. This weekend was important,” I told him, annoyed with his tone.
He pulled me towards him, his fingertips dancing over my bruises softly. “When are you going to get through your pretty head that you are the most important thing to me? I’ve lived without you. I know that there isn’t anything in this world that deserves to take precedence over you.”
They were pretty words, but a part of me still doubted.
“I took your brother away from you,” I blurted out.
He raised an eyebrow.
“I took your brother away from you, and I’m never going to take anything else from you again.”
“Baby, you didn’t take anything away from me. You don’t owe me anything. I’m the one who owes you. Please, promise me that you’ll call me, no matter what. I want to know if something falls in the middle of the night and scares you, I want to know when you hit your funny bone, I want to know every inane detail about your life. I need you to trust that I can be there for you, no matter what.”
Jackson gazed at me with those blue eyes that looked like they’d been touched by storm clouds today. I lost my breath for a second at the love I saw in their depths.
“How can you look at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m everything.”
He smiled slightly. “Oh baby, it’s easy. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known. I can’t look at you any other way.”
Jackson loved me.
The irrefutable truth of the statement sparked my heart, creating an impenetrable barrier of strength in my soul that told me I could do anything as long as he was with me.
Jackson sat on my bed, pulling me into his arms. I nuzzled my face in the crook of his neck as we sat there and absorbed the silence.
Finally, I pulled away.
“What are we going to do about Caiden?” I asked.
A look of determination took shape on Jackson’s face.
“I’ll deal with Caiden.”
I wished in that moment that it would be that simple. That Jackson could stop Caiden on his own.
I had a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Let’s go get something to eat, and we can figure out what to do. I think the first step is you moving to my place.”
I shifted uncomfortably. Moving in with him seemed like a really huge step. “I’ll be alone in this room from now on, I assume.”
“Can you honestly say you’ll feel comfortable sleeping in here alone? I mean, if you want me to start sleeping in here every night, that’s fine, but we’re going to need to order a new bed.”
I scoffed, thinking of Jackson moving in here when he had his shiny, new townhome.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I told
him. “I’m starving.”
Jackson looked confident he would get his way, but he let me lead him out of the room and then to my favorite pizza place down the street from the academy, where I drowned my sorrows in greasy carbs.
“We should have grabbed the rocky road ice cream too,” Jackson complained as I got out my key to unlock my dorm room door.
I put the key in the lock…and quickly realized that the door was unlocked.
And I knew I’d locked it on my way out. My hand trembled as I clenched the key tightly.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jackson.
“The door’s unlocked,” I whispered, my words choking on my rising fear.
A grim look crossed Jackson’s face, and he pushed me gently behind him as he slowly opened the door and flipped on the light.
“Fuck,” he snarled.
I peeked my head into the room before he could stop me from coming in, and I cried out when I saw the ripped apart carcass of an enormous snake all over my bed. The snake’s red blood was splattered all over my bedspread and the wall behind my bed.
I plastered my hand to my mouth, trying to quell the urge to be sick.
“What’s with the snakes?” I moaned.
“We both knew you were scared of them,” Jackson absentmindedly responded, looking at a torn-out piece of paper that had been placed next to the blood and guts of the snake.
My gaze snapped to him. “You were responsible for the snake in my shower?” I gasped in horror. “I thought that was one of the things Melanie did.”
Jackson had the decency to blush as he brushed a hand through his hair, embarrassed. “I have immunity now, right? You’re not going to run away from me?”
I scrunched up my nose in disgust. “What else did you do? What about the night from hell in the storage shed?”
Jackson shook his head vigorously in denial. “I didn’t have time to do anything else before we started having sex. And I wouldn’t do something like that to you. Even as messed up as I was over you, I wouldn’t have gone that far.”
I huffed. “The snake was going too far.” My gaze flicked to the destroyed snake tarnishing my room.
I shivered.
“I’m sorry, little angel,” Jackson whispered as he came up to me and enveloped me in his arms.
“What did that note say?” I asked, ignoring his apology and vowing to get back at him someday. Maybe a spider. Jackson was terrified of spiders.
“I’ll deal with it,” he answered vaguely.
“Just let me see it,” I snapped.
Jackson reluctantly handed the piece of notebook paper to me.
For You LyLy, was all it said, in Caiden’s bold handwriting.
But it was enough to stoke the embers of fear inside of me that Caiden’s existence always kept present.
He was coming for me. I was never going to get away from him.
“You’re moving to my place,” Jackson said firmly.
I didn’t argue this time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jackson
I was done playing nice. Caiden obviously wanted to play dirty, and I could do dirty with the best of them. Especially after hearing Everly scream in the middle of the night as she came out of a nightmare starring Caiden.
I went hunting for Caiden the next morning. I stopped at his dorm first, but my teammates who lived there said they hadn’t seen him in a few days. It was the same for everyone else on campus that would have any clue where he was.
Caiden had disappeared.
On a whim, I called my parents.
“What do you need Jackson?” my dad answered, annoyed.
“Hello to you too, Dad.”
“Your mother and I are very disappointed. Your brother is here, and he’s told us all about your behavior at the school. Sleeping with Caiden’s girlfriend, harassing Everly. I’m regretting the day you were ever born!”
It took me a second to respond, because I was so fucking shocked at the words that had just come out of my father’s asshole…I mean mouth.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I finally said, in what I was proud was a calm voice.
“We’ve had to cover up a lot of your fuck-ups, Jackson. But enough is enough. This is too far. We’re cutting you off.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to stay calm. The last thing I needed was to go black right now. Everly would be left all alone.
Please, God. Don’t let me go black.
“He’s lying about everything. He beat Everly half to death the night of the accident, and he’s been basically stalking her since he woke up,” I tried to explain to him.
“Why on earth would Caiden be stalking that trash?”
I wished I could reach through the phone and land a fist in my father’s stupid fucking face at that moment.
“He’s obsessed? I don’t know…you would have to ask him why he’s such a psychopath.”
“Jackson, you’ve been jealous of your brother since almost the moment you were born. I’m not going to listen to this crap for one more minute.”
I heard Caiden’s smug voice in the background, and then the line went dead. He’d hung up on me.
Well, at least I knew where Caiden was. The snake had returned to his hole.
I went to the administration the following morning with Everly and reported Caiden.
The school dean had a flabbergasted look on his face as we laid out all of Caiden’s sins, his mouth opening and closing in shock.
When we’d finished outlining everything, there was a long pause.
“Are you sure it was Caiden?” the dean finally said, and I shot him a disgusted look.
“I’m positive. So do your job.”
“Have you spoken to your parents about this?” I scoffed, knowing he was worried about losing the sizeable donation that my parents provided to the school every year.
“Let’s just say that my parent’s donation will be the least of your concerns if Caiden is still a student here by the end of the day.”
Dean Lewis puffed up like a peacock, his enormous stomach threatening to bust his shirt open as he poked his chest out, trying to look intimidating.
“Are you threatening me, Mr. Parker?” he asked in a tight voice.
“Of course not. I’m simply saying that if he’s still in the school, this story will be everywhere. I’m sure that your other donors will have a lot of questions as to why such a fine institution as Rutherford Academy would be allowing such acts to happen in its hallowed halls.”
Dean Lewis stared at me, a tic moving rapidly in his left cheek. He hated me.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he finally seethed.
“Do better than that,” I warned as I dragged Everly out of the office behind me.
“This is going to send him over the edge, don’t you think?” Everly asked, worriedly.
It would, but that was what I was counting on.
“Either that, or he’ll give up.”
Everly nodded, but I knew she didn’t believe that he would give up.
I didn’t believe it either.
Caiden had been texting her constantly since about an hour after we’d discovered the snake. No matter how many times she blocked his number, he’d text her from another number, until finally, she’d just turned off her phone.
The texts had terrified her, a strange mix of threats and obscene descriptions of all his sexual fantasies he had concerning her. We’d saved all of them in case we needed to get her a restraining order, but I was worried it wouldn’t be enough, or that a restraining order wouldn’t do a damn thing in the first place.
I might’ve been able to put pressure on Rutherford Academy, thanks to my position as the number one quarterback in the country, but my parents held all the power outside of these walls. They could make a restraining order disappear in a flash, if it meant protecting their beloved son.
My heart clenched, thinking of this latest betraya
l.
I’m regretting the day you were ever born.
My father’s words shouldn’t have stung so badly. I’d been hearing a version of them ever since my diagnosis.
But somehow, they still hurt.
Everly’s warm, lithe body pressed against me just then, and the pain quieted.
As long as I had her, nothing else mattered.
Please, God. Don’t let me go black.
Everly
The shrill whaling of the fire alarm jolted us both awake. I inhaled in surprise at the rude awakening and immediately began coughing as smoke filled my lungs. Tears washed over my eyes.
The entire room was cast in a hazy cloud of dark smoke that had fear sparking up my limbs.
“Shit. We have to get out of here,” Jackson yelled, panicked.
He hastily pulled on his pants and threw me my sleep shorts and tank top that he’d ripped off earlier when he’d devoured me before falling asleep.
“Hurry,” he urged me as he ran to the door and tapped the doorknob carefully, checking to see if it was hot.
“It’s still cool.”
Jackson wrapped his arm around my waist and led me down the hallway and down the stairs.
We turned the corner and stopped when we saw that the kitchen was entirely engulfed in flames. The whole house smelled of gas, and I dimly realized that all of the burners on the stove were on, pouring gas into the air.
“We have to get out of here,” I cried, and Jackson yanked me back the way we came, towards the small office on the opposite side of the first floor.
He yanked open a window, and we crawled out, coughing and choking on the thick smoke that followed us out the window.
Jackson swept me up in his arms and carried me across the street. We could hear sirens in the distance, assumedly coming here, but they would get here too late. There was an explosion just then, like something out of a horror movie. Right before our eyes, the house became nothing but twisted plastic and charred wood, acrid smoke pouring into the night air.
Two fire trucks came racing onto the street, and my attention got caught on a familiar silver Range Rover that was parked at the end of the street.