Page 136 of Secret Mission

“You’re looking better,” he says with a sharp grin.

“Feeling better. What about you?”

“Getting there. I’m glad you’re finally awake. I’m heading out of the country, so I wanted to stop in to look at your ugly mug one more time.”

I glare at them all. “What is this, give Truck shit hour?”

“Oh, have I been missing the fun?” Axle shakes hands with the others. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us. I’d like to speak to my twin alone.”

The room is clear seconds later.

Axle, lowers himself into a plastic chair and leans back. He’s moving gingerly. He’s lost weight. But he’s looking ten times stronger than the last time I saw him.

“Glad you’re alive.”

“Ditto.”

A dense silence fills the gap.

“I want to talk to you about Hope.”

A dull blade cuts through me. “Fuck.” What else am I supposed to say? My heart has clawed itself up into my throat.

“You know I would never cheat with your fiancée.”

Exhaling slowly, I watch him. Axle’s never outright lied to me. That’s not how we operate, but months of agonizing inside my head over the text messages I found on Hope’s phone have made me insane.

“What about the texts?” My voice is rusty, barely understandable to my own ears.

“I should have told you.”

The dull knife twists, pain gathering around it like a well of black lava. “But you didn’t.”

“She was thinking of leaving.”

Fucking hell. “I think you should leave. Now. I’m too fucked up on drugs to deal with this.”

“Truck, she wasn’t leaving for me. She just couldn’t be happy, and she didn’t know how to do it without hurting you. So she asked me.”

His words slowly filter into my fogged brain. “Wait…”

He rubs a hand over his jaw and drops his gaze to the floor. “Every single day I think about how if I’d told you maybe you could have talked. Maybe that day you wouldn’t have been arguing over some bullshit thing because she was really trying to find herself, and pushing you away because she couldn’t be happy.”

A sob jerks inside my chest. For a few long minutes I fight the tsunami inside of me that wants to rip me limb from limb.

“When I saw…” I force a few breaths. “Those texts between you and her, I couldn’t take it.”

“Is that why you’ve been so mad at me?”

I nod, using the sleeve of my hospital gown to angrily swipe at my face. “I didn’t want to believe it, but the proof was there.”

“Proof that I was the person closest to you and she wanted my advice.”

“The texts didn’t look like that.”

Clasping his hands, he holds my gaze, a torture so much like my own in identical eyes. “I have them all if you want to read them. I don’t know what she kept or deleted. I’m sure it could look like anything if you only saw a few of the messages.”

“Fucking hell.” I cover both eyes with my hands, making the IV line tug until the medication dispenser begins to send out a loud alarm.

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