After Forever by Jasinda Wilder Read Free Book Online Page A

had stabbed me in the heart. I’m not kidding. It was physically painful. I swear I’m not making this up. I haven’t—I haven’t told anyone. I was in bed. I had a test the next morning, and I’d been cramming for it. I’d been up for, like, forty-eight hours. But I wasn’t asleep yet. I’d just…just turned off the light. I closed my eyes and started to drift. And then I felt this…terror. Dread. Like…you know that feeling you get when something bad is happening? Like, right then, in that moment, that feeling you get when you know you can’t stop it?”
    My throat closed. “All too well.”
    Eden paled. “Shit…fuck. Of course you do. God, I’m so sorry, Cade, I didn’t mean to—”
    I waved my hand, focusing on not crying. The memory was so powerful, like icy claws in my gut, dragging horror up from the shadowy depths of my soul where nightmares resided. “It’s fine,” I choked out. “Keep going.” I could sense she needed to say it, to tell someone. I didn’t want to hear it. Not even remotely.  
    She took a deep breath. “I got that feeling. I was safe in bed, I knew I was, but I sat up and looked around, afraid. I mean, I think I honestly expected to see someone standing over me with a gun or something. Like the building was on fire or…I don’t know. Something. It felt like I was in danger. It was that strong a feeling. And then I knew. I knew , Cade. I knew something had happened to Ever. I called her phone. I must have called her phone a hundred times. It kept going to voicemail, straight to voicemail.”  
    Ever’s phone had been in her lap, and it had gone flying. Clean-up crew found it twenty feet away from where we’d first impacted, smashed into pieces.  
    Just like her.
    “I didn’t know your number. I called Dad, but he didn’t answer, either. He was at work. He never answers his cell when he’s at work. So I just—I went to the hospital. I knew, Cade. I knew.” She blinked hard. Trembled. “I knew . I got to Beaumont about five minutes after the EMS truck. They…they wouldn’t let me see her. They wouldn’t tell me anything. Just that she was there, and so were you. They wouldn’t tell me anything. I freaked out. They had to tell me that if I didn’t calm down, they’d call security. I was losing it and I knew it, and I couldn’t stop. I was screaming, kicking chairs over, demanding to see her, to know what the fucking hell had happened, but they wouldn’t tell me ! She’s my twin, and I didn’t even know if she was alive, what had happened.” She was shaking all over, pale skin shivering, shoulders heaving. Barely keeping it together, about to crack.  
    I reached across my body and touched my palm to her shoulder. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t say anything. She flinched from my hand, and then leaned into it. She sucked in a deep breath, sobbed once, then choked, visibly trying to stuff it down, to keep the tears at bay.  
    “It’s okay, Eden.” I whispered it. I wasn’t sure whether I meant that things would be okay, to get her to stop crying, or that it was okay if she did cry. I knew the latter was probably what she needed. I just wasn’t sure if I had the strength myself to comfort her. “It’s—you can cry. I’m here.”
    She shook her head, “No, no…” scraping from her throat. But she leaned forward, face in her hands, and swayed toward me, into the chaste touch of my palm on the top of her shoulder.  
    I turned toward her, angling my body toward hers. I rubbed her shoulder, my hand touching the warmth of her back, the fabric of her sports bra. She quaked under my hand, and then turned into me, putting her forehead against my chest. I put my hand on her back, in the center, right over her spine, and held her as she cried. I closed my eyes and stared up at the ceiling, but I saw anyway the curvature of her spine as she bent into my awkward, one-armed hug.  
    The intimacy was disconcerting, right and wrong at the same time,