“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.
The rain came down like the sky had split open, drumming against the tops of the trees, and soaking through fucking everything, to the point where the earth itself was turning to mud beneath my boots.
The storm should have drowned out every sound, but I heard him anyway.
Shiloh never could move quietly, not when he was pissed off and stumbling around with a bottle of whiskey in his grip.
He’d filled his gut with so much fucking alcohol that he could barely string a thought together, much less hunt an animal. The thing he was stabbing now was a rock. And the idiot yelled at the thing like it was some fox ready to bolt from his might.
Oh, Sunshine. What the fuck am I going to do with you?
I’d followed him out here because I couldn’t fucking stay away. I told myself it was to watch him fade, watch his guilt eat him alive, and to revel in the pain he’d caused me as it reflected back onto him.
But the truth was, I couldn’t watch him suffer anymore.
I had my fun.
The news was filled with Carmen’s death, and Shiloh flinched every time Xanthy cried for her friend. His guilt was killing him, but not faster than the fucking alcohol he drank like a sippy cup.
He couldn’t breathe without me knowing. And tonight, Christ, tonight he was a fucking mess. He opted for a bow, probably because the shot of a rifle made him recoil. And now it hung loose in his hand. The strings looked like dew-covered spider webs from the rain.
His beautiful blond hair was disheveled and plastered against his face. He walked like a man dragging chains behind his ass, and I could smell the liquor on him even from yards away.
He was hunting as he did every day, albeit mostly to avoid my nagging, self-centered sister. But it wasn’t the deer he wanted to kill, or the rabbits, or the foxes. The look in his tired blue eyes told the truth. He came here to kill one animal.
Himself.
Don’t even fucking think about it, Sunshine.
