Page 2 of Shattered Hate

Nobody tells you how hard it is to breathe when that first heartbreak hits.

And nobody tells you that first love cuts the deepest.

I never saw him again. I never got that feeling again.

Until I sawhim.

His eyes sparkled like shooting stars against the night sky. His smile was a beam of light in my otherwise dull life.

For thesecondtime in my short eleven years of life, I felt them—the butterflies, the rush, the excitement, and even the peacefulness he created that surrounded me whenever he was close by. At that moment, I felt everything.

It was the first time I didn’t think about the boy from the lighthouse.

Over the years, my happiest moments were spent with him, sharing peanut butter cups. We always got a pack of three, and he’d split the last one so we could share. When his hand accidentally brushed mine, I felt it—an electric zap straight to my chest. Thousands of currents shot through me, making my heart race and flutter.

For four years, I thought I was in love with my best friend. I stood by his side, hoping he’d feel the same one day.

And he did.

When we were fifteen, we shared our first kiss. I’ve never felt anything like it.

He would watch me for hours while I trained on the ice, and his face lit up like the night sky on the Fourth of July whenever our eyes connected.

But then things changed—he changed.

I’ve learned that movies and books deceive us. They don’t tell you about the other side of love—the side that feels like thousands of knives piercing every butterfly that once swarmed your body.

Nobody tells you about the feeling of having your heart stamped on and shattered.

Nobody tells you how much it fucking hurts.

Here I am, sixteen years old, staring at thethirdperson to leave me, thethirdperson to break my heart.

I stare at the boy, who just shattered my soul into tiny fragments, while he kisses another guy.

The boy I have loved for the last five years.

The boy I gave myself to on my sixteenth birthday.

The boy who was my best friend.

Today will always be the day I remember that I, Trayton King, switched his feelings off and vowed never to fall in love again.

Fuck Bexley Anders.

Fuck love.

And, to the guy who is currently staring straight at me while kissing the boy I love…

FUCK YOU, Daxton Rivers.

Chapter one

Trayton

Present Day - Twenty years old

“Did you see the pictures Brayden put up on his Insta?” Kal mutters while we run side by side on the treadmill. I smile to myself, remembering last night when I looked at Brayden’s Insta and saw all the things he and Mr. Stiles, or I guess I call him Bohdi now, were doing. It looks like they had a pretty good damn time.

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