Coldhearted Heir (The Heirs 1)

I sit up and don’t bother wiping the blood from my busted lip. My eyes never leave Jade as she drops to her knees, with our friends on either side of her. The breath she sucks in sounds painful as if she’s choking on the air, then she lets out an agonizing scream.

It’s the first time I see just how much she’s hurting, and it breaks something inside of me.

Maybe it’s the last hope I had of saving our friendship?

The ground might as well tear open and swallow me in a pit of darkness. The finality of losing Jade is too much to bear.

Kao wraps his arms around Jade, and presses her face against his chest, trying his best to console her. His gaze meets mine, and the worry he feels for us makes his blue eyes look like stormy waters.

Noah comes over to me and hands me a piece of toilet paper he must’ve gotten while I was focused on Jade. I wipe the blood from my mouth and slowly climb to my feet.

“I’m sorry, Jade,” I say for the millionth time.

She’s the only person I’ve apologized to in my life.

“I wish I could say I’d do things differently if I had the chance, but there’s still no way I’d let you lose your virginity in a guest room at the age of sixteen. You deserved better than that. And you were way too young,” I finally get to say the words, standing up for my actions of that fateful night.

Jade shoots forward like a bullet and stops an inch from me. I take in her tearstained cheeks and the broken look in her eyes. “Fuck you, Hunter.” She closes the distance between us until I can feel her warm breath on my neck. “Fuck. You.”

After twenty months of frustration and with my heart cracked wide fucking open in my chest, I lose my calm and shout, “What the fuck do you want me to say?”

“The truth!” she yells. “What did you do to Brady when you took him home?”

I suck in a deep breath and take a step backward to put some space between us. Struggling to regain my self-control, I growl, “Nothing. I dropped Brady off at home and left.”

“Liar,” she hisses, and then her face crumbles as she cries, “You’re a fucking liar.”

Jade storms out of my room, and soon after, the slam of her bedroom door echoes through the suite.

Feeling emotional and fucking exhausted, I sink down on the edge of my bed.

Breathe, Hunter.

Just breathe.

It feels like a tornado swept through me. Fuck, things are worse than I thought. The fact that Jade really thinks I played a part in Brady’s suicide sinks in like a ton of bricks.

Hana presses something cold to the cut on my bottom lip. “I’m okay,” I mutter.

“I know,” she whispers.

Jase, who I thought was missing in action, sits down next to me. Placing his arm around my shoulders, he doesn’t say anything. Maybe it’s because there are no words for this fucked up situation.

Fallon squeezes my hand before she walks away and slips inside Jade’s room with Mila right behind her.

“You should go too,” I tell Hana, not wanting her friendship with Jade to be affected by our war.

Hana nods and gets up. “Keep the frozen peas against your lip.” I take hold of it as Hana leans down, pressing a kiss to my forehead before she leaves.

After a couple of seconds, I drop the peas on the floor.

“Damn,” Jase whispers.

“Yeah,” I agree.

Noah brings me a tumbler with whiskey, and it makes my lips twitch, but the impending pain has me swallowing my grateful smile. “Thanks.”

I gulp a mouthful down, then say, “I didn’t know things were that bad.”

Jase nods. “Yeah.” He lets out a sigh. “Damn.”

I turn my face to him. “You’re speechless. That’s a first.” In response to my words, a sad smile forms on his face.

“What are you going to do?” Jase asks the million-dollar question.

I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I take another sip from the tumbler and let the whiskey burn down my throat. “But I have to do something. She’s hurting, and I don’t have it in me to take much more.”

“It’s too much,” Noah adds. “It’s breaking my fucking heart.”

“It’s breaking all of us,” Jase murmurs.

Thoughts swirl in my head until I grab onto one. “I’m going to let her fight. If she needs to beat me up to feel better, then so be it. Maybe if she has an outlet for her pain, she’ll deal with it, and we can become friends again.”

Noah pulls an unsure face. “She packs one hell of a punch.”

I let out a chuckle. “She sure does. When did she go from playing with dolls to becoming a badass fighter?”

“It’s all those summers she spent with Mr. Cole on his ranch,” Noah voices. “He’s a retired Navy Seal, after all.”