Playing Heart Games

Boss Level 69: Save Him

VIOLET

The entire drive to the painting house, I couldn't help but wonder why Axel wanted me to come there.

What if he'd created a new painting?

I grinned as I remembered him showing me the paintings of us. I remembered the way he'd smiled. That smile was the first time I'd ever seen him so raw, so vulnerable.

Whatever it was, I knew it was going to be amazing.

I was ten minutes out from the house when I noticed a column of smoke rising in the distance.

Was it a bonfire? I frowned. It was the middle of the day. And there was something off about the colour of the smoke—

A wave of panic hit me.

I'm imagining things. I drove faster anyway.

My stomach bottomed out when the house finally came into view.

I jerked my car to a stop, scrambling out.

Axel's painting house was on fire, clouds of smoke consuming the entire building.

I felt like I was choking. Axel's home. Everything Axel had created. Destroyed. When he saw this—

Wait—where's Axel?

I ripped my eyes away from the house. Two cars. Empty. A figure—

Brielle?

Brielle was sat on the gravel, her back against one of the cars, her chest heaving.

I sprinted towards her.

"Where's Axel?!"

Her head whipped to me. Her face was pale and soaked with sweat, ash and bits of plaster smeared on her skin, her eyes too wide.

Panic. Pure panic. "Where's Axel?!"

Her voice was a croak, "Inside."

I could have sworn that, in that second, the world ended. That the sun blinked off and everything stopped functioning.

I was moving before I had a conscious thought about what I was doing.