Logan sagged against the wall beneath my grip. “Do you know what it’s like?” he asked, dropping his stare. “To feel like a stranger in your own body? To not know who or what you are?”
“Yeah, Logan, I do.” I didn’t lighten the hold I had on him, afraid that his “fit” wasn’t over.
He shook his head sadly. “I thought you would make this better.”
His words broke something in me. I wanted to be who he thought I could be, but I didn’t know how to fix him.
“The hellhound inside you—it’s part of you—you recognize it. It doesn’t hurt you like it does me. It’s not that way for me. Why isn’t it that way for me?”
He looked so defeated. It killed me. This was my baby brother. I didn’t want this for him. I eased back, no longer restraining him, but hovering close by. “I don’t know, Logan, but I’ll figure it out. I will.”
“Sometimes I feel like…” His voice trailed away and he was silent for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to finish his sentence. But then his voice cut through the quiet. “Sometimes it seems like the two parts of me are fighting and eventually one will win.” His eyes snapped up to mine. “What if the real me loses? What if the hound takes over, and I’m stuck in a body that I don’t want to be in?”
It had never been this hard for me. Being a hellhound was never really something I hated. What I had hated and had to learn to accept was that being a hellhound made me different, that the life I thought I was going to have wasn’t an option.
“Logan, listen to me. It’s going to be okay. I know it’s hard right now. I know you’re confused. I don’t have all the answers and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I swear it’s going to be fine. It’s not always going to be like this.”
He looked up and that wild look had drained away, leaving the look of a scared, vulnerable kid in its place. I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Promise?” He scarcely said the word, but I heard him.
“I promise.” In the back of my mind I cringed. How was I going to make things better for him? What if I couldn’t?
He smiled and nodded, all trace of anxiety seeming to fall away. He looked over at the massive mess all over the place and grimaced. “I’ll clean that up.”
“Yeah, you will.” I clapped him on the back with my hand. His shirt was damp with sweat.
“Guess you’re pretty disappointed in me,” he said while scooping soggy food off the floor.
“It was a pretty good burger.” I sighed dramatically.
He laughed. It was such a “Logan” sound that it gave me hope…
I shook myself out of the memory and realized that I was standing in the middle of the yard, hands fisted at my sides in the dark. I started moving again, and seconds later, the house came into view. I expected all the windows to be dark and the house to be closed up. But the lights were on and the back door was open…
I looked across the yard and saw Cole’s truck in the spot beneath the tree where I always parked (well when I was supposed to be here).
He was standing on the porch, without a shirt, and Heven was just a few feet away—walking toward the door.
“Heven, wait.” I heard him call out and she stopped to turn back.
He moved forward so that he was within inches. I held back a growl and the urge to rush over there and knock him out.
“Do you ever think about what it would be like?” Cole said, staring at Heven.
“What?”
“To kiss me?”
I sucked in a breath. He wouldn’t dare touch her…
“N-no,” Heven said and thankfully began backing away.
“Never?” he challenged, following her retreating form. I ground my teeth together until my jaw hurt. I took a step forward, ready to launch myself in the direction of the porch.
“I’m in love with Sam,” Heven said and surprisingly, I felt better. I knew she loved me. I felt it every day. She wouldn’t be too happy with me if I raced over there and pummeled Cole into the dirt, which I sorely wanted to do. She would want to handle this on her own.
Cole didn’t seem to hear her words because he leaned in and touched his lips to hers. White-hot rage came over me and the thought of letting Heven handle her own life fled my brain.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” Heven raced from the porch, disappearing from sight.
I ran to the porch, but Cole had already followed, closing the door behind him. I stood there breathing hard, seeing red and thinking of violent ways to hurt him when I realized something…
Heven hadn’t liked that kiss.
I had been so focused on my own reaction that I hadn’t paid much attention to hers, but I had felt it. When he kissed her, she felt nothing and she had been relieved.
I can’t say I was too happy about her relief, because that meant that she had been confused in the first place—but hadn’t I already known that? But now I knew that whatever it was between Heven and Cole wasn’t romantic, at least not on her end.
Instead of bursting in the house, I went around the side and went through her window into her bedroom.
I liked this space. It was comfortable and filled with Heven. It made me feel like I belonged somewhere. Silently closing the window behind me, I went toward the door and listened for her and Cole’s voices downstairs.
She told him again that she was in love with me (I smiled with smug satisfaction), and then I heard her footsteps on the stairs.
I went and sat on the bed, trying to appear as though I wasn’t eavesdropping, and knowing I would fail miserably, when she opened the door and sagged against it. She looked exhausted. I moved to stand up and she jumped, not realizing I had been here.
“It’s just me,” I said, standing up from the bed.
“Sam.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “You scared me.”
“It was probably hard to hear me come in when you were downstairs with Cole.” I couldn’t keep out the bit of coldness that crept into my voice. Just because I had kept myself from busting in the house on them didn’t mean I wasn’t pissed.
She made a sound in the back of her throat.
“What’s going on, Heven? I thought you weren’t going to tell him anything. What’s he doing here?”
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
It was wrong, but I lied. I wanted to see what she would say. It’s not that I didn’t trust her to tell me because I knew with everything in me that she would. But I didn’t want to admit I had been eavesdropping on her and Cole.