Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MILO
The first thing I thought about when I woke up was Calder.
It wasn’t the cabin, or the long list of photos I’d planned to take today. Simply the memory of standing in the clearing beside him while the forest moved quietly around us.
I stayed in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling and replaying pieces of the night before.
The sound of the owl, the way Calder had tilted his head when he heard something I hadn’t noticed yet. The strange, steady calm of standing next to a seven-foot cryptid like it was the most normal thing in the world.
I rubbed a hand over my face and pulled myself to sitting. “Well,” I muttered to the empty room, “that’s new.”
Every morning since I arrived, my first thought was about light—how fast it raced through the trees and whether I was about to miss the best part of the morning.
Today, it was Calder.
That realization sat in my chest for a moment before I pushed the blankets aside and swung my feet onto the floor.
I wasn’t going to go looking for him, I decided.
If Calder wanted to show up again, he would.
The cabin was quiet as I moved through my usual routine. Coffee first, camera batteries next. By the time I stepped outside, the early morning air had that sharp, clean bite that meant the sun had only been up for a little while.
Perfect light.
I slung the camera strap over my shoulder and started down the narrow trail leading away from the clearing.
This was why I’d come out here.
The forest in the morning didn’t pose for photographs. It didn’t wait for the right angle or the perfect expression. It just existed, moving through its own rhythm whether anyone was watching or not.
A thread of spiderweb stretched between two branches near the path. I stopped automatically, raising the camera as the rising sun caught the strands and briefly turned them silver.
Click.
The image flashed across the screen.
Clean composition. Good light. Simple.
I kept walking.
A pair of small birds landed on a fallen log a few yards ahead of me, hopping along the bark like they owned the place. I crouched slightly, adjusting the lens while they argued over something invisible in the moss.
Click.
Click.
Moments like this were the reason I’d driven halfway across the Midwest to rent a quiet cabin in the woods.
Out here, a crow landed in a patch of wet grass and shook rainwater from its wings like it had somewhere better to be.
I raised my camera again.
Click.
No posing. No direction. No second takes.
Just the moment.
I checked the shot and smiled to myself before slinging the camera back over my shoulder and moving deeper between the trees.
This was the kind of photography I’d been looking for.
Honest and unfiltered—real.
A few yards ahead, I paused again when I spotted deer tracks pressed into a stretch of damp soil near the base of a pine. Fresh ones, by the look of them.
I crouched, adjusting the lens as the morning light slid across the shallow prints.
Click.
The forest was wide awake now. Birds called overhead and something small moved through leaves somewhere behind me.
And for the first time since I’d arrived here, the woods didn’t feel empty.
Not really.
Because somewhere out there, moving through the same trees and listening to the same sounds, was Calder.
I told myself I wasn’t waiting for him, but every now and then, when I lowered the camera and glanced toward the darker line of trees beyond the trail, I half expected to see him standing there, watching.
Instead, the trees stared back at me like they always had.
I straightened and rolled my shoulders, adjusting the camera strap. The silence that followed felt a little too aware of itself, like the forest was waiting for me to do something next.
“Okay,” I murmured to no one in particular.
My stomach rumbled a reminder that coffee alone did not count as breakfast. I glanced around for a moment before spotting a fallen log a few yards off the trail and walked over, brushing a few loose pine needles aside to clear off a seat.
The phone signal out here came and went like a shy animal. I held the device up for a second until a single bar appeared and quickly tapped the contact before it vanished again.
Mrs. Alvarez answered on the third ring. “Milo, mijo,” she said immediately. Milo, my son. “You’re alive.”
“I was alive the last time we spoke too.”
“Mmhmm,” she drawled. “But that was before you ran off to the woods like a hermit.”
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “It’s not running off if I told you where I was going.”
“It is when you choose a place where the nearest grocery store is thirty miles away.”
I smiled despite myself. “I have food.”
“You are eating properly?”
“Yes.”
“And the cabin is safe?”
“Yes.”
“And you are staying warm?”
“Yes, Mrs. Alvarez.”
She made a satisfied humming sound on the other end of the line.
For a moment, we just sat in the comfortable silence that always came easily with her. Mrs. Alvarez had been asking me the same questions since I was seven years old, and I suspected she would keep asking them when I was seventy.
Then, lightly, she said, “You haven’t met the Beast of Bray Road yet, have you?”
I laughed, perhaps reacting faster than intended. “No. No cryptids so far.”
“Hmm,” she replied, the sound stretching out in a way that suggested she wasn’t entirely convinced. “Well, if you see a large hairy monster watching you from the trees, you should probably say hello.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You should. Remember your manners.”
I shook my head, smiling.
We talked for another minute or two before the signal started to crackle and fade again. I told her I’d call later in the week and slipped the phone back into my pocket once the line went dead.
Then, I just… sat there.
Mrs. Alvarez had told those stories my entire childhood with complete certainty, like the Beast of Bray Road belonged to the woods as naturally as deer or storms.
And now, I could see the truth in those tales.
Because somewhere in the forest behind me was a creature that matched her description a little too well, and I still wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that information.
I pushed the thought aside, stood, and lifted the camera again.
The position of the morning light had changed while I was on the phone. It slipped through the branches at a slightly different angle now, turning patches of moss into deep green velvet against the dark bark of the trees.
Click.
A squirrel clung sideways to a tree trunk nearby, chattering at me like I had personally offended its entire family.
Click.
Two birds burst from the undergrowth a few yards away, wings flashing pale gray as they climbed into the air.
Click.
Time moved the way it always did when I had the camera in my hands—quietly and without asking permission.
The sun climbed higher, shadows shortened.
At one point, I crouched beside a low cluster of stones where moss had spread across the surface in a thick, uneven pattern. The light caught it just right, turning the tiny ridges into a landscape of soft hills and valleys.
Click.
I lowered the camera and rubbed the back of my neck, glancing around the trees again without really thinking about it.
Nothing, only the slow movement of leaves and the occasional bird call drifting through the branches.
A few minutes later, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.
Something large had stepped into the open space between two trees.
I straightened slowly and rotated to face him.
Calder stood at the edge of the woods and for a moment my brain simply… stalled.
Seeing him again sent a sharp jolt through me, not because I thought he would hurt me, but because some part of me had already started expecting him to be there.
My grip tightened slightly on the camera.
Calder hadn’t moved.
Seven feet of muscle stood between two pine trees, perfectly still.
Morning light filtered through the branches behind him, catching along the dark fur of his shoulders.
My pulse jumped hard enough that I felt it in my throat
It wasn’t fear, exactly. It felt more immediate than that.
My brain was still trying to catch up with the fact that a creature out of local legend was standing twenty yards away from me while another part of me noticed things about said creature that felt… weirdly specific.
The slow rise and fall of his chest when he breathed.
The length of his arms.
The quiet watchfulness in his eyes.
I realized I hadn’t looked away once since he stepped out of the trees.
Calder tilted his head slightly, and something about the quiet curiosity in that gesture pulled a smile out of me before I could stop it. “Well,” I breathed, lowering the camera a little, “there you are.”
My voice came out more casual, like spotting someone who’d been gone a few hours instead of a living contradiction to everything I thought I knew about the world.
Calder moved with the same careful confidence I had come to expect from him.
I closed some of the distance between us too before I realized I was doing it.
“So,” I began, shifting the camera strap off my neck so it hung at my side, “do you do that on purpose?”
His ears twitched slightly. “Do what?”
“Appear dramatically at the edge of the woods.”
“I came out of the trees,” he stated, as though that explained everything.
“You make it sound way less dramatic than it is.”
Calder’s mouth shifted a fraction, not quite a smile, but close enough that I noticed.
His gaze flicked briefly to the camera in my hand. “You have been taking images.”
“Trying to. The forest is not great at taking direction.”
He glanced over my shoulder, to where I’d been standing. “What did you find?”
I approached him, turning the camera so he could see the screen.
“Birds arguing over territory,” I explained, scrolling through the photos. “A squirrel that seemed deeply offended by my existence, and moss that looks like an aerial photograph of another planet.”
Calder leaned in slightly to look. Heat rolled off him into the cool morning air, his body inching closer than it ever had before.
“That one,” he murmured, indicating the moss photo with the tip of one claw. “It survives where little else does.”
“Yeah, I liked that one too.”
He studied the screen for another second before straightening again. “You capture small things.”
“Small things don’t usually pretend to be anything else.”
He considered that and for a moment, neither of us spoke. The forest filled the silence with its usual quiet movements—branches shifting and birds calling somewhere high in the leaves.
Then, unexpectedly, Calder asked, “Have you always taken images like this?”
I leaned back slightly against the trunk of a nearby tree. “No.”
“What did you photograph before?”
“People,” I said simply.
He tilted his head. “For what purpose?”
“Money.”
That answer seemed to satisfy him enough to wait for the rest.
“Weddings,” I added. “Engagement shoots, luxury events. The kind of photos where everyone is smiling so hard their faces start to hurt.”
Calder studied me. “You did not like that.”
“No. I was good at it, but that’s not the same thing.”
I glanced down at the camera in my hands. “My parents understood that version of photography better.”
“Your parents.”
“Victor and Marianne Hart. Corporate people with everything perfectly organized and pristinely polished. I think they always expected my brother or me to eventually slide into that world with them.”
Calder stayed quiet beside me.
“When I started my own business, they accepted it,” I continued. “And they helped in their own way. Recommended me to clients, pulled me into charity events and donor circles.”
My lips twitched with the hint of a smile.
“But wildlife photography in the middle of nowhere probably makes a lot less sense to them than photographing rich people at hotels.”
“They wanted a different future for you.”
The words landed more directly than most people would have said them. I considered them briefly before giving a half-hearted shrug. “They probably did.”
The admission sat easier out here than it would have anywhere else.
“They aren’t bad people,” I added after a moment. “They just weren’t around very much.”
Calder’s gaze didn’t leave my face. “You were alone.”
“Pretty much. We had a nanny though—Mrs. Alvarez. She practically raised my brother and me. She was the one who showed up to school events and made sure we ate a proper dinner.”
Calder listened without interrupting.
“My brother’s seven years older than me,” I continued. “By the time I was old enough to understand that things at home felt… off, he was already off to college and building his own life.”
“And now?”
I looked down briefly at the camera in my hands.
“We’re trying harder now,” I said. “Calling more and actually talking instead of just texting each other on holidays.”
My smile relaxed into something more genuine.
“He always says, ‘love you, kid,’ before hanging up now, which still catches me off guard sometimes.”
Calder continued to listen quietly.
“His work keeps him moving around the country most of the time,” I added.
The quiet between us felt easier after that.
“What about you?” I asked quietly. The question slipped out before I could stop it. “Did you ever have family?”
Calder was silent for a moment. “No. I have always been alone.”
Something about those words twisted my chest painfully, and the two of us fell quiet.
We had lived very different lives, but loneliness still recognized itself.
The space between us suddenly felt smaller than it had a moment ago.
Calder watched me carefully but didn’t move.
Before I could second-guess the impulse, I closed the space between us and wrapped my arms around him.
Hugging Calder was not something I had ever imagined doing with my life.
But he didn’t move away.
His fur was thicker than I expected.
Not rough the way I’d imagined from a distance.
It was dense and warm, softer along his chest and throat where my face pressed against him, coarser over the heavier muscle beneath.
Heat engulfed me almost immediately, carrying the clean, wild scent I’d started associating with him—pine, cold earth, rain-soaked bark, and something so deep and primal that should have felt dangerous but didn’t.
It felt safe.
For half a second, Calder stiffened.
Then one massive arm came around my shoulders, careful with its strength as he held me against him, and something in me unraveled at the embrace being returned.
The forest sounds continued around us—birds calling, wind brushing through the branches—but they seemed farther away for a moment.
I could hear Calder breathing.
Slow. Deep.
The warmth of his chest rose and fell against my cheek.
“Okay,” I murmured against his shoulder. “This might officially be the weirdest morning of my life.”
Calder’s arm tightened just slightly before he answered. “I do not think it is unpleasant.”
I laughed, continuing to stand there with my arms around The Beast of Bray Road.