Every Breath After: Part 1 (Lost Boys, #3)

by Jessie Walker

“It’s okay to love him,” Izzy says after a long moment, her voice muffled by my shirt. I stare blankly at the ceiling, wondering… She can’t…know…right? “I love him too. It’s impossible not to.” Again, I murmur, my voice barely audible, “Yeah.”

She really has no clue. I’d laugh if it wasn’t so sad. And here I thought with our so-called twin connection, I’d never be able to hide it from her…this thing inside me, growing stronger and stronger every day.

Find what you love and let it kill you.’”

“Comparing yourself to them does you no favors,” he tells me. “I know.” He searches my gaze. “Just because it takes you longer, doesn’t mean you’re any less talented. Or that you don’t have as much, or even more, potential.”

“Makes me wonder sometimes, who I’d be now if it wasn’t for anxiety.”

Not to mention he’ll be able to attend prom with us next year too. He’s yet to go to a school dance, and as cringey as they are, there’s no way he can’t go to prom. If I didn’t know Izzy would beat me to it, I’d kidnap him myself. Yeah, right. As if the second he started panicking, you wouldn’t bend over backward to insist having prom here instead with just the four of you, and whoever Waylon’s flavor of the month is.

Our gazes find each other, locking, and for a moment, time just stops. The room around us fades. My throat thickens. His lips purse. And then he looks away, taking a quiet gasp from my lips with him.

It all happens so fast, there and gone before I can catch hold of it, not unlike that stubborn faint melody that appears in my head sometimes, just out of reach. And with every second that passes, I can’t help but think I just imagined it. All of it. We were doing homework, and now we’re here. A blink.

The last thing I ever want Jeremy to feel is left out. It’s been my entire mission in life, no matter what it takes, even if I slip sometimes, lost in the vortex that is music and Isobel Montgomery.

Even if sometimes, I know—I know Jeremy would rather just melt into the shadows.

He mumbles something, and it takes me a second to register what it is. And when I do, my chest breaks open all over again. “I’m free.”

Weak is the last thing I think of when I think of you.”

Some people set fire to their insides. I prefer to see mine in a thin stream of blood, drawn by my own hand.

He’s intense. Always has been. Whereas I’m the smoke that trickles up into the air from black, chipped husks, those two are the embers in the ashes. Fan the flames, and they ignite.

“I just need it out sometimes.” “It?” Again, I shrug. “I don’t really know how to explain it, especially not in a way that will make you think it’s okay.”

“I just meant…you guys are different. You’re not like me. You can…feel things, and-and you’re brave about it. Honest. Open. Even when it consumes you.”

“You keep pushing me away.” My frown deepens, and I think, I have to. I have to push you away, because if I don’t… If I don’t… “What about our friendship?” he says quietly. “What about us? Do I mean nothing to you?” You mean everything to me, and that’s the problem. But of course I can’t say that. Swallowing tightly, I shake my head. “You’re my best friend, Mason,” I whisper. My only friend, really. And if that isn’t just the saddest thing ever. “And you’re mine.”

“It’s not fair.” “What isn’t?” “It doesn’t hurt anyone. It⁠—” “It hurts you. And therefore, it hurts me, and everyone else who loves you.” At that, I go completely and utterly still. “I don’t…” “You don’t what, Jeremy?” He all but growls. He shoots off the bed, and scrubs his hands down his face. “God, when will you get it through your thick skull?’ He whips toward me. “You are loved, Jeremy,”

“You are so damn loved by so many people, and you just…you won’t let any of us in.”

“What did I do?” Blinking, I shake my head, trying to keep up. Where is this coming from? “What did I do to make you shut me out? For years now, you’ve been…pulling away. Just tell me what I did.” You chose my sister.

I have to quickly look away, worried he’ll see the mess of it all in my eyes. The truth, in all its ugly, unfair glory. Unfair, because Mason has no idea. No idea I was even an option. Not that I really ever would’ve been, seeing as he’s straight as a fucking ruler.

He could never love me in the way I crave so desperately…not in this timeline. Not in this universe. Our stars are only ever meant to exist from opposite sides of...

“You scare me sometimes.” Eyes burning, all I can do is stare back at him, biting my tongue like my life depends on it. And in a way, it does. Because he scares me too. He terrifies me.

“I don’t know how to do this sometimes.” “Do what?” “Be your friend.”

I just wish things were different. I wish I was different. And sometimes it just really fucking drags me down, knowing I can’t just turn this off. I can’t be who I know they’d all wish I could be.

“I can’t help but feel like…like I’m this constant burden,” I find myself telling him, words untangling, and taking shape faster than I can keep up with. “Someone that they always have to protect. Coddle. It’s humiliating, and I…I know they probably wish I was different. Was normal.

“What’s your dream then?” You. You’re my dream.

“Hey, Jer?” Glancing over my shoulder, I find him with his hand gripping the side of the door, head tilted to face me. “Never again.” Something stutters in my chest. “For me.” I frown. “If you won’t stop for you, stop for me.”

“I can’t lose you,” he says. “Be it intentional, or accidental…I just can’t.”

But you will lose me… someday, somehow… It’s inevitable.

It’s moments like this I can’t help but remember the boy I first met, with the impossibly light blue eyes and the biggest grin. “Captain America’s my favorite!” He was my hero that day.

And while I still see glimmers of that strong, fiercely protective boy inside him, I know better than to think he’s not without his weaknesses. Every superhero has their kryptonite. And Mason’s? Well, in some ways, I guess you could say we’re cut from the same cloth. Like flocks to like. Only the whispers in his head, clawing around his airway, aren’t born of fears of being perceived the wrong way. Whereas I can barely stomach people looking at me sometimes, Mason’s got a touch of the opposite. He’s terrified of people looking away. Of being left alone.

Because I might not be a hero like him, but he is and always has been my kryptonite.

It’s wild, sometimes, to think that this is the same frizzy haired girl who all but stormed into my life and made me her friend. The same girl who gave me a whole second family. The girl who gave me piano. Eleven fucking years.

And gay or straight, I don’t care, as long as he’s happy and whole and not bleeding from his wrists.

“It’s okay to have something that’s just yours.”

“Infinity.” She pulls back, smiling. “And if that infinity branches off into other little infinities, that’s okay too. That’s the beauty of it after all. There will always be new melodies. It’s endless.”

Try as I might to tear myself away, I can’t… Not when it hits me—really hits me—that this is all I’ll ever have of him. That this is the only way I can watch him, with my heart cracked open, and him no more the wiser to it. Because his heart’s too busy beating for someone else, so loud it drowns out anyone else’s. Drowns out mine. In a rhythm that was never meant for me.

It was never just my sister I had to compete with… I see that now more than ever. It’s his love for music. And both are so intrinsically tied, there’s no one without the other. I think of their matching tattoos, and as much as it kills me… I get it now. A Mason without Izzy is unfathomable… Because a Mason without music is unfathomable.

Because at the end of the day, it’s Izzy and me versus the world. And despite this ever-present rift between us—one I know she is still blessedly ignorant to—I love my sister.

And I have to believe, out there, somewhere, there’s someone for me too. Someone who will love me the way Mason loves her. Someone I can give my heart to, fully and wholly and without shame, free of the secrets that keep it currently chained. Someone just for me.

There was just…something about him. Something in his eyes that wasn’t quite right.

She’s always had a sort of built-in radar for it, sensing when I need her before I even realize I do. Before I realize anything’s amiss. Can’t say the reverse ever developed. Our twin super powers are strictly one way.

“It’s there, JJ. I know it is, just like it is for me. You’re just…closed off to it.” I try not to feel hurt recalling her words. I know she didn’t mean it to be cruel. Closed off.

Why would I be closed off to something I want? Obviously, I’d love to be just as free-spirited and open and hopeful as her. To not be a cynic. I want it… Badly. But I want a lot of things, and, well, maybe it’s just not meant to be.

Or maybe I just haven’t advanced to that level of…peace within myself, to allow another person’s feelings and influences to take shape inside me. Maybe I have ...

She’s not a mind reader. If she was, I imagine things would be a lot different. I have to believe that. If she knew… You sure she’d choose you?

What the hell could he possibly do? He’s old—ish—and frail, given the cane and limp and all, and there are dozens of people standing just across the hall. And yet… I remain trapped, caught in his web.

“It’s quite…disheartening is it not? To be a prisoner inside one’s body.”

“Tell me, malen’kiy golub’, do you want to fly?”