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

by Jessie Walker

“Will you please look at me?” I ask thickly. He swallows, gasps, and screws his eyes shut like he’s in pain. He drops his hand, shaking his head in a quick, jerky movement. “Jeremy,” I utter brokenly. “I can’t.” “This doesn’t chan⁠—” He snaps his head around, his gaze crashing into mine so fast, I rear back. And in a guttural voice, he says, “It changes everything.”

This scenario is not one I ever imagined. The one with Jeremy walking away. The one with my heart in my throat. The one where it feels as if I’m being physically ripped apart as two timelines converge.

He crooks me a small, sad, knowing smile. And just before he disappears around the corner, taking with him every other version of Jeremy conjured up in my head, he repeats his earlier words, mouthing them so they’re just for me.

This is a good thing. A good thing… Because Isobel Montgomery is alive. His sister is alive. The girl I loved so desperately, until it almost killed me… The girl I went to war with the gods over… The girl I thought I’d marry one day… She’s alive. She’s alive. This is a good thing… And yet⁠—

But it’s okay if she cries. She’s a girl. Dad says girls are sensitive, and it makes them cry a lot, but it’s okay. They can’t help it, all the big feelings they’ve got. It’s our job to take care of them, and protect them, because those feelings make them silly sometimes.

I’ll show him. I’ll be strong and good like Captain America, and he’ll come back.

I don’t have any gifts. Izzy got them all. Maybe it just hasn’t happened yet… Maybe I’m like Spider-Man. Maybe it’ll happen when I’m older. Izzy just got lucky. She was born that way—a mutant.

Twelve minutes and thirteen seconds. That’s how long I had to exist on this planet without my sister. And Mommy and Daddy said I screamed for every single moment of it.

He cut his hair. It makes me sad, though I’m not really sure why. There’s just a twisty feeling in my chest when I think about it and remember yesterday, when he peeked up at me, long silky blond hair hanging down his face. It doesn’t look bad, but still. I don’t like it. I feel like he didn’t actually wanna cut it. And then I remember. Girl. They called him a little girl. Is that why? But his hair was so pretty…

“I found Jeremy, the boy from the song,” I tell her, grinning. Her mouth twitches. “Oh?” I nod, and then my face crashes down with a scowl. “People are mean to him too.” Momma’s eyes crease, and her mouth thins. “I’m sorry to hear that.” I shake my head. “It’s okay,” I rush out. “It’s not gonna happen again. He has me now.”

I sit down on my bed, and clutch my knees, staring at the back of my hands, wishing, not for the first time, things were different. That I was different. That I could be like Mason and pretend I don’t care what people think. That I could belong. Be normal.

You two…you’ve always been close. Sometimes closer than I think even you and I are.”

“You’ll always be theirs first.”

He whips toward me. “You are loved, Jeremy,” he says fiercely, the words wrenching from his chest. Glittering black orbs clash with mine, bright with unburied emotion. “You are so damn loved by so many people, and you just…you won’t let any of us in.”

You chose my sister.

You. You’re my dream.

He’s beautiful. 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 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.

He’s beautiful, even when he’s at his ugliest—a husk of the person I once knew. Barely even recognizable these days, and yet my soul still aches for him, always. More now than it ever has.

“And then someday, there will be this guy, and he’s gonna come along and-and push all the right buttons. You’re gonna fight it. Be stubborn as always. But fuck, he’s gonna fall so hard. And you’re gonna fall so hard right back, because…because he won’t give up. He’ll never rest until you let him in.”

“This boy—this man… he’s gonna treat you the way you deserve, better than you think you deserve. He’s gonna give you the world even when you insist you don’t want it. Because as low maintenance as you try to be…” I say roughly, a low chuckle threading my words, “you’re not.”

“And you shouldn’t be. You should have ridiculous standards and expectations, and settle for nothing less than everything.” The mood sobers once more, and my voice grows even quieter, so quiet, it’s no more than a whisper. “And he’s gonna be the luckiest man in the world, whoever he is. Because…you don’t let people in easily. You don’t love freely. So to have that…” I swallow. “To have that…”

In his arms, I’m a stand-in for someone else. In mine, he’s everything I’ve always wanted.

And Jeremy screams. The most heart wrenching scream I’ve ever fucking heard in my life. It rings out into the night, broken and savage and filled with more pain than words could ever do justice. More than I think any human is capable of carrying, much less storing inside for as long as he has. It seems to rip out of him from the deepest, unventured part of him—somewhere no one, not even him, I suspect, has trekked. And I realize it’s not just the loss of his other half finally hitting him, after months of holding it in, displaying hardly any emotion whatsoever. It’s everything.

“She’s the love of my life.” Yeah, well, you’re mine, Mason. So fuck us both I guess.

To be loved by Mason Wyatt would surely be a death sentence. The weight of it would crush me.

He kissed me. Mason Wyatt fucking kissed me. He kissed me. And I kissed him back. Me…Mason…kissing… No matter how I spin it, it just doesn’t compute. And the fact that he was hard? Yeah, nope. No. I can’t even think about that without my brain going into a full-blown system error.

I can’t do this. I can’t survive this. Without her, I’ve been half a person. And now without him too, I’ll be lucky if there’s even a sliver of me left.

“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.”

“The Mason I knew and loved died with her. I see that now.” Her face bunches, eyes watering. “Sweet boy…” I shrug. “It is what it is. At least now I can…finally accept that, and grieve them both, and-and move on with my life. Start over.” For real this time.

“Because…because you and I both know that if she were here, I wouldn’t even be an option.”

“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 nod some more. “Okay,” I whisper, so quiet it carries hardly any volume. “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?”

“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.” I shake my head, his words tumbling around my head. “I told you⁠—” “And you lied!” he shouts over me. Nostrils flaring, chest heaving. “Whether you want to admit it or not.” He won’t believe me. No matter what I say… “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. Maybe you should tell him that, a voice pipes up, and I go still… because it sounds like Izzy. And it’s been so long since I could remember her voice so clearly. Jeremy stares at me, jaw ticking. The cords down his neck jump under his skin with how rigid he holds himself. “Jeremy, please⁠—” “Don’t,” he says simply, stiffly. He gives his head a little shake. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it. Nothing you can possibly say right now will make this better. So just…don’t.” My heart thumps painfully. Lips pressed tightly together, I give him a nod.

“I’ve got him, Iz,” Mason chokes out. “I’ve got him.” Waylon wraps an arm around me from my other side, and says strongly, “We’ve got him.”

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

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

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.” Like this, trapped in his orbit. I can believe it. I feel it. How he hid this from me, I have no fucking idea. How I could even doubt him… No clue. This kiss isn’t just a goodbye—a last chance. It’s an affirmation. A last-second battle cry into a war I didn’t even know I was fighting. A, hey there, look at me, do you get it now? Do you see? Are you listening?

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? There’s nothing I can do to convince him. And frankly, I’m not sure I’m brave enough to risk it—not yet—not when the stakes have been spelled out, leaving no doubt as to where we must go from here. And that’s not even taking into consideration what people would even say, if we did get together. I’m fighting a losing battle here.