Page 65 of No Mistakes
We’re closer to Lake Forest than we have been in years. The last time we visited this house, it was as a family. My brothers, our parents, and I enjoyed the Fourth of July by swimming in the pool while my mother prepared her famous barbecue, with a rack full of meats and sides.
It was once our refuge when the world was too noisy, but now it holds memories that will never fade.
Mandy sits next to me, curled into the seat like she owns it, like she’s always belonged in my passenger side. Her boots rest in the footwell, legs drawn up, fingers tapping against the armrest like she’s playing a melody only she can hear. Her face is calm, but her eyes are somewhere else. Watching the skyline rise like a beast from the shadows, waiting to swallow us whole.
This is my city.
And somehow, she makes me see it differently.
Last night wasn’t just sex. It was a storm. Years of silence, of keeping my distance while I hid in the shadows, burned away in a single spark, and it was she who struck the match. She lit a fire inside me that I thought was long dead. And now it’s burning through every part of me.
She doesn’t know what she’s done. How could she when she doesn’t know the monster that has been locked away for years?
I glance at the backseat. Carter and Gunnar are both out cold, heads tipped back towards each other, mouths wide open like they’re trying to catch flies. Music plays faintly in the background, but their snores almost drown it out.
I reach over and rest my hand on Mandy’s leg. Her body stills, just slightly. She doesn’t look at me, but I see the disappointment flicker across her face.
I haven’t said a word since we left the motel, and I know she was hoping I would, but how the fuck do I explain it? Talking in front of the others feels like peeling my skin off, bone by bone. Doesn’t matter that they’re my brothers. Doesn’t matter that they’d never use it against me. It still feels wrong. Still feels like a weakness.
She deserves better than my silence, but I don’t know how to give her more. Not yet.
She shifts, her thigh pressing into my palm, and it takes everything I have not to grip tighter.
I wish I could tell her this isn’t about her. It’s about me. That I haven’t been the same since that night. The night Carter protected me. When I heard the screams and saw the aftermath. He covered for me when our father asked questions. Lied through his fucking teeth to save me.
But that kind of damage? It carves itself into you. It stays, following you around no matter where you go.
The Ashford name is a brand. A legacy soaked in blood and built on fear. We don’t bend. We don’t break.
Except I did.
And Mandy? She’s the only person who makes me want to break all over again, just to feel something real.
She turns her head toward me, just a little. Enough to meet my eyes for half a second. I give her a small smile, sliding my thumb over the inside of her knee, and she places a hand over mine, squeezing lightly.
Her hand stays over mine. It’s small, soft, but somehow heavier than anything I’ve carried in years. Like the weight of her touch sinks into my bones and reminds me I’m still here. Still breathing. Still capable of something other than survival.
I don’t deserve that.
I don’t deserve her.
My mind goes back to the motel again. Her skin, her sounds, the way she looked at me like I was more than just a wreckage of my own bloodline. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t pull away. She let me have her, and I took it like a man starved, because I was. I still am.
The sign for Lake Forest flashes by, green and blue blurring past as I drive past it.
The road narrows. Trees thicken. Streets start to look familiar in that sickening way old wounds do. Everything is quieter here. Cleaner. Wealthier. As if money could scrub the blood from our family’s name.
I never wanted to come back here, to see my father’s office, but with Mandy beside me. It changes things. She changeseverything.
I wonder if she feels it too, the shift in the air, the way this place hums beneath our tires with secrets and danger. She hasn’t said a word since she touched my hand. Maybe she’s giving mespace. Maybe she’s trying to decipher me like a language that keeps rewriting itself mid-sentence.
I slow the car as the turn approaches. Trees loom over us, thick and heavy, swallowing the road like they’re trying to keep the past buried under the roots. The neighbourhood’s too quiet, too perfect. The kind of place that masks the rot behind crisp lawns and million-dollar fences.
The car turns, following the curve of the roundabout, bringing the gates to our home into view.
Black wrought iron, tall and sharp, just like I remember. Twisted into elegant spirals that could cut your skin if you got too close. And in the centre, still untouched, still gleaming is the gold ‘A’. Our family’s initial. A brand. A warning. A fucking curse.
I stop the car in front of it, chest tight from seeing it. It hasn’t rusted. Hasn’t faded. Just sits there like time never touched it.
