Page 88 of His Trick

“I fucking hate you, Carrington Harding. I will fucking kill you for what you did. You made me feel safe. Made me fucking love you. I’ll never forgive you for this. You will fucking die.“

Love.

I do love you.

The realization was sickening and damning. But it physically hurt seeing him rip away from me. I couldn’t move. Just sat there watching Shiloh get up and leave me.

The cold around me grew with each step. I saw him darken, saw the light leave him and swirl into the darkness.

My sunshine was…fading.

The metal doors slammed shut behind me, their echo chasing me out into the night like a finality that I couldn’t stomach. My pulse thundered in my ears, drowning out the clamor of the prison yard. Rain hammered down like the sky was fucking punishing me too, it’s cold needles stabbing every inch of my exposed skin.

I didn’t stop moving. I couldn’t. My shoes splashed through the puddles as I tore down the cracked pavement outside the gates, my breath burning in my throat as much as my heart. Rage and grief braided themselves tight in my chest until I thought it might split me apart.

Carrington…he was here.

“Shiloh!”

His voice cut through the raging storm, ragged and flayed raw.

I didn’t turn around. My jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth would fucking crack. He had no right to call my name. No right to drag me back into his orbit when the truth had gutted me and caused me to bleed out in this fucking world.

“Stop,” he shouted, closer now. “Please.”

I spun around on him, rain dripping down my face with the tears I couldn’t hold back. “Don’t you fucking tell me what to do. Fuck you, Carrington. Leave me the hell alone.” My voice tore out of me, loud enough to rip through the storm.

Carrington stood a few yards away, his chest heaving. The rain had drenched him from head to toe, and it made him look like something savage and undone. His eyes, even from here, God, those fucking eyes were the same ones that had pulled me in all those times before. The same eyes I used to think saw me. Now they only looked like betrayal and pain.

“You knew,” I spat, my voice breaking. “You knew all this time, and you stood there like it was nothing.”

He flinched like I’d hit him. I fucking wanted to break his skull against the pavement. “I didn’t know it was her.” His voice cracked. “I swear to you, Shiloh, I didn’t know it was your mom. I was a kid. I followed my father’s orders, I didn’t…I never would have touched her if I knew?—”

“Don’t.” I cut him off, my throat closing around the word. “Don’t you fucking dare make excuses. You can’t rewrite what you did. Can’t take back all the lives you stole. How many people did you fucking murder because your fucking dad demanded it?”

His fists balled at his sides, not in anger, but like he was holding himself together by threads that were no longer there.

“I live with their ghosts every day. You think I don’t? You think it doesn’t rip me apart that now every time I look at you, I know the blood on my hands is the same blood in your veins?I see every face I…I can’t help the darkness inside me, Shiloh. It’s them or me. I will be swallowed whole if I don’t let it out somehow. My dad used me. He told me they were bad. He built me into the perfect monster. I didn’t know better. Now I control it. Now I choose who to…”

The rain blurred my vision, but I didn’t move. Couldn’t.

Carrington took a step closer, his voice dropping, rough and jagged, like a glass dragged across the stone walls. “I tried to stay away from you, okay? I need the darkness. I was drawn to your light and needed to feel it. I told myself I didn’t deserve you. But I can’t do it anymore, Shiloh. I can’t keep pretending that I…that I don’t fucking love you. I don’t know how. Or why, but I know I do. I love you, Sunshine. With every broken fucking part of me.”

The words landed like lightning, searing through the storm and right into my heart.

I froze. My lungs forgot how to fucking work, and my chest locked.

Love.

He said love like it was an open wound, like it cost him everything to bleed it out loud. Maybe it did. But I wanted to watch him bleed.

My mouth opened, but no words came out. Only the pounding rain, the furious beat of my heart, and my fucking pain seeped into every crack.

“I love you, Shiloh.” His voice broke on my name. “And I’ll carry the weight of what I’ve done until it kills me, but don’t you dare walk away thinking I don’t feel this too—don’t you dare believe I don’t love you with everything I have to give. I know that’s not worth shit, but I do. I can’t help it. You are my everything.”

Something inside me cracked wide open, the kind of pain that felt too real, actually to exist. I wanted to hit him, to fucking kill him, to kiss him, or to run until I disappeared and nothingwas left. Every cell in me screamed to get away from him, and every pulse begged me to collapse into him, never letting go.

My hands trembled at my sides.