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.

The last thing I see before the door closes behind him is his red backpack and the name stitched across the pocket. And all I can think is… I found you.

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.

“She’s a girl,” I tell her, because that feels important. “And she’s pretty and-and she’s good at piano, and she’s nice and-and they’re in the same classes, the same grade…” Mom’s eyes gleam with some emotion I can’t name.

I don’t know how I ended up over here, separated from all of them. But then again, where there’s a wall, there’s a Jeremy. Just call it the thirteenth law of the universe.

On the surface, everything is as it should be. I should be relieved. I should be grateful. I should be thanking my lucky stars. And yet… Why am I so sad?

Digging his head back in the pillow, he stares hard up at the ceiling, his eye shining with unshed tears. 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.”

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.”

“But you’ll always be hers first,” I whisper

Our stars are only ever meant to exist from opposite sides of the sun burning brightly forever between us.

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. Chewing the inside of my lip, I nod, and finally manage to rasp, “I promise.” And I know, deep down to my core… I mean it. If not for me, for him. Always for him. Because I might not be a hero like him, but he is and always has been my kryptonite.

The funny thing about moments where your world comes crashing down around you… Is that you have no idea that that’s what’s happening.

“Do you still feel her?” And with nothing but plastic stars and planets as my witnesses, in the arms of the boy I love and who I’ll never have—not now, and not ever—I let the lie fall easily from my lips. “Yes.”

He swallows audibly. “You…you just have to hold on, okay?” Emotion swells my throat. “They’ll find her, and they’ll bring her home. We just have to hold on. We can’t fall apart.”

It’s living that feels sluggish. Every move I make. Breath I take. Every step I trudge through this alien, dreamlike landscape feels like wading through quicksand.

Because there’s absolutely no way in this universe—in this timeline—that Mason Wyatt—Mason fucking Wyatt—is burying his face in my hair and kissing my head and holding me so tight I almost forget what it’s like to not be held.

Because as far as I’m concerned, there’s no one else in the world who deserves to unleash as much as Jeremy Montgomery.

Fingers dig into my neck. “M-make it stop,” he sobs. I hold him tighter, rock him. “I can’t, I can’t…” I can’t fix this. I can’t protect him from this. The sound he makes against my chest is unlike anything I’ve ever heard—inhuman and terrifying in its devastation. And I find myself pleading. Praying. For once not for her… But for him. Make it stop. Please, make it stop. This can’t be happening It can’t. She can’t be dead. He won’t survive it… We won’t survive it.

Come back. Please come back. Don’t leave me too.

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

It’s just gone. Disintegrated. And I am lost. It’s so cold here…

It’s as if I’m observing in real time, as he sheds chains I never realized were there—one made up of ivory keys and frustrated fingers and a steel jaw and hard, bleary eyes as he tried to force sonata and overtures from a brain just aching for something more, something else…

No, no, I’ll never let you fall either. I’ll be by your side always. Forever, through it all, even if it kills me.

Those warm amber eyes widening at my fast approach. I’d recognize this boy anywhere. Jeremy.

Fuck, it absolutely pummels me how…how free he looks. Free and…and… My heart slams against my ribs.

Jeremy’s gaze drops, and for a brief, sharp moment, I swear the world tilts on its axis. But then he’s looking away, and rubbing his neck, and I’m certain I just imagined whatever the fuck that was.

I don’t think I’ve seen him this…this exposed since⁠— As if on cue, a steel wall slams down on the images surging up in my head, and I turn away, clearing my throat a couple times as I mentally shake off my weirdness. I missed him. I missed my friend. That’s all this is.

The pale column of his throat ripples with a swallow. Then, “You’re amazing. The band I mean,” he clarifies quickly…too quickly. Shaking his head, he bunches his face, and says, “I should’ve said that before. Should’ve been the first thing I said. I⁠—”

We’re both…” I wave my fingers, looking for the right words. “Half of who we once were without her.”

My trembling fingers betray me with the truths that still escape me Do you hear their whispered confessions Burrowing in your skin In your bones In your dreams The angels can’t hear me I’m praying to ghosts

Spinning, spinning… Spinning the wrong way.

Being in Jeremy’s presence has been a balm to me for as long as I can remember. Even when we were kids, he’s who I’d seek out when I was missing my dad or beating myself up for struggling with piano, or just…fuck, having a bad day.

But Jeremy… Jeremy… My gaze drifts down the delicate knobs of his spine, lingering on the two, barely there dimples above the waistband of his black shorts. And I gulp. He makes magic with his fingers too. And it’s messy and quiet and perfect in its imperfections and it’s…

“Mason?” he says, so quietly I barely even hear him over the roar flooding my ears. What…is this… I sink into his gaze, and I feel…something, something big lurking there, just on the horizon. A tug from somewhere inside me, or maybe inside of him… Emotion flares from his eyes, expanding his pupils. And I see myself reflected there, in their black, shiny depths. Is the fear I see mine, or his? My fingers flex against his soft, too-warm skin, and it’s like I’m suddenly outside myself, watching as my lips part. Watching as I start to lean in⁠—

He’s also still in love with my dead sister, whose birthday just so happens to be today as well… and he’s likely losing his shit just like every year, and I’m… Fine. Totally, a-okay, fine.

That it’s her birthday, and she’s not here. That it’s her brother’s birthday too, and he’s not here either, but drowning his grief in alcohol two hours too far from me. That their parents are thousands of miles away, living out of an RV. That her best friend is off God knows where tonight, losing himself in whiskey and a warm body, pretending this day is just another day. That I couldn’t protect her…keep her safe…

I’m trembling head to toe, my heart thrashing against my chest. My knees quake, threatening to give, and there’s no denying—no running away—from the fact my jeans suddenly feel a size too small.

“I don’t see how this is any of your business.” “You’re not like this with Way. Only me.” “Just ’cause she’s not here, doesn’t mean you have the right to go all crazy over-protective sibling on me.”

Note to future me: TURN PHONE OFF WHEN HAVING SEX Also, don’t talk to Mason when you’re drunk If I never have to hear him growl and get all protective over me like that again, it’ll be a moment too soon. My poor hand. Pretty sure I’ve developed carpal tunnel. YEAH, YEAH, LAUGH IT UP I’m just grateful I never had to hear you guys doing it. I’m pretty sure I would’ve died.

And sure, he still is all that. But as he’s gotten older, and started working out, and weaving things like tattoos and that sinful lip ring into an already stunning package… Well, let’s just say if I didn’t have years of practice bottling up my attraction for him, I’d be a puddle on the fucking floor right now. He’s gorgeous. Painfully so.

He heard me having sex. Did it gross him out? Is this how things are gonna be from now on?

A laugh travels across the room—his laugh. Breathy and raspy… Not unlike the moan I heard over the phone weeks ago.

What the hell would she say if she knew the shit I was thinking? She’s out there, God knows where, waiting for someone to find her—rescue her—and what the fuck am I doing? Thinking about what her brother looks like naked and in the throes of passion.

His features bunch, eyes searching between mine. “Mase…” “What?” “He’s not her.”

Shaking my head, I go to give him back his hand, when his fingers slide over, and brush my lips, lingering there. I freeze, tensing all over. I don’t even breathe. He grunts when his fingertip catches lightly on my lip ring. Tingles crawl down my neck, spreading goosebumps over my arms. I swallow, hard, blinking rapidly. Helpless to do anything but hold very still. “Mase Face,” he says on a sigh, and his lip crooks up in a stupidly adorable smile. Jesus.

Because if it’s not this one, where Izzy’s gone…dead… It’s the one where it’s Jeremy, who I’ve lost instead—Jeremy, who’s been missing; Jeremy who’s dead. And I⁠— I can’t. I can’t. I—

And just like that, every steel door in my head is blown to shreds. No warning. No time to prepare. Every line of defense between me and the monster with my face I’ve tried so hard to appease… It’s all just… Gone.

A sinking feels forms in my chest, and a buzzing fills my ears. What did I do? What the fuck did I do? Because for the first time ever, that I can recall… He left me on read.

Would Waylon still avoid this house? My parents? Doubtful. Would Mason resent them for trying to move on, for accepting my death so easily? Maybe. But he’d have Izzy, so…