Page 98 of What I Should Have Done

Hatred, searing, red hatred swelled in me. “You fucking killed him! How could you kill him?!” I screamed. Rising from the ground, I balled my fist up as Duncan joined in the restraint. His hand wrapped around my arm, pinning it behind me.

“We have to go, Scottie,” Duncan softly encouraged.

Guilt overwhelmed me. The last thing I’d told Mikey, the last thing I shared with him was that he wasn’t worth the risk to my reputation. All for something selfish, and he lost his life to protect mine despite what I’d said.

What I should have done no longer mattered. There was no coming back. There was no reset.

No, this wasn’t happening. There was another way to go about all of this. We could do this again and I wouldn’t get out of the buggy this time. I’d stay near Mikey. Or I’d just shoot Karim without waiting for Dom’s command. Something had to go differently.

He wasn’t dead.

He couldn’t be.

Because if he was…

There was no stopping the absolute, numbing guilt and pain overwhelming my body. My veins ran cold. Not a sound registered around me. My feet followed the team as we raced away from the implosion and collapsing canyon wall.

How was I supposed to move forward with this?

Mikey was nothing but a memory now. I would never hear his laugh again. I would never see that cocky-ass smile of his.

I would never have the chance to tell him that I loved him.

He was a ghost.

In one wrong turn, he no longer existed in this world. And because this entire mission was off the books, he really didn’t exist. His story was done.

The only way I’d ever feel him close to me again was in my own mind. In the memories left behind.

Mikey was dead.

And so was my soul.

Chapter 33

SCOTTIE

“Mikey,” I mindlessly whispered into the nothingness. A team I didn’t trust surrounded me. People I didn’t recognize silently walked ahead of me, except for Dom. He lagged behind, keeping pace next to me as we continued our ruck home.

Another wave of tears slid down my cheeks. I’d long since abandoned wiping away the stains on my skin. I clutched my sniper rifle—retrieved during the ruckus somehow—to my chest. Mikey would’ve helped clean the blood from my hair. He would’ve asked me how I was doing.

Or maybe he wouldn’t have. Not after how I’d told him off again. I shook my head, desperately trying to rid myself of whatever lesson I didn’t want to learn from this. All he’d asked was if there was something more between us. And I’d pushed him away for fear of what would happen to my damn career. Which pained me even more since he’d promised he wouldn’t say anything to anyone, and Mikey kept his promises—all but one. This was my burden to bear, this consequence and pain knowing that the one man who was worth risking it all was gone.

“I had to do it, Scottie,” Dom’s voice sliced through my thoughts. He didn’t look at me, simply stared out into the distance. The sun breaking the horizon had never looked so beautiful. The pinks painting the cotton balls in the sky were hauntingly stunning.

“No, you didn’t have to,” I hissed, choking down the tears. “You could’ve killed Karim instead.”

“I didn’t have a clear shot. If I had missed, he would’ve escaped with—”

“He still got the damn coordinates! We could’ve had a chance to rescue Mikey, but instead…” I closed my eyes, squeezing back the tears.

“He didn’t get the right ones. Mikey gave him fake tags,” Dom quietly explained.

“Wh-what?” I stammered, cracking open my eyelids as my feet stumbled beneath me.

“Mikey gave him fake tags. We made up the coordinates on them,” Dom said again.

Indescribable rage and emptiness flooded my heart. “You knew?”

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