Page 101 of His Trick

“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’tgoing 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 silencethat 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.