Page 34 of Hounded (Fire & Brimstone)

34

Loren

Three months earlier…

Indy knew he was pretty. Not handsome. Pretty. He preferred it that way. He thought I was pretty, too, and every time he said so, my cheeks warmed.

But he was beautiful tonight. His hair was lavender and long enough that the ends brushed the nape of his neck. He sat at his desk with a pencil tucked between his full, pink lips. The collar of his cropped sweatshirt had slid off one shoulder, and I couldn’t stop staring at the curve of his neck and the freckles like a connect-the-dots game I wanted to play.

He paused and turned with one brow quirked. I reclined on the couch, cutting my gaze toward the window so I could pretend I’d been admiring the sunset. It was lovely, too. Beams of gold burst through the silhouettes of trees, and the sky was tie-dyed orange, pink, purple, and blue. But then there was Indy with a spiral curl falling across his face. He plucked the pencil from his mouth and grinned .

I didn’t often speak first because Indy always had more to say, but this time I asked, “What is it, Doll?”

Rising from his stool, he crossed to the sofa and clambered onto it. His knees tucked on either side of mine as he cupped my cheek, and I laid my head in his hand.

“You look like a picture,” he said, echoing my thoughts about him. “Maybe I should make you into one. What do you think?”

“This is you.” Indy tipped back the canvas and marveled at it. After a brief inspection, he flipped to the next one. “And this…” His brow furrowed as he glanced over at me. “I painted you?”

I shrugged, and he returned to the pile, filtering through one after the other as a deep blush colored his face.

“I painted you a lot,” he murmured.

It had taken some convincing to get him out of the Airstream and into my truck for an impromptu drive across town. He held both our cellphones the entire ride, glancing occasionally at mine and then gazing out the window with a forlorn look.

We arrived at a climate-controlled storage facility. Decades of life had allowed Indy to become prolific in his artistic endeavors. He’d tried oil paints, charcoal, chalk pastels and, most recently, watercolor. A few went to Sully’s gallery to be sold; others would never leave this room. They were too personal for public display .

As Indy scanned the next canvas, he muttered to himself, “All this time I thought you were the stalker.”

I snorted. “I’m not a stalker.”

His tenuous grin eased a bit of the tension that had bound me up since we left Trailer Trove. “You kinda are,” he said. “But it’s okay. Makes me feel like I’m famous or something.”

There was no furniture in the unit, so I moved to the side wall and sat on the floor with one leg pulled up and my arms hugged around it. Tugging my sleeve cuff down over my palm, I rubbed my fingers across the material, worrying a spot that was slowly but surely going threadbare.

Indy continued his search and study in silence. There was more to tell him—so much I hadn’t said—but I would let him arrive at that conclusion on his own.

I didn’t have to wait long.

“How did I die?” Indy’s forehead scrunched with uncertainty. Or disbelief. It was a lot to take in.

I leaned forward to rest my chin on my knee. “I think you were sad.”

“You can’t die from sadness,” he replied.

“No.” I heaved a breath. “But sometimes people die to make it stop.”

He looked stricken all over again, and I wanted to go to him. But my legs were like lead weights as I sat, watching him process alone. The same way I did every time he left me.

After a handful of seconds, he cleared his throat. “Like… suicide?”

I nodded .

“How?”

When I didn’t answer, he filled in the blank for me.

“Drugs?”

Another nod.

Blowing out a long breath, Indy walked around the rack and lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the open floor in front of me. His hands clasped in his lap, and he twiddled his thumbs while staring at them.

Any other time, he would have crawled in my lap and been cradled there. My arms felt empty without him in them. But I didn’t welcome him, allowing the unseen wall between us to hold him at bay.

“You could’ve told me,” I said.

Indy straightened from the beginning of a slouch. “Told you what?”

“Anything.” I bounced my shoulders. “Everything. I like it when you talk to me, Indy.”

In Hell, I was often dismissed and ignored. Moira preferred me silent—more of a prop than a person—but Indy engaged with me. He welcomed me into his sunny world, and when he left, his light went out, and everything became so very dark.

Emotions were thick in my throat, and I swallowed them down to the pit of my gut where bad feelings stewed and simmered. They formed a tarry pit in my middle, a swiftly sucking mire that threatened to devour me.

“Okay. I’ll talk, then.” Indy’s eyes flicked up to meet mine. “I’m a phoenix. A bird. And you’re…” He tipped his head in that avian way. “You’re a dog. So, some cross-species shit going on here? Is it bestiality or…?”

Slumping back, I let my skull knock against the corrugated metal wall. The sound echoed as I grumbled, “Jesus, Indy.”

“Okay, okay.” I heard the smile in his voice. “And we’re boyfriends. Or we were. Before I died.”

And demons were raising an army of hellhounds to hunt him down. His life was in danger, and I wasn’t sure I could save it. I was sure I couldn’t bear to lose him again. And I knew I would, regardless.

When I looked at Indy again, he was waiting with a question. “Are we boyfriends now?”

I studied him, analyzing the details I’d committed to memory long ago: his freckled cheeks tinted with blush, his cupid’s bow lips halfway to a pout, and his curls going every which way like mischief bursting out of his brain.

I rubbed up my face and over my closed eyes while silence swelled between us. I’d explained this, endured it, a dozen times, yet it never got easier. I needed a moment to compose myself and piece together a response that wouldn’t leave us both in shambles.

“You don’t get to do that.”

Indy’s statement prompted me to peel my fingers away from my face. He was puffed up, full of hot air and ire, and his rosy cheeks were splotched red.

“Do what?” I asked.

He pushed to standing, then loomed over me with his fists balled. “Toy with me,” he replied. “Jerk me around. Change your mind and say you shouldn’t have said things that…” He drew halting breaths while his features contorted in a near-snarl. “They meant something to me, Loren!”

I flinched .

“Those pictures you deleted? They meant something to me, too!” Indy stabbed his finger at my chest. “You stole my life. You ruined my chances of recovering whatever I lost, and you left me in that fucking rehab center alone. For months. When I got out, all I had was a note and your name.”

The force of his wrath pinned me to the wall. I shrunk back, wanting to run, but I managed to stay put while Indy carried on, growing louder and more hostile with every word.

“I forgave you for putting me there,” he said, “and for missing pickup, and for showing up late like you had better things to do. I apologized without knowing what for. And now, I’m not sure you’re worth it because you are everything I have in this life, but you’re giving me nothing. Less than nothing because you took everything else.”

Anger rolled off him, blistering hot. I remembered what Moira said about phoenix fire being the only thing that could burn a demon, but Indy’s fire went out long ago. This was not supernatural rage, but it singed me all the same.

I needed to say something, but all I could think was how broken he looked while he hugged one arm to his side and blinked tears off his long lashes.

In all my indecision and my insistence on having a choice in matters for once, I’d never considered that Indy had a choice, too. I’d certainly not thought about him being done with me. The idea of him pulling away and leaving me for good stirred me to sickness.

Who would protect him, then ?

That was all I’d tried to do. The only thing I wanted was to keep him safe and, every time he died, I felt like a failure.

I felt that way now. For mismanaging things. For indulging my hurt feelings and maybe, just maybe, turning a blind eye to his suffering because I wanted someone else to be as miserable as I was.

I stayed on the ground, folded up and holding onto my bent leg while Indy glowered at me.

“Is that it?” he asked. “You’re just gonna sit there?”

My mind churned through responses, grinding them into meaningless mush and holding me prisoner to silence.

Indy shook his head so hard his curls swished. “Fine,” he said. “Then I’m leaving you this time.”

This was new. I didn’t like new. It confused me, frightened me. The sight of his turned back was poignantly painful, and I realized he’d seen entirely too much of that from me in the past few weeks.

I stood, bracing on the wall as I called after him. “Where are you going?”

He was at the threshold of the unit door when I said his name. When he looked back, his expression was impossibly severe.

“You’re a dog, right?” he asked.

I nodded, and Indy nodded, too.

“Then stay,” he said.

I didn’t have to obey him; that wasn’t how it worked. But I stood there anyway while his footsteps echoed down the hallway. I waited after I heard the exit door open and shut. I stayed, and I wondered why I didn’t chase him, throw myself at him.

By the time I thought to move, he was long gone.