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

by Jessie Walker

I wished he was mine. All mine, and only mine. For years. On shooting stars. On birthday candles. Then one day, my wish was granted. And I’ve been wishing every second since, on every breath, that I could take it back.

“You can cry, you know,” she says. I shake my head. “Why not?” My voice comes out razor-thin, nearly inaudible, “I’ll never stop.”

“I’m done being some kind of…stand-in for her. A place for him to dump all that love on, because she’s not here to take it.” Mom’s eyes widen. “Jeremy…you can’t honestly believe that’s all you are to him.” I huff a bitter laugh. “Whether he knows it or not, that’s exactly what I’ve become.” I meet her tightened, reddened gaze. “The Mason I knew and loved died with her. I see that now.”

You kissed him. You kissed him, and then you called him by his sister’s name. What the actual fuck is wrong with you?

Izzy’s dead. She’s fucking dead. I broke my sobriety. I told Waylon I wished it was him. I kissed Jeremy, of all fucking people in the world to kiss… And I called him by his sister’s name, not even, what, minutes, hours later? Does it even matter? Kissing him or not doesn’t erase how fucked up that is regardless. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I didn’t cost myself two, if not three, of the most important people in my life. And for what? A ghost?

All these years, I was terrified it’d be Jeremy. Despite his insistences. Despite his promises… When in fact, it was the guy with the perpetual smirk and deep-seated dimples and devil may care attitude who was hanging on by an actual thread I should’ve been paying closer attention to.

He doesn’t actually see you. I’m just the closest thing he’s got to her.

“You think I’m gorgeous?” The words tumble out before I even realize what I’m saying. Jeremy’s eyes widen, then harden, and he sneers. “That’s what you’re choosing to focus on?”

“I didn’t…” “Didn’t what?” he says with a dangerous edge to his voice. I gulp. Lick my lips. “Didn’t think you saw me like that.”

“But that’s…them. Not you. You’ve never looked at me like that.” Again, he just stares at me. Blinks. One second passes. Two. And then he cocks his head, eyeing me in a way I can’t quite define, other than to say he has never looked at me like this. Like he suddenly has something over me, and it’s a mindfuck if there ever was one. One that has the blood rushing from my head, and the ground beneath us tilting. “Sure about that?” And everything just sort of grinds to a halt. Pretty sure my heart is failing.

“Out of everything that happened that day—that night…me kissing you back should be the least shocking thing. That I…I liked it.” His voice cracks, the first outward sign that he’s not as unaffected by this as he’s trying to be. A short, rusty sound chokes out of him. Taking a small step back, he hangs his hand. “Why we’re even discussing that of all things, is⁠—” “You did?” I murmur almost soundlessly. And yet he must hear it, because his words drop off immediately. My chin quivers, and this time it has nothing to do with the cold. His face scrunches up when he lifts it, and he shakes his head, drilling his gaze right into me. “Of course I did.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t real?” I whisper, my breaths coasting along his face.

“Then why…why am I sober right now, and I still want this?” My voice cracks, betraying me. “Why?”

“You were looking right at me,” he whispers tightly. “Right into my eyes. You’d never looked at me like that before.” His voice grows louder, cracking painfully into the night. “No one’s ever looked at me like that.”

“That’s how I know this isn’t real,” he goes on thickly, tightly, his voice on the verge of breaking once more. “It’s just a-a symptom of our grief. Because of how much you’ve come to depend on me, and how much I’ve enabled it.” And I shake my head harder, tears clogging my throat, stinging my eyes. “No. No.” It’s not true. It’s not. “Because…because you and I both know that if she were here, I wouldn’t even be an option.”

“It’s always about her. Even when she’s dead, it’s all about her. Always has been, always will be with you,” he spits. I flinch. “Mason and Izzy,” he growls. “A tragic love story for the ages. I’m so fucking sick of being in the middle of it. I didn’t ask for this!”

“Sometimes, I really fucking hate her. You know that?” His voice trembles. “I hate her. And I love her. And I miss her. And I want to grieve her. I want to let her rest, but you won’t let me!”

“I just want to forget,” he wrenches out. “I just want a fucking break from all this shit. Just when I think I’m finally free of you—you pull me back in, and without a fucking care in the world. “I’m done being dragged down by you.” He throws a hand out. “I’m done living in this ghost town. And I’m done being a stand in for her,” he says, looking right into me, for once letting me see it all. His pain. His anger. Years of agony and spite stored up… It’s all laid out for me to see. “I’m done letting you use me to fill some void.” My eyes fall shut, and I shake my head. No… It’s not true. It’s not. “Hang onto her—hang onto the memories all you want. But I want out. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

“I don’t want to feel like I’m not supposed to be here.” I suck in a breath, and my eyes open. “Jer.” His face bunches and he shakes his head. “Do you know what it’s like, realizing the universe fucked up?” His eyes are thick with tears he still can’t seem to let fall, despite bleeding out for me. “Do you know what it’s like to know that deep down, it has to have crossed people’s minds, my parents’ minds, yours?” “It should’ve been me.”

“You’re supposed to be here, Jeremy,” I whisper instead. “You’re supposed to be here.” A world without him in it… Is no world I want to live in.

I don’t know who I am without you. And I’m not just saying that cuz of these last four years. I hate myself for jeopardizing our friendship. For hurting you and not thinking things through first. You mean too much to me to gamble what we have, just cuz kissing you felt good

For one, I think I might be bisexual. I’m also pretty sure I’m into your brother.

I hate that you never got a chance to fall in love with someone who wasn’t me, someone who gave their all to you. Someone who’d love you without a single doubt.

“Do you…do you need Shawn?” My eyes fall shut. I need you.

On the outside, I’m utterly still. I don’t so much as blink. All I can do is stare at him, wondering if perhaps I’m dreaming, and that’s why he looks so inhumanly beautiful right now, as impossibilities spill from his lips.

Because surely—surely—Jeremy Montgomery, the boy I’ve known since I was six, my anchor through all these years, the boy I once made my mission to protect and keep happy…isn’t confessing that he’s in love with me. Me… The selfish asshole who’s put him through the ringer these last few years.

“It hurts. It hurts so fucking much, loving you, and knowing I can never have you.”

“If given the choice, you’d choose her. And I know that’s not fair to you. But it’s true. We both know it’s true deep down.” Is it though? I swallow tightly, already knowing the truth… But also knowing, to my core, he won’t believe me. Not today. Not yet. My word means nothing in the wake of my actions…in the face of our history.

“You should’ve never fucking stayed here to begin with, and I’m so sorry if I ever made you feel trapped. Like you had to keep coming back, when we both know how much you hate this place.”

“I played with fire, knowing I’d get burned. And then I kept playing, even when the flames were consuming me whole. At any point here, I could’ve walked away. But I didn’t.”

“I told you. You’re Mason Wyatt. Of course, I fell in love with you.”

Like falling in love with me wasn’t just an accident, but an inevitability. Like my mere existence is all it took for him to fall.

“I’ve treated you like shit.” He tilts his head with a soft sigh, his cheek brushing my knuckles where I still hold him. “Yeah…but to be fair, you didn’t know what was going on in my head. And…despite it all, I’m still in love with you. Pretty sure that says more about me than you.”

“I need to know what it’s like to live without you. Just as I think you need to know what it’s like to live without me.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s the only way.”

“I’ve gotta lose you,” I say with a near-unbearable thickness. It’s a wonder he even understands me at all. He smiles, making his eyes squint, and he nods. “Yeah, you do.” “But not forever. I refuse to let this be forever,”

“Jer.” He quiets. “Just shut up and kiss me.”

And she is forgotten. If only for this moment. It’s just Jeremy and me, and a lifetime of fear and regret and pushed back feelings colliding in a white-hot supernova that obliterates every other thought, every other sensation, but this.

Forget the kiss at fourteen—hell,forget the two kisses we shared months ago. As far as I’m concerned, this is it—this is what it truly is like to kiss Jeremy Montgomery, my shy, stubborn boy with his fiercely protected heart; the boy who gave me back the stars…the angels… The boy who held me even when it was likely killing him… The boy who just ripped himself open for me. “I’m in love with you, Mason.”

And all I can think is⁠— He’s wrong. He’s so fucking wrong.

He is wrong. That kiss confirmed as much. There is something here…something raw and fragile and foreign, yet…not. Like a forgotten memory, I just have to polish off. There has to be…I can’t be so fucked in the head that I created all of this—all of that—out of nothing. Out of a void. He is the void. Him. Jeremy.

He’s what’s been missing all along… What I’ve been chasing. Right in front of my fucking face. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?

I don’t want to lose him… But I know I can’t keep him. Not now, not like this. I’ve kept him for long enough. And this boy deserves to fly free—to scream from hilltops haloed under lemon-yellow suns, his demons slain and scattered beneath his feet.

King Jeremy the Wicked, finally ruling his world.

Like dominos, all my plans and hopes—all the layers of resolve and determination I’ve stacked up over these last few months—topple over, falling somewhere in the pit of my stomach.