Page 20

Castle liked to wander around the house at night, and I’d purposely made sure he’d gone to bed and waited for an hour before I left, but I never thought he would follow me out of the house.
That only meant he’d been carefully tracing my steps until now.
“Millie…” He said in a soft voice.
I trudged back to where he was standing.
Castle was huge compared to my size. He could flick my forehead playfully, and I’d likely go rolling into the lake.
I reached out and took his large hands into mine.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered, and it completely broke me listening to him plead.
He knew I was leaving for good and he’d followed.
“Please, Millie…” his hands wrapped around my waist and he tugged me against him.
I pulled away to look at him, and in the moonlight, his eyes looked dark. “Castle, I can’t stay here, sweetie, I need to go or someone will…” I swallowed, but I willed the words to come out. “Or someone will kill me too, just like they did Barbara. You’ll find another caregiver.”
“You,” He said accusingly, shaking his head vigorously. “I want you.”
The intensity in his eyes and the deepness in his voice would have suggested something else entirely.
I felt this alien feeling brewing inside me as I heard him begging me to stay.
Nobody had needed me before.
I felt guilty doing this; running away without letting him know when I knew that as the days had passed, Castle had become attached to me and I don’t mean that in any romantic way, he enjoyed being where I was, and he would follow me around the house and I didn’t care as long as he wasn’t harming me in any way. He would watch me shyly throughout meals, let me read books to him, go on walks together, and that told me he enjoyed my company immensely as a friend, someone who could understand him more than anyone else in his family could so the thought of leaving him was hard, but it was that or get killed.
I cupped his jaw and felt his grip tightening around my waist as his fingers dug into the fabric of my top, clinging to me desperately. “I’ll get help from outside and I’ll tell someone about you, but I can’t stay here in the house.”
“I…” He started to say, but the words were stuck in his throat like he couldn’t remember what he wanted to say. “I…”
“You what, sweetie?”
“I’ll go with you.” He said finally.
I shook my head. “This is your family and your home. You can’t come with me.”
“No!” He screamed, and I jumped back a little. “I’ll go with you!”
Think Millie, think.
How could I possibly take him with me? If Castle tagged along, Devin would call the cops and there would be a manhunt to find me. Knowing how smart Devin was, he might tell the authorities that I’d kidnapped his brother. Either way, the man could twist the story in a way that he saw fit.
Castle couldn’t come with me. End of story.
That also meant I couldn’t leave today.
“Let’s head back to the house,” I suggested, and when he didn’t move from the spot, I added. “I won’t go anywhere.”
He seemed content hearing that.
I picked up my duffel bag and headed back towards the forest. Castle walked close behind me. I guess he didn’t trust me not to flee with him, so he kept his gaze trailed on me.
The dark sky was being blanketed with gray clouds and, as they churned closer, the sound of thunder resonated within the forest. It was a sign of the impending rainstorm.
I picked up speed and jogged ahead through the muddy trail that my shoe prints had left behind, so it was easier for me to know where I was going.