Chapter 27
The rain didn’t let up the whole way out of Kentucky. It was like miles upon miles of pouring rain were determined to drown me.
I drove with the window cracked, even though it let in sheets of water, soaking my arm and the side of my face.
I needed the cold to sting. I needed the air to burn in my lungs. I needed the cold air that felt like needles. Something sharp enough to remind me I was alive, not just drifting in the aftermath of Carrington’s words and the reality of my past.
I love you, Shiloh.
It looped in my head like a fucking curse. No matter how hard I gripped the wheel, no matter how loud I cranked the static-smeared radio, I couldn’t shake those damning words that felt so much like a brand. The words that stuck to me like oil, as sure as the fucking rain’s unrelenting raindrops.
My mother’s face swirled in my memories. Her soft smile, easy laugh, and vibrant beauty. She was whole. Then her body flashed. Gone, her absence now a hollow hole that carved through every year of my life from the second I was told she was dead. And now I knew why.
Or at least who. Carrington.
The same man who had pulled me back from my own destruction, who’d touched me in ways no one else dared.
The same man whose lips I’d let devour mine in the rain, knowing he fucking killed my mother.
The same man I swore I hated as I drove away, knowing I fucking loved him with every part of my fucked up heart.
I slammed my fist against the steering wheel again and again, demanding the images fade. The horn blared into the empty stretch of the highway, and my stupid car kept veering off onto the shoulder. My throat felt scorched and tense, desperate for air.
“Fuck you,” I screamed into the dark car, but the words didn’t stick.
They melted into the storm, into the steady hum of tires on the wet asphalt, as the vehicle practically glided over the puddles. No one else was dumb enough to be on the highway, on a fucking interstate, going a hundred miles an hour.
“Fuck.”
My car hit a patch of icy water and skidded. Throwing my hands up, I waited to fucking die, looked out my window while the trees spun around me like a tilt-a-whirl I couldn’t get off of. I didn’t see any bright light from heaven or hell. I only saw my stupid ass reflection in the mirror.
And then it was quiet.
Just rain, hard, heavy-hitting thunder, and lightning that lit the sky. I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t flipped or even crashed. The car had slid around to face the opposite direction on the highway, and I was sitting there, pointed toward the bridge that led nowhere.
Should I just drive off?
The thought made me feel weak…stupid, even. Before some fucking car slammed into me and caused their death thanks to my own stupidity, I got my ass back onto the road the right way and kept driving.
I thought of Xanthy. The perfect woman. Her soft voice, gentle hands, and the way she looked at me like I wasn’t just a product of the violence and scars of my past. She was easy, so fucking mind-numbly simple.
She didn’t come with a history tied to blood and loss.
She was a little debutant princess, one who expected a prince to nut-up and make her a queen.
She was safe.
I hated that I needed her right now, needed her words and her body. She was like comfortable pajamas you had worn so long you really didn’t want to get rid of them.
The hours on the road bled into one another. Mile markers passed like ghosts. My eyelids burned, but I couldn’t stop, not tonight…not when I needed distance from fucking Carrington.
I wasn’t about to stop at a hotel and remember the way his body tasted in the shower. I wasn’t stopping until I got back to her, to Xanthy. The woman I should be giving my fucking soul to.
I didn’t slow down once. My reckless driving should have gotten me ticketed, jailed, or killed, but then I saw it.
“Welcome to Normal.”
The sign flickered in my headlights, blurred by the rain, and lit up by the lightning cracking overhead.
This fucking place was anything but normal.
By the time I pulled into her parents’ massive driveway, my whole body was shaking. Not from exhaustion, which was also there, but from holding back the weight of everything I couldn’t say to that black-haired, golden-eyed heathen.
The porch light was on.
She must be waiting.
I had ignored the eighteen thousand texts she sent while I was away this weekend. And I didn’t even think to let her know I was heading back. Xanthy always looked ahead. Always planned for my return. I couldn’t tell her I nearly died on the road like an idiot.
Xanthy opened the door faster than I was able to shove a key through the lock, despite the fact that it was two in the morning. Her expression softened the moment she saw me, drenched and fucking ruined.
“Shiloh,” she breathed, reaching for me. “What happened? Baby, I have been texting and calling for days. Why didn’t you answer? Where’s my brother?”
So many questions I didn’t want to answer. Instead, I leaned forward, dropping my small bag and the weight it carried.
I kissed her before she could ask more, my hands locking on her waist, dragging her into me like she was my only means of oxygen. She gasped against my mouth but didn’t pull away. She never did.
I knew Xanthy’s body. Knew every curve and divet. I knew her neck turned her on the most, and how she hated everyone’s feet. I knew she adored old-fashioned movies, and the first time we fucked was to Pillow Talk at a drive-in date I arranged just for her.
I knew everything about this woman, except how to love her.
When I broke the kiss, I pressed my forehead against hers.
“Don’t ask. Please, Alexandra, just…don’t,” I rasped, the desperation dripping from me like the rain from my clothes.
Her manicured brows pulled together, concern like a second skin, clinging to her like my clothes.
“You’re scaring me, Shiloh.”
“I just need you, okay? I missed you. I love you. Be with me, Baby Girl,” I said, too harsh, too absolutely broken.
She hesitated and searched my face. “Need me…how? I love you too, Baby. Please let’s talk. I know you went to see your dad. I…tracked your phone. Can we talk, please?”
She was so much like Carrington it fucking hurt. But maybe that was what I needed. A piece of him I could drown in.
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I pushed her inside the house, shutting the door with my heel. The storm stayed outside, but it still roared within me.
“Shiloh—”
“Please.” My voice cracked, just once. “I fucking need you, Alexandra Harding. Don’t deny me.”
Her shoulders softened with her name, and then she sighed, looking at the broken man in front of her.
“Please, my love. Be with me.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay. Whatever you need. But we will talk about this again, Shiloh Anderson.”
She would have to kill me first.
I led her to the couch in the foyer, my hands already rough on her skin, tugging at her soft booty pajama shorts and crop top. She didn’t resist me, but her sorrow-filled eyes stayed locked on mine, still searching, like she knew there was more under the surface.
I couldn’t bear to look at her fucking eyes. The gold around the brown was a painful reminder of him. I flipped her, and when I bent her over the couch arm.
“Talk to me. Please. I’m here, Shiloh,” she whispered.
“Let my body do the fucking talking.”
I thrust into her hard, no warm-up, my teeth clenched, and my nails dug into her thick, delicious hips. She gasped at first from the shock and then moaned. Her body fell into the easy, familiar rhythm, but still she kept pressing, her words breaking between breaths and pants.
“This isn’t you. Not like this. What’s—mmm fuck—what’s going on—you can’t just ignore your pain by fucking me—”
Yes, I can.
“Nothing,” I ground out, the lie choking me. As I choked my dick in her tight cunt.
“Shiloh, stop lying to yourself and me.” Her voice shook with my speed as I fucked her harder, trying to stop her ability to use words.
“I can’t,” I snapped, my hips continuing to slam into hers.
“Can’t…or won’t?”
I didn’t answer, and finally her orgasm took hold. She couldn’t form any words other than my name. I buried my face against her shoulder blade, fucking her harder, desperate to drown myself in her pleasure.
My tears came hot and fast, the unexpected bitch slap I didn’t need. They were soaking into her dirty blonde hair, where she couldn’t see.
“Shiloh…” she whispered again, breathless after she came, but softer this time, not demanding and not angry…Just there.
I hated her for that. Hated her for letting me break on her body, for being the shield I needed when all I wanted was a storm she couldn’t provide.
“Fucking take me, and shut the fuck up. If you want this dick, don’t say another fucking word.”
She quieted, and I found release in the silence.
“Oh fuck. That’s right…just like that. Such a good, obedient girl—feel my fucking come, you dirty slut.”
When I came, it wasn’t a release. It was a complete and total collapse. A sound tore out of me, a sob mixed with a groan, as I pressed my forehead to her back, shaking, so she wouldn’t hear the fucking name uttered that wasn’t hers.
God damn him.
She reached back, her fingers brushing my damp hair. “You don’t have to tell me tonight,” she murmured. “But don’t shut me out forever. Please, Baby. Let me be here for you.”
I swallowed hard, biting back the scream clawing up my throat.
“I can’t,” I whispered, cleaning up the come leaking out of her with my sopping wet shirt. It reminded me of the prison.
The blood and the come. And him.
“Not tonight. Please. I just need sleep.”
She didn’t push again. She just stayed there on the couch, lying back on the leather, letting me cling to her like a lifeline as my tears mixed with the rain still dripping from my hair as she stroked the wet strands.
Even with her warmth surrounding me, her body cradling me like I needed, I felt the pain he had caused still lingering. I couldn’t stop thinking of Carrington. His wicked mouth, his deep voice, and…his fucking love.
No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many times I begged Xanthy for more. Her mouth couldn’t stop the noise in my head, and I couldn’t fuck him out of my mind and memories. I couldn’t stop hearing his moans. I couldn’t stop feeling the pain he caused me. And…
I couldn’t stop loving him.