Chapter 33 #2
It looked fake, like the hunt. Like the pig’s blood we poured on the actors. He didn’t carry any deer or other game with him. His shirt clung to him, darkened in the thick sticky red. He was literally dripping blood onto the ground.
He didn’t look at me right away, just unlatched the gun, setting it against the wall, and stood there with his hands braced on the counter. He was breathing too hard. Like he’d run the whole way back, or maybe like he’d seen something out there that chased him home.
My throat went dry. My questions bounced in my mind, but the pain was louder.
“You’ve been gone all day.” My voice cracked more than I wanted.
He didn’t answer. Just stayed bent over the counter, his head hanging, blond hair dripping, and his back rising and falling.
“Shiloh.”
Finally, he lifted his head, and I wished he hadn’t.
His eyes looked…wrong. Wild and hollow at the same time, like the woods had swallowed him whole and spit out something I barely even recognized. There were no soft edges, no trace of warmth in his stare—just cold, haunted shadows of the man I loved.
“What happened, Baby?”
“Nothing.” The word was sharp and clipped.
I bit my lip, prepared to back down again and give him space, but something snapped in me.
“No. Don’t lie to me.”
That made him look at me. Really look for the first time since he got home without my brother. For a second, I thought he might break down and spill whatever truth was clawing at his insides. But his jaw clenched tighter, and he shook his head, shutting me out.
“Some things are better left buried, Alexandra. Drop it. You don’t want to know,” he muttered.
“Yes, I do,” I shot back, louder than I meant to.
My hands trembled where I gripped the back of the chair, but I didn’t care.
“You think I can’t see it? The way you come back from the woods like you’ve left pieces of yourself behind in there?
The way you won’t let me in despite every desperate attempt I make. ”
His silence was worse than his anger.
I wanted him to yell, to slam his fists, to do anything that proved there was still fire in him. That showed an emotion…but no. Instead, he just stared at me, the kind of stare that felt like it burned straight through me and went beyond my soul.
He was unreachable.
“I don’t know how much longer I can keep pretending this is fine,” I whispered. “That we’re fine.”
For the smallest moment, something flickered in his eyes.
Pain, maybe. Guilt?
And then it was gone, swallowed up by the same emptiness that had walked in with him. The shadows he cast consumed him.
He turned away from me, dragging a hand over his face. “Drop it, Xanthy.”
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. I hated him for shutting me out. “You come back coated in blood every night now and want me just to say ‘Yeah, great job. Sleep well.’ I’m not that person, Shiloh.”
I hated myself more for wanting to follow him into whatever darkness he was hiding just to get a glimpse of the light he once showed me. The warmth I craved to have again.
I stepped closer.
“Shiloh, look at me.” My voice was firmer now, like I was trying to carve through the ice around him. My hands reached for his shoulders, just enough to make contact, and I felt him tense under my fingertips.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull away. He just stood there, rigid as stone. The touch itself was a reminder of the pieces of him he’d left behind somewhere in the woods.
“You’re not okay,” I said softly, almost pleading. “I can feel it. Every hunt you come back from, every time you breathe—you’re not okay.”
“I said drop it,” he mumbled. His words weren’t loud, but they carried weight.
A threat, a warning. Maybe an exhausted plea?
“I can’t drop it,” I whispered, my forehead almost touching his chest now, trying to pry off the sticky, bloody clothing and lead him toward the bathroom, like he did for me a year ago.
“I can’t just pretend you’re fine when I know you’re not.
And I can’t pretend like I don’t see it every time you walk in from the woods looking like…
” I swallowed hard, trying to find the words as he followed me to the bathroom.
“Like you’re carrying something dead on your shoulders. ”
The words hit harder than I expected, and when I helped him in the shower, I saw it—the soft flicker in his eyes. I saw him crack. The wild, dark gaze flashed with something fragile.
His guilt. All the grief. His rage and so much pain.
My empathic heart felt it all. Every emotion tore through me like fire, like it was my own.
“I—” he started, then stopped. Head dropping, shoulders slumping, as if the weight of whatever he was holding had doubled and he couldn’t carry it anymore.
“No,” I told him, turning on the warm spray of the water and getting into the shower with him.
“You don’t have to talk about it. So, just give me silence, and let me care for you if you can’t give me the truth I want to hear.”
Shiloh opened his mouth and closed it again and again.
“I’m…sorry,” he said finally, and his mouth closed again.
I tried to keep from sighing, happy that at least he wasn’t intent on lying again. He finally let me strip the bloody clothes off him, let me scrub the grime, dirt, and decay from his skin.
He watched me, admired my naked body, but didn’t touch me, just let me do what I needed to. It was almost like how I’d cared for my idiot brother. I loved him. But that love was something I just didn’t understand anymore.
When I finished sudsing him down, I felt a spark of bravery and went with it.
I forced the words out. “The wedding, don’t push me away from that, too. I need you there. I need you with me. Don’t make me stand there without you. You owe me that, Shiloh Anderson.”
The silence that followed was suffocating. He didn’t respond, not with words. His dick bobbed and pressed into my chest. He didn’t even shift. His breathing was uneven and shallow, like he was in pain.
“Shiloh, please.” I gripped his arms tighter. “I can’t do this alone. Not if you’re not in it with me. Are we still a team?”
He finally lifted his head to me, his stormy eyes meeting mine, and for a heartbeat, the walls he built around himself seemed thinner, fading away with the soap and the water. I thought I saw him tremble and sigh.
But then he stepped back, and the fragility dissipated like the steam.
“Xanthy,” he said, his voice low, almost breaking. “You don’t want to know what my demons are. They will haunt you. They will kill you. I don’t want to hurt you. That’s all I know. I don’t want to hurt you.”
I swallowed the fear that pressed against my throat. “I know you’d never hurt me, Shiloh. I want to be with you through the demons, even if it’s dark. I want to fight it with you.”
He didn’t answer. He just stared, his big chest still heaving, his fists curling and unclenching. My heart pounded as I realized how far he had gone into the woods, literally and figuratively, and how little of him had returned with him.
Sighing, I tried one last thing, softening my voice, whispering against the tension in the room. “Whatever it is, you don’t have to face it alone. I’m here. I’m not leaving. Let me make you feel warm, the only way I know how to.”
He exhaled sharply. The sound was ragged and so broken. For a second, I thought he might crumble in my arms, let everything spill out.
But he didn’t.
So I touched him.
I reached out and gripped his dick, touching him the way I knew he needed. His body was so hard, he hissed at my touch, biting me a little too hard, and pushing me to the tiled wall.
I stayed where I was, my hands trembling, knowing that the man in front of me, the one I loved, was both here and not here, trapped somewhere between the forest and the horrors in his mind. He was using me like I was using him. He wanted my pleasure, and I wanted to take away his pain.
Would this be our life forever? A complacent need to balance the other, but never truly feeling fulfilled, and always compromising.
The wedding loomed. Our future did too. I realized with a chill curling through me that the storm inside Shiloh wasn’t just about me and our life. It seemed to linger, a much bigger, darker challenge we were meant to face.
As I sucked his cock into my mouth and took every single brutal thrust he had to give, I couldn’t help but realize that no matter how close I tried to get to him, no matter how much sex or love I poured into his soul…I might never reach him again.
Never feel his warmth.
But I would try.
Always, I would try.
It’s all I could do.