Page 96 of Hounded
When I managed to speak, my voice was a rasp. “I thought we were.”
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 thoughtyouwere 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.
