Page 176 of Tell Me Pucking Lies
“Is that safe?” I look between them, distrust coloring every word.
Axel’s expression softens, and for a second he looks like the brother I remember from before everything went wrong. “I can go back to rehab if that’ll make you happy.”
The words hit me in the chest. Something warm and painful blooms there as I look at my big brother. Despite everything, despite the drugs and the mistakes and the years of disappointment, he’s still trying. Still here.
“I’ll leave that up to you,” I say, and I mean it. “I just want a normal life and a real relationship with you.”
He nods, and I see his throat work as he swallows. “Yeah. Me too.”
I hold his gaze for a long moment, trying to communicate everything I can’t say with words. Then I turn away before the tears that are burning behind my eyes can fall.
“Let’s go,” I say to Atticus.
I don’t look back as I walk out the door. Don’t look at Koa standing there with my anger and his kiss still written on his face. Don’t look at Revan or the cabin or any of it.
Atticus follows me to a car—not the Mercedes from before, something else, something that blends in better. He opens the passenger door for me, and I slide in, numb and exhausted and furious all at once.
As he starts the engine, I stare out the window at the trees blurring past and try to figure out when my life became a war zone.
Try to figure out how I’m supposed to navigate a world where the people who hurt you are the same ones who claim they’re saving you.
Try to figure out if I can ever trust any of them again.
40
Koa
The engine hums beneath me, a steady growl that vibrates through the steering wheel and up my arms. Highway lights flicker across the cracked windshield in rhythmic intervals—yellow, dark, yellow, dark—hypnotic and disorienting. My hands grip the wheel hard enough that the scabs across my knuckles split open again, fresh blood seeping through and staining the leather.
I don’t loosen my grip.
Axel closes his eyes in the passenger seat, his head pressed against the window, breath fogging the glass in small circles. The rehab bracelet is still on his wrist—white plastic with black lettering, a marker of failure and hope existing in the same space. His face looks younger in sleep, less haunted. Almost peaceful.
Lexi thinks I fucked up his life by making him a dealer, but I did that to keep control over him before Vincent could ruinhim. The second I heard Axel was a junkie though? I pulled him under my wing and offered him a position to keep him close, to give him a purpose. As fucked up as that purpose was, it took him a couple years to get lost in it. Then his sister came into the picture. And thank fuck she did because I think he’d be lost without her. I hate to admit that I probably would be too.
The silence between us is heavy—too clean, too complete. I don’t trust silence. Silence is where thoughts live, where guilt breeds, where the things you’re running from catch up.
I keep running through the night in my head, frame by frame like a movie I can’t turn off. Vincent’s voice echoing off warehouse walls. Lexi’s eyes when she realized what I’d done—the exact moment trust shattered and became something else. Something uglier. The Reaper masks pouring through the doors like judgment made manifest.
I thought delivering her would free me. Thought fulfilling the debt would cut the chain Vincent had wrapped around my throat since I was fourteen. Instead, it branded me. Marked me as something I never wanted to be—my stepfather’s son in all the ways that matter.
The highway stretches ahead, endless and dark. Exit signs flash past advertising gas stations and diners that are probably closed at this hour. The dashboard clock reads 3:47 AM. The dead hour, when the world holds its breath.
Axel stirs, shifting against the window. His eyes flutter open, unfocused and clouded with residual drugs. He blinks a few times, trying to orient himself.
“Where are we?” His voice is rough, scratchy from disuse.
“Almost back to campus.”
He processes this slowly, staring out at the darkness rushing past. Then his head turns toward me, and there’s something calculating in his expression now. More alert than he was a second ago.
“You sure you wanna bring me there? Thought you people liked hiding your messes.”
I smirk, keeping my eyes on the road. “You’re the least of my messes.”
The words hang between us. He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t look away. Just studies me with an intensity that makes my shoulders tense.
“You love her, or you just want to own her?”
