The Shadows in the Hills: Triple Threat

Chapter Ten

I couldn't stay in there when I could see how much distress she was in. She hated me so much that even seeing me was too much. I stood out there in the rain, as though everything going on inside was nothing to do with me. The baby or babies were already more Jackson's than mine and the idea killed me. He would be welcomed into that room while I stayed outside in the cold. I never could have imagined the gravity of the consequences of my mistakes.

For a while, I had thought Jackson wanted her as his own and although I had been wrong, it had turned out that way, anyway. Jackson was her partner in everything and had been there for her and the baby. I was nothing, and he was everything. I felt like my heart was literally tearing in two. Between my pain and hers, I could barely stand it. Everything was coursing through me and it was too much to handle. The pain, the rage, the longing for Jackson. I could hear her crying out his name in her mind over and over again, and it was killing me.

It was even worse knowing that I only had myself to blame for it all. She was going through so much and I was throwing myself a pity party. I had convinced myself that I changed the day she left, but maybe that wasn't true at all. Out of nowhere, I spotted the two wolf forms darting towards me, but there was no sign of Marcus at all. Tyler must have made the decision that getting Jackson back was more important than keeping Marcus under his control.

I was standing in front of the door and I should have moved, but I didn't. "Why Jackson? Why wouldn't you speak to me?"

"What difference would that have made? She was leaving no matter what I said. I had to make a choice, and I made the right one. If you had made the right choice, then we would never have gotten to this point."

"Do you honestly believe there is anything going on between me and Cassie?"

"It doesn't matter what I believe. It matters what Esme believes, and she doesn't trust you at all anymore. That day she left, you never could have convinced her that it wasn't true. She didn't even trust her own judgement. She had been so certain about you and then proved wrong time and again. I had no real choice in any of this, other than whether to leave her to do all of this alone or not."

"Thank you." He gave me a funny look. A confused one. "For looking after her. She should have been with me at the camp, but the fact that she isn't is on me, not you. I need you to know before you go in there that everything she thinks she saw wasn't true. Cassie's gone. I threw the lot of them out of the camp."

"I honestly don't care one way or the other, Brodie. Just move. I need to check on her." I stepped aside. It was odd. I had been taught not to show my emotions, but at that moment, I wanted to sit on the ground and cry. Just like I had when my father had left me bleeding in the woods. It wasn't the first time I had cried for a woman who had been lost to me. Last time it was my mother. I didn't even know how long I had been outside, but I heard the cries almost the second Jackson entered.

It took everything in me not to burst through the door. I heard her telling Jackson that the baby looked like me, as though she was disappointed. "Tyler, stay here. I need to head out for a while."

"Where?"

"Nowhere." Which was exactly where I belonged. I didn't go too far. I wanted to be able to check in on her and make sure she was OK, but at the same time, I needed some distance from everything she was feeling. The love she felt for Jackson seemed to radiate from that little house. It made me sick. Staying human, I just ran. Following the edge of a nearby field. It was the only thing that ever brought me some peace.

When I felt the pain in her increasing again, I stopped and tried to concentrate. Hunching over and grabbing my knees. Trying to get my breath back. It was much faster than the first and seemed less intense. Although that could have been because of the distance I put between me and her. Focusing on listening to her words, "Jackson, we've got a girl. She's so tiny." It was enough to tip me over the edge. Esme had pulled my legs out from under me and left me lying on the cut wheat. The stabbing of it in my back actually seemed to make me feel better.

I felt like I needed to cry, to let out the tension of everything I had lost, but there was nothing. For so many years, it had been drilled into me that I couldn't show any weakness at all and I wasn't capable of doing it anymore. My dad tried to make me the stronger man, but he was so wrong. He had destroyed every bit of strength in me and left Jackson being the strong one. Dad had needed me to be strong to keep the power, but I had no power at all. If he could see me laid there, he would have been ashamed of me and that just added to the pain of everything. That young boy praying for his mother had never really gone anywhere. He was laid in that field with me.