Chapter 26
The metal doors slammed shut behind me, their echo chasing me out into the night like a finality that I couldn’t stomach.
My pulse thundered in my ears, drowning out the clamor of the prison yard.
Rain hammered down like the sky was fucking punishing me too, it’s cold needles stabbing every inch of my exposed skin.
I didn’t stop moving. I couldn’t. My shoes splashed through the puddles as I tore down the cracked pavement outside the gates, my breath burning in my throat as much as my heart. Rage and grief braided themselves tight in my chest until I thought it might split me apart.
Carrington…he was here.
“Shiloh!”
His voice cut through the raging storm, ragged and flayed raw.
I didn’t turn around. My jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth would fucking crack. He had no right to call my name. No right to drag me back into his orbit when the truth had gutted me and caused me to bleed out in this fucking world.
“Stop,” he shouted, closer now. “Please.”
I spun around on him, rain dripping down my face with the tears I couldn’t hold back. “Don’t you fucking tell me what to do. Fuck you, Carrington. Leave me the hell alone.” My voice tore out of me, loud enough to rip through the storm.
Carrington stood a few yards away, his chest heaving.
The rain had drenched him from head to toe, and it made him look like something savage and undone.
His eyes, even from here, God, those fucking eyes were the same ones that had pulled me in all those times before.
The same eyes I used to think saw me. Now they only looked like betrayal and pain.
“You knew,” I spat, my voice breaking. “You knew all this time, and you stood there like it was nothing.”
He flinched like I’d hit him. I fucking wanted to break his skull against the pavement. “I didn’t know it was her.” His voice cracked. “I swear to you, Shiloh, I didn’t know it was your mom. I was a kid. I followed my father’s orders, I didn’t…I never would have touched her if I knew—”
“Don’t.” I cut him off, my throat closing around the word. “Don’t you fucking dare make excuses. You can’t rewrite what you did. Can’t take back all the lives you stole. How many people did you fucking murder because your fucking dad demanded it?”
His fists balled at his sides, not in anger, but like he was holding himself together by threads that were no longer there.
“I live with their ghosts every day. You think I don’t?
You think it doesn’t rip me apart that now every time I look at you, I know the blood on my hands is the same blood in your veins?
I see every face I…I can’t help the darkness inside me, Shiloh.
It’s them or me. I will be swallowed whole if I don’t let it out somehow.
My dad used me. He told me they were bad.
He built me into the perfect monster. I didn’t know better. Now I control it. Now I choose who to…”
The rain blurred my vision, but I didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Carrington took a step closer, his voice dropping, rough and jagged, like a glass dragged across the stone walls.
“I tried to stay away from you, okay? I need the darkness. I was drawn to your light and needed to feel it. I told myself I didn’t deserve you.
But I can’t do it anymore, Shiloh. I can’t keep pretending that I…
that I don’t fucking love you. I don’t know how.
Or why, but I know I do. I love you, Sunshine. With every broken fucking part of me.”
The words landed like lightning, searing through the storm and right into my heart.
I froze. My lungs forgot how to fucking work, and my chest locked.
Love.
He said love like it was an open wound, like it cost him everything to bleed it out loud. Maybe it did. But I wanted to watch him bleed.
My mouth opened, but no words came out. Only the pounding rain, the furious beat of my heart, and my fucking pain seeped into every crack.
“I love you, Shiloh.” His voice broke on my name.
“And I’ll carry the weight of what I’ve done until it kills me, but don’t you dare walk away thinking I don’t feel this too—don’t you dare believe I don’t love you with everything I have to give.
I know that’s not worth shit, but I do. I can’t help it. You are my everything.”
Something inside me cracked wide open, the kind of pain that felt too real, actually to exist. I wanted to hit him, to fucking kill him, to kiss him, or to run until I disappeared and nothing was left.
Every cell in me screamed to get away from him, and every pulse begged me to collapse into him, never letting go.
My hands trembled at my sides.
“You don’t get to fucking say that to me,” I whispered. “Not after what you took from me.”
“I know.” His voice faltered as he got closer. “But it’s still true. I’m so sorry, Shiloh. Please, Baby Boy. I will live every breath I have to make this up to you. Please stay, Sunshine. Just…love me too, okay? Please…love me too.”
The rain lashed at us with renewed fury, drowning the silence that followed, until the only thing between us was thunder, lightning, and the undeniable fact that he’d said love. I couldn’t unhear it, no matter how much I wanted to do it.
The storm swallowed us whole in this moment.
We stood across from each other, breaking in two, with the only chance of healing lying in the reason we’d fallen apart.
My chest heaved, my breath burning, and Carrington just stood there, like he could weather anything if it meant being together.
But then his eyes locked on mine, haunted and desperate.
I knew he couldn’t. He was broken, too.
Before I could push him away again, he moved toward me, pleading with those golden eyes. His hand fisted in the front of my hoodie, yanking me forward hard, and then his mouth crashed against mine.
The kiss was brutal, desperate, an apology, and a plea. His lips were fire against the cold rain, as his breath tangled with mine. His whole body pressed into me like he was trying to fuse us together. Pulling away wasn’t an option. My mind screamed to shove him off, but my traitorous body gave in.
For one reckless, ruined minute, I let him kiss me.
I needed it.
I needed him.
I let myself taste the truth in his kiss.
Confession, apology, the aching hunger that had been chewing us alive since the moment we met.
I clung to him with shaking hands, part of me begging to believe in his words, to sink into him and never come up for air. A part of me knew there was nothing left to hold onto, nothing but the darkness seeping in.
Reality came slamming back into me.
I tore away from him, shoving his chest so hard he staggered back and fell onto the hard pavement. My lips burned where his kiss touched, my chest felt like it was breaking, and my rage poured out like the storm above us.
“I hate you.” The words ripped out of me, vicious and trembling. “Do you hear me? I fucking hate you. Stay away from me, Carrington. You wanted the darkness? Now it’s all I have. If you chase me again, I will kill you.”
His face broke, just for a fleeting moment, tears streaming down his cheeks, joining the relentless rain. Straightening, he clenched his jaw, but his eyes stayed wrecked and raw in a way I’d never seen before.
I turned away from him, storming toward my car. My hands shook as I gripped the door handle, yanking it open and sliding behind the wheel before I stopped myself. My chest was a mess of sobs, my throat raw from the words unspoken.
Through the blur of the rain-streaked windshield, I saw him still standing in the rain, in the same spot I left him in.
He was soaked to the bone, fists clenched at his sides, his shoulders squared like he’d take the whole storm if it meant I’d return to him one more time.
But I didn’t.
I shoved the key in the ignition, let the engine roar to life, and with one last glance at his silhouette dissolving into the downpour, I pressed the gas pedal and left.
The tires hissed through the flooded pavement as I sped away, leaving him in the storm—alone, soaked, and drowning in my hatred.
And still, my lips wouldn’t stop burning from the taste of him.
All the broken fucking pain I felt had me drowning too.
Because the truth was…I didn’t hate Carrington.
Fuck me.
I loved him.