Chapter 30
“Ineed space.”
The lie rolled off my tongue easily, smoother than it should have. The look in Xanthy’s eyes when I said it nearly made me choke on my guilt. She’d asked me again this morning, like she’d been rehearsing it all night in her head, if I’d go with her to that stupid fucking wedding.
“Be my plus one,” she said again, like it was something sweet. Something simple and easy that didn’t make me want to blow out my brains.
But nothing about me was simple now, and nothing about a fucking wedding was sweet.
I grabbed her father’s rifle and slung it over my shoulder. Carrington’s plastic knife was tucked away in my pocket. I wasn’t going to think about why I needed a fake gimmick weapon on a real hunt.
“I need the quiet to think about it. Give me that, and maybe I’ll go.”
She didn’t argue, though the corners of her mouth dipped like she wanted to. She always wanted to bitch about something lately, but she was too kind for her own good.
I couldn’t stand it.
I needed the fucking woods. Needed the silence, the blood, and the illusion of control.
I needed the peace of the early morning hours to let my mind remember the memories with him.
Carrington.
It had been over a week, and he still hadn’t come back to the mansion. He stopped sending texts to Xanthy, the ones I secretly mulled over when she wasn’t looking. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. I didn’t know why I fucking cared.
The mansion faded behind me the deeper I got into the trails behind the stupid maze set up. I was swallowed by trees that seemed to lean in closer than before, branches knitting overhead to block out the morning sky.
The air out here smelled like damp earth and pine resin from the old bark. It was like rain was still holding on to every leaf, too stubborn to let go and drop to the ground.
It was thick enough to taste, a sort of metallic cold and wintry green veil that reminded me that the world didn’t give a fuck about me, the mess I’d made of myself, or my life.
Every one of my steps sank into the spongy forest floor, leaves decomposing under my boots as I trudged forward.
The forest was alive with nature’s chatter—crows calling, hollow in the distance, squirrels chittering to one another, branches creaking as though the trees themselves were whispering secrets of my sins here.
Beneath it all, I felt the hush, the kind of silence that pressed into my chest until my heartbeat felt too loud in my ears.
I wasn’t chasing deer like I had told Xanthy, not at first.
I was chasing the damn quiet, which I couldn’t even get here. The echo of the past was the loudest sound around me.
I told myself the hunt would steady me, the way it always had. The kill was all I needed to resurface good as new and cleansed of the lingering darkness.
I needed to focus on the tracks in the snowy ground, on the scatter of broken twigs around, and on the faint depressions where hooves had pressed into mud, the dusting of snow not thick enough to hold its weight.
I was desperate to lose myself in the chase until the knot in my chest unraveled. Until I could breathe without hearing his voice.
Or lately…hers too.
Xanthy.
Her laugh wouldn’t let me alone. It followed me between the trees, soft, lilting, and sticky like tree sap. The words she’d said this morning, right as we woke up, kept circling back.
“You’re distant lately. What’s wrong, Baby? You still haven’t told me what happened with your dad. Did you not get your closure?”
What was I supposed to tell her?
That every time she touched me, I felt like a thief stealing something I had no right to touch?
That standing next to her in a room full of vows, flowers, and champagne would feel like shackles clamping down on my wrists, knowing she wanted the same fucking thing from me? How can I tell a woman I have been with for a year that I can’t marry her, and not only because I can’t love her…
But because I fucking loved her goddamn brother.
Weddings weren’t celebrations to me. They were as suffocating as a cage. All the niceties and fake bullshit filled a room with hot air in a second—prisons dressed up in pretty colors.
I wasn’t built for forever.
Hell, I wasn’t built for knowing if I’d make it another day. For all I knew, my life was set in stone to be in a cage next to my father.
Or maybe in the ground with my mother.
The more I thought about it, the harder I walked forward, like I could trample the thoughts into the ground beneath my boots and run away from the weight they carried.
My fingers brushed the rifle. The familiar weight was slung across my shoulder, and I breathed in a shaky breath.
The chilly air didn’t help and only burned as it sliced through my lungs.
Focus, Anderson. Get a fucking kill and tell the bitch you’ll go to the stupid fucking wedding. Do it. Or use the gun on your own damn heart.
I crouched low to the ground, scanning the area.
Fresh prints, maybe an hour old.
A buck, based on the deep grooves. The tracks cut east, toward the thicker brush.
I followed, moving more slowly, steadying my breathing, and becoming one with the forest. Every one of my senses stretched tighter as the smell of damp bark thickened in my nose, and the faint rustle ahead alerted me.
I saw him.
Through a lattice of branches, a flash of movement caught my attention, and I zeroed in on the young buck. His antlers were sharp but not yet full. A soft dusting of snow coated his tawny hide, catching what little light filtered through the canopy of trees from the morning.
My pulse surged, and the forest seemed to narrow. Every sound faded but his breathing. Even the softer sounds like the twitch of his ears, or the lift of his head as he sniffed the air, were all I could hear.
I lifted the rifle slowly. The butt pressed into my shoulder like it belonged there, and I aligned the sight with the rhythm of my breath. I tracked him briefly, the world slowly shrinking to the space between the crosshairs.
For a moment, I froze.
His eyes, dark, wide, and unblinking, locked on me.
I saw myself reflected there…always on edge, waiting for the wrong sound to pull me under, the wrong move to turn the blade on myself, and the wrong hand on my shoulder to end everything in the blink of an eye.
I almost lowered the gun. The look on my face, glittering in his eyes, was too haunting to push through.
But then I thought of the wedding. Of her hand reaching for mine when I wanted to pull away. Of the lie stuck in my throat every time I said I was fine…and of him. The pain he caused with his fucking presence and even more with his absence.
I squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
The crack of the sound split the air, loud and final. Birds erupted from the surrounding trees, wings thrumming in panic as they retreated from my line of sight. The buck jolted, his legs folding beneath him, as he dropped hard to the ground with a pained cry.
For a second, I just stood there, watching the smoke curl from the barrel, and feeling the echo of the shot reverberating in my chest. The knife burned in my pocket, and I took it out, flipping it over and over in my hand.
Why does Care Bear have this silly thing with him all the time?
Upon closer inspection, I saw a groove lift from the plastic corner, and I picked it with my nail. The cover moved, and I unsheathed a true weapon underneath.
Of course. You are always hiding.
I approached the buck slowly, each step as muffled as the last, as if the sound of the gun jarred the forest. The buck’s chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths as I came closer.
The pitiful sounds it made normally would quell the beast in my mind, but even its struggles did nothing to dull the burn.
Not bothering to draw it out, I kneeled and used Carrington’s serrated knife on the animal’s throat. The thick pool of warm blood spilled onto my hands and thighs like a river, and its once bright eyes were glass now, staring past me into nothingness.
I pressed my palm against his flank, desperate to feel any form of relief from the evading darkness that still lingered.
I was coated, every part of my skin was painted in the red of the beast—still nothing.
Just the numbness I came here with. I held my hand there, needing to feel the last echo of life drain from him, but still never feeling even a stir of emotion.
It should have stilled me. It should have smoothed the jagged edges inside.
But all it did was remind me how easy it was to end something.
And how much harder it was to live with it after.