Page 15 of No Mistakes

CHAPTER 8

AXEL

I stand frozen,watching as the car disappears down the road into the distance. The sun is setting, and a cold breeze wraps around me, like a reminder that without her, there is a piece of me missing.

I don’t move while the weight of everything crushes on top of me from the inside out.

She was gone, and I had no one to blame but myself.

Footsteps scruff against the gravel, and I don’t have to look to know it was Ant. He stands beside me, silent but observing like always.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of him pulling his phone out.

“You can’t fix this with a bullet.”The message reads.

A bitter smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. I know a bullet can’t fix this, but if I could, I would’ve already put one through my own goddam heart.

“I know,” I mutter, my voice low. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to try.”

Ant doesn’t respond. Instead, he just stands there like a goddamn statue, giving off the kind of silent judgment only a brother could perfect.

Solid. Steady. Annoyingly calm.

I’d probably have to light myself on fire before he so much as blinked, and even that is a push.

I drag a hand through my hair, gripping the back of my neck like it could hold me together.

I had one chance left. One fucking chance, and I already set it on fire the second I walked into that room and saw the look on her face. But beneath all of the emotions that ran through her, the one thing that gutted me the most was the look of hurt. The kind you don’t come back from. She looked at me like I was the bullet that hit her straight through the heart.

I look towards Ant, and I can’t help but almost laugh because, between the two of us, he’s the one who doesn’t even speak. Yet somehow, he’s the only one saying exactly what I need to hear.

Nothing.

No lies. No pretty words. Just standing there like he’d keep doing it even if the world burned down around us.

Hell.. Maybe it already has.

I scrub a hand down my face, the scrape of my calloused fingers against the stubble on my chin doing jack shit to ground me.

“She’s gone,” I mutter, more to myself than him.

Gone, becauseIbroke her. Gone, becauseIcouldn’t keep a grip on the one thing that made me feel alive for the first time in years.

Ant shifts slightly, dragging his gaze across the empty parking lot where Eva’s car once sat. I let him have a moment because with Eva gone, that also means Mandy’s gone. He won’t tell us any information when it comes to his relationship with her. But it doesn’t take a genius to know that something is going on between the two of them. I see it in the way his eyes light up when she walks into a room. Mandy has the same effect on himthat Eva has on me. That whenever she’s around, it’s like the whole damn world around you disappears.

I watch as his shoulders rise and fall as he sucks in a deep breath, pushing his feelings down before jerking his chin towards our vehicle, telling me it’s time to go.

I release a sigh while dropping my gaze towards the floor because, after all, we don’t have the luxury of standing here like heartbroken idiots. Not when the real work was still ahead of us.

I roll my shoulders back, forcing my spine straight even though everything inside me feels like it’s caving in.

“Let’s go, Flynn should have the package by now,” I say, my voice rougher than intended.

I may have lost Eva for now, but this was never just about winning her back. It’s about surviving long enough to deserve her. About tearing down the world that tried to destroy us and building a new one where she never has to flinch at a knock on the door again.

She doesn’t know it yet, but every lie I told, every secret I’ve buried, was for this.

Forher.