Chapter 31
Ileft the deer where it fell.
I should’ve field dressed it, taken the meat, and finished what I started.
That’s what a real hunter would’ve done, what my father had taught me to do.
But my body refused to move the way it should.
My legs carried me back a step, then another, until the rifle slipped from my shoulder and I turned away completely.
The weight in my chest didn’t ease. It just grew heavier, pressing into my ribs and stealing the air from my lungs.
The kill was supposed to give me stillness and silence. But all I felt was restless.
Empty.
Hollow.
I wiped my blood-covered palms against my jeans, but the red stain clung stubbornly. It seeped into the threads of the fabric, refusing to let go.
Just like my memory of the woman that night in the hunt…the one blemish on my conscience that refused to fade.
The girl.
I could still hear her cries in my head, soft, hushed, and pleading in the dark of this very forest. I could feel the scrape of tree bark against my palms as I held her against the pine, her breath hot and fast against my throat.
She’d been alive, desperate, terrified, and warm.
I’d taken every second of her resistance. Molded her to my body, and broke her beyond repair. She may have left that night, but she wasn’t whole.
I swore to myself I’d never come back to that clearing. Never retrace the steps that led me here. But the woods had a way of pulling me where I least wanted to go.
My boots shifted direction before my mind caught up.
The deeper I went, the quieter the forest became. The chatter of squirrels faded. The birds stopped calling. Even the wind seemed to curl back in on itself, becoming heavy and still, like the world didn’t want to touch what lay ahead any more than I did.
Branches whipped at my shoulders, clawing like hands trying to hold me back. The ground was uneven, with roots jutting out like bones breaking through soft skin. I pushed forward anyway, my chest tight, my breath shallow, the forgotten rifle left near the downed deer.
Every step closer felt like I was trespassing, like walking into a graveyard where the dead were listening.
No…I’d kept her alive. She was alive. I didn’t succumb to my darkness.
I shook my head, forcing my thoughts to be filled with Xanthy, as the woods taunted me with what I still had.
Her smile.
Her questions.
Her fading hope, and that stupid fucking wedding she wanted to drag me to, the one that made my stomach twist like a knife digging deeper each time.
I’d thought about it.
Ironically, when I told her I’d think about it, it was to get her off my dick and let me leave, but here I was actually thinking about the damn ceremony.
I imagined her hand in mine, her eyes bright as we stood among flowers, music, and the fake promises spilled by gullible people. My throat closed at the thought. I couldn’t give her that. I couldn’t even give myself the illusion of being good enough for her.
But I could give myself this.
The woods and the silence that held the truth that waited in the place I feared to return to, afraid the memories would drown me when I heard Carrington’s voice louder than ever in my ears.
I finally broke through the thicket. The clearing opened up in front of me, and a crack in the sky lit up the large tree, shining light on my darkness.
Something isn’t right.
I knew that something waited for me.
The air was wrong here. Heavy. As if the trees themselves leaned back, refusing to touch what lay in the center of the clearing by my tree.
My eyes caught a form.
A shape.
A body.
Her body.
I stopped cold, falling to my blood-soaked knees, my breath locking in my chest, my pulse thundering so loud it drowned out the silence and became a buzzing hum.
She was there.
How long had she been left here to rot?
She…had…been…alive.
I had left her alive.
Didn’t I?
But now she wasn’t.
It hadn’t been long, and time had not chewed at her.
Her skin was soft, not sunken, and the bones weren’t pressing against stretched flesh. Her clothes clung in tatters, stained with earth, blood, and weather. But all of that blurred as my eyes drifted to her face.
And what had been carved into it.
Her lips were cut wide, slashed deep into her cheeks. Pulled into a grotesque grin that stretched too far, too wide, and much too cruel. The cuts didn’t stop at her skin. They burrowed into her mouth, the flesh carved back so it would never close completely.
It mirrored my mask, a warped smile. It looked forced and permanent.
A smiley face was gouged into her flesh like a joke. No, it was not a joke. It was a message.
My stomach churned as bile scorched my throat, but nothing came up.
My eyes burned, but I couldn’t look away.
I dry heaved on the ground, my hands soaking in her thick sticky blood, blackened with time, and turned into an oozy sludge.
I remembered her voice, soft and frantic against my fury. Now it was gone, stolen, and replaced with this obscene mask.
Someone had done this knowing I’d come here.
Carrington?
Is he playing tricks on me?
He wanted me here. Wanted me to see my biggest mistake, and shine light on it for all to fucking see.
The carved grin stared back at me, the empty eyes hollowed out, yet still staring into my fucking soul, like the forest was whispering nothing but one name.
My name.
Shiloh.