Page 137 of His Trick

“Sunshine…what…what did you do?”

I didn’t want to hear the words. I didn’t want to hear the reason why he came to me tonight. It wasn’t to tell me this wasokay. To tell me I needed to behave and stop leaving dead bodies in the woods. This was darker. His light was…gone.

“I chose her, Carrington. I had to choose your sister. There’s no future with us. I’m getting married to Xanthy. We ca-can’t be together. We will only drown each other.”

My entire life, I had held onto a sliver of humanity, a small light in the dark that allowed me to control my actions, my movements. But with his confession…

I didn’t feel warmth. I didn’t feel light or love.

I felt nothing.

I was completely numb.

“Ichose Xanthy.”

Time froze.

A fire roared inside me and then froze simultaneously. Every nerve, every vein, every muscle coiled, twisting desire with grief, dulling the lust with heartbreak. Every beat of my heart felt like breathing broken glass.

“You…chose her?” I rasped, my voice breaking no matter how I tried to steady it.

“Yes,” he admitted, those damn tears rivaling my own. His blue eyes met mine, and they seemed to fade. “She’s my light, Carrington…my safe place…I can’t let that go. I can’t…I can’t give her up for your darkness.”

He scooted away from me, his back against the wall. Every inch of me wanted to pull him back, to claim him as fucking mine, and to make him surrender, or make him forget her.

Every fiber of my being burned with obsession and longing, but the ache of heartbreak made it impossible to hold him anymore.

I let him step away.

I lingered over the heat we’d created, over the friction, over every tremor of his body when it had been pressed against mine.

I let him go. My hands reached out and then fell reluctantly. I stayed where he left me, my body numb, yet somehow my muscles ached. I pressed my fingertips into the floorboards, trying to ground myself to the earth I felt like I was floating away from. My breathing was fractured, while I let the fire simmer, knowing it would never fully die, just like the love he didn’t want.

He didn’t want me.

He didn’t choose me.

He chose her.

Not me.

No one will ever choose me.

I am nothing.

Just darkness that will drown me in the end.

He stumbled back slightly, his chest heaving, his eyes dark with want, and his body still trembling. Desire clung to him, his skin still warm with our heat, but his heart had chosen another. I stayed in the shadows, burning and fucking aching. The obsession roared, I wanted him more for the denial, for the fire I couldn’t fully claim.

Even after he turned to leave, the tension lingered. I got to my feet and followed silently, always the unwanted predator in the shadows. I didn’t hunt him or seize what wasn’t mine anymore.

I simply savored him.

I had to feel his memory, to remind myself that part of him had always belonged to me.

“Shiloh,” I murmured, my tears flowing faster, my voice a ragged, rough echo through the haunted halls. “You can leave me…but you can’t escape me.”

He hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. He opened his mouth, then shut it, his body moving faster.