Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MILO
The next morning, I stayed in bed for a while after waking, eyes closed. If I didn’t move, I could almost imagine Calder was still stretched out behind me, one heavy arm draped low across my waist, his warmth pressed against my back.
I’d fallen asleep leaning into him.
The memory returned slowly enough that I almost smiled, then the silence registered–too much of it.
I peeled my eyes open.
The ceiling came into focus first.
I stayed still another second before finally rolling onto my back, already knowing what I was going to find.
An empty bed.
No warmth behind me, no arm holding me in place, no slow, steady breath against my neck.
Just the cabin, morning light, and the space where Calder had been.
I exhaled and pushed myself upright, rubbing a hand over my face.
“Okay,” I muttered, voice rough with sleep. I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress. “Don’t start spiraling before coffee.”
Because there were reasonable explanations.
He hunted early.
He preferred the forest.
He probably hadn’t slept indoors in… honestly, maybe ever.
That didn’t mean anything had changed.
Probably.
I stood and padded into the main room, bare feet quiet against the wooden floor. The cabin still smelled faintly of him if I paid close enough attention—earth, pine, cold air carried in from outside—but it had already started fading beneath the familiar scent of cedar walls and old coffee grounds.
My gaze automatically scanned the room.
That was when I saw them.
At first my brain registered only shapes on the table where there definitely hadn’t been anything before.
Then I stepped closer.
Stones, placed carefully in uneven rows.
I stopped beside the table, staring down at them while my brain slowly caught up with what I was seeing.
Smooth river stones, all similar sizes and different shades of gray–and arranged deliberately enough to form words.
I WILL BE BACK LATER.
I stared at the message for a long second before a breath escaped me somewhere between a laugh and relief.
“Oh,” I huffed to the quiet room.
Because that… that wasn’t what I’d expected to find.
He’d… planned this.
He hadn’t disappeared into the woods pretending last night hadn’t happened. Hadn’t left me wondering if he regretted it. Hadn’t vanished without explanation.
He’d left a message.
For me.
My gaze raked over the stones again, slower this time, noticing the details I’d missed at first glance.
The slight differences in the shading. The way some were darker along one edge, lighter along another.
The fact that they weren’t just any rocks pulled from the ground, but chosen specifically.
Matched closely enough to read as one thing, varied enough to show intention.
Care. Then something else occurred to me.
Calder could spell.
Not just recognize words or repeat phrases he’d heard from humans over the years. He understood language. English, at least. Enough to shape it deliberately and think ahead. Enough to know I’d wake up alone and wonder where he’d gone.
Something softened painfully in me at that, because this wasn’t about intelligence. I’d known Calder was intelligent almost immediately. Anyone paying attention for more than five minutes would know that.
This was something else.
Care.
Thoughtfulness.
Planning.
I reached down and brushed one of the stones with my fingertip.
“I will be back later,” I read quietly.
The words sounded strangely solid spoken aloud.
A smile pulled at my mouth before I could stop it. “You really don’t do anything halfway, huh?” I said to the empty space.
Because apparently the terrifying cryptid in the woods not only kissed me senseless last night—he was paying attention to details, to patterns, to people, to me…
which was still a little wild to wrap my head around.
But this… this wasn’t instinct. It wasn’t something driven by hunger or territory or survival.
It was intentional.
And more than that—
The words weren’t there to tell me where he’d gone. They were there because he’d known what waking up alone would feel like.
He’d expected me to look for him.
To wonder where he was.
To worry he’d left.
And before he’d disappeared into the forest, he’d tried to spare me that.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
No one had ever thought that far ahead for me over something so small.
God, maybe it was ridiculous how much that affected me.
I dragged a hand over my face, exhaling slowly, then glanced toward the counter where my phone sat plugged in beside my camera gear. For a second, I hesitated. Not because I didn’t know who I wanted to call, but because I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to say when he picked up.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “This is gonna go great.”
I crossed the room, grabbed the phone, and tapped Elias’s name before I could overthink it. It rang—one, two, three, four times—before the line clicked.
“Milo?” he answered, voice already alert, like he’d gone from zero to field-ready in half a second. “You okay?”
I huffed a quiet laugh, leaning back against the counter. “Wow. Not even a hello. You wound me.”
“You called before noon,” he shot back immediately. “Historically speaking, something is wrong.”
“Rude,” I said, but there wasn’t much heat behind it. “But not entirely inaccurate.”
There was a brief pause on his end, not long, but long enough that I could picture him shifting gears—cataloguing tone, timing, context. He’d always been like that. Half scientist, half overprotective older brother.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Still in Wisconsin. Cabin’s intact. No wildlife uprising. No dramatic exits. You can relax.”
“Mm,” he hummed, which was his version of not relaxing at all. “And you’re calling me because…?”
“Because I felt like it,” I chided.
“Milo…”
I tipped my head back against the cabinet, staring at the ceiling. “You’re exhausting, you know that?”
“And yet, here I am, still your favorite sibling.”
“You’re my only sibling.”
“Details.”
I smiled in spite of myself, then let the silence stretch just a second too long before filling it again. “I don’t know,” I admitted after a second. “I just—needed to hear a familiar voice, I guess.”
That quieted him immediately. “Okay,” he said carefully. “That sounds emotionally significant.”
“It probably is.”
“Milo…” he scolded again.
I rolled my eyes–I knew he could feel it happen even if he couldn’t see it. “You ever have one of those moments where something changes, and you can’t decide if it’s a good thing or if you’ve completely lost your mind?”
“Constantly,” he said dryly. “Usually around grant deadlines, but continue.”
“This is… different.”
“Different how?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Because I could hear it, even in my own head—how it would sound if I said it out loud. How quickly it would spiral into questions I couldn’t answer without revealing the truth of Calder’s existence…
So I went with the safest version of the truth. “I met someone,” I blurted.
There was a beat.
Then, “You met someone,” Elias repeated, tone flattening in that way that meant he was filing this under important whether I liked it or not. “In the middle of the woods.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“You called me before noon to discuss your mysterious forest man. How else am I supposed to say it?”
“Casually,” I suggested. “With less implied concern for my life choices.”
“Milo,” he drawled, and now there was a thread of something else in his voice—care, edged with caution. “You’ve been out there, what, a few days?”
“Enough days.”
“And in that time, you’ve already reached the ‘I need to call my brother about it’ stage.”
I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck, glancing again at the table, at the stones, at the quiet proof that I wasn’t imagining any of this. “Yeah,” I said softly. “That part surprised me too.”
Another pause. Then, more carefully, “Is this someone I should be worried about?”
The question landed heavier than he probably intended. I looked at the stones again, the message and at the space where Calder had been, and the certainty that he would come back.
“No,” I said, and I meant it. “No, you don’t need to be worried.”
“Okay.” I could hear the part of my brother that wasn’t entirely convinced. “Do you need to be worried?”
A faint smile pulled at my mouth. “Probably,” I admitted. “But not because I think he’ll hurt me.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It’s not supposed to be. It’s just… honest.”
He let that sit for a moment, then sighed quietly. “All right. I’m going to do something very out of character and not interrogate you for the next twenty minutes.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
There was a small rustle in the line—fabric, maybe, or him settling into a chair—and when he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its edge.
“Just—be careful,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me everything. I get that. But if something feels off—”
“I’ll call you,” I finished.
“Yeah.”
I smiled, softer this time. “I will.”
Another quiet beat passed between us, familiar in a way that grounded everything else.
“Hey,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m okay.”
He went quiet for a second. “Are you sure?”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. “Yeah.”
We talked a little longer after that–about easier things–work, Chicago, one of Elias’s research grants falling apart in spectacular fashion because apparently academia was just professionally managed suffering.
By the time we hung up, the knot in my chest had loosened enough that I could breathe around it again.
“Love you,” I said before ending the call.
“Love you too, kid.”
The call went silent.
I stood there for a second longer, phone still in my hand, then let out a slow breath and set it back down on the counter.
I looked around the cabin again. The place didn’t feel empty anymore.
Just temporary.
Like waiting.
And honestly?
That might’ve been worse. Because now I knew he was coming back. Which meant I had entirely too much time to think about last night before he did.
“Great,” I muttered. “Fantastic development.”
I made coffee first, then breakfast, and tried very hard not to think about Calder while doing either.
Failed completely.
After eating, I cleaned up the cabin–mostly because I needed something to do with my hands.
Then I answered a few emails from my assistants back in Chicago, checked edits on a gallery set, confirmed an upcoming booking I’d almost forgotten about, and spent twenty minutes pretending I could focus on photography notes while my brain replayed Calder kissing me against the couch.
That failed too.
By late afternoon, the light had changed completely, softer now as it filtered through the trees outside the windows.
I picked up my camera eventually and wandered outside for a while, taking photos mostly out of habit.
The woods looked different now. Not safer, exactly, but more familiar–like some invisible line had quietly disappeared without me noticing.
A few hours later, I found myself back inside the cabin again, pacing without purpose between the kitchen and the window.
Because once my body stopped moving, my thoughts immediately circled back to him.
His hands.
The way he’d held back even while kissing me.
The carefulness in every touch.
And maybe the most dangerous part of all—the fact that none of it had felt temporary.
I scrubbed both hands over my face with a groan.
“Okay,” I muttered to myself. “This is getting ridiculous.”
Pacing didn’t help.
Thinking definitely didn’t help, and apparently photography wasn’t helping either.
I’d just turned toward the kitchen again when something changed outside.
Nothing loud or dramatic. Just—different. A subtle disruption in the rhythm of the woods.
My body reacted before my brain did, attention snapping toward the door so quickly the rest of my thoughts disappeared completely.
No knock came, or the sound of footsteps.
Just the unmistakable awareness of someone standing outside–someone familiar.
And suddenly every restless thought I’d spent the day fighting vanished all at once.
I crossed the cabin slowly this time, already knowing who I’d find before my hand even touched the handle.
When I opened the door—Calder was there.