Charade (8 page)

“You shouldn’t have done that.” I raced in the house away from him.

He found me a few moments later in the family room, making up the couch. “Heven.”

I ignored him and continued to punch the pillow into a white case.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing it from my hands.

“You had no right,” I said, hating the tremor in my voice.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m such an ass.” He scrubbed a hand down his face.

“I’m in love with Sam.”

“I know. I know,” he whispered. “You already said that.” He tossed the pillow onto the couch.

“I’m going upstairs. I’ll see you in the morning?” I wanted to run to my room and hide.

“Yeah, okay.” When I turned away, he grabbed my hand. “Heven, I’m really sorry. I don’t want to mess up our friendship.”

I sighed. “It’s all right, Cole.” He hugged me and I let him. When I pulled back, he threw himself down on the couch. On my way out of the room, I noticed that the blinds were still open and went to close them. I looked out into the dark and an eerie feeling of being watched ran up my spine. I pulled them down and took off upstairs, heart pounding.

Once there, I shut the door and sagged against it. Some movement across the room caught my eye and had me straightening in defense.

“It’s just me,” Sam said, standing up from the bed.

“Sam.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “You scared me.”

“It was probably hard to hear me come in when you were downstairs with Cole.”

Had he seen Cole kiss me? My hands were shaking and I felt sick. How did everything get so messed up? I made a sound in the back of my throat.

“What’s going on, Heven? I thought you weren’t going to tell him anything. What’s he doing here?”

What on earth was I going to say?

Sam

I parked my truck and climbed out, locking the door and stuffing the keys into my pocket. I didn’t really think anyone would bother it out here at the edge of Gran’s property, practically hidden among the trees and bushes, but I locked it anyway—out of habit I guess. Protecting what was mine seemed to be ingrained in me. It wasn’t something that I could turn off; it was automatic, just like breathing. I wondered how I had gotten this way. Well, I
knew
how, but when had it become a
part
of me? It must have been a gradual change, happening slowly over time until it became all I knew.

I walked through the dark, wondering if Heven was asleep by now. I was late, a lot later than I wanted to be, but Logan needed me. Maybe I should have stayed with him like I did the other night but… I really wanted, no
needed,
a break. He had another one of his “fits,” as I had come to think of them, again tonight. It was really hard to watch—to not be able to do anything about. For someone who was decidedly protective, not being able to protect my own brother was driving me crazy.

But how do you protect someone from themself?

The night had started out fine. We grabbed some burgers and fries for dinner, rented the new
Transformer’s
movie and went to our place. I didn’t turn the movie on right away; for some reason, sitting in front of the TV while we ate bothered me. I worked so much and spent a lot of time with Heven. The time that I did have for Logan, I didn’t want to spend it with us watching TV and not talking. A memory of my brother and I sitting around the dinner table with Mom and Dad flashed into my head. She never let us watch TV during dinner. She made us turn everything off because it was family time. I guess I learned that from her. Man, it used to make me so mad. I smiled at the memory. “Why?” I would whine, mad that I couldn’t watch whatever the latest cartoon was.

“Because I want to hear all about your day. Because I like to see my son’s faces.”

I brushed away the memory when my chest began to feel tight. Those times were over. But Logan was really struggling to adapt to his new life and I wanted to attempt to give him some kind of normal.

“So I was thinking we could go out to the woods that border the farm this weekend,” I told him, tentatively. We wouldn’t ever go back to the woods that bordered Sebago Lake again, but even though it had been horrible last time, I still really felt like trying again was something that he needed to do. “Work on how to control—”

And just like that, it was like a switch inside him flipped.

“Would you give it a rest?” he said, cutting me off angrily and tossing down his half-eaten burger to glare at me.

I was momentarily stunned at his tone. Instead of getting angry, I said, “Look, I know that shifting hurts and I hate to see you that way, but it doesn’t mean that practice won’t help— make it easier.”

“I don’t care!” He shoved his coke over. The plastic lid popped off and coke and ice went rushing across the table.

I cursed and stood up. Everything was soaked. “What did you do that for?” I snagged a roll of paper towels off the counter and held them out. “Clean this up.”

He glared at me, breathing hard, ignoring my outstretched hand. “Don’t you get it?” he snapped. “I don’t want to be like you. Being a hellhound isn’t what I want.”

“I get that. I really do, Logan, but you can’t change what you are.” I tried to keep my voice level.

“You don’t get it!” he yelled, jumping up, sending the chair he was sitting in clattering to the floor. “It’s all so easy for you. You just walked away from us, from your old life without a second thought. You started a new life.”

“I did not walk away from you.
They
kicked
me
out. They told me to go. They couldn’t stand the sight of me.” My heart was pounding and anger swirled inside of me. He was blaming me. Blaming me for doing what I had to do to survive.

Logan made a sound in the back of this throat and he leaped forward and upset the table, sending it over on its side. There was a huge bang and my food and soda went everywhere, ice slid across the floor, leaving a wet trail behind it.

I lunged at him. He was strong, but I was stronger. My age and honed-hellhound abilities put me at an advantage. I shoved him up against the wall and pinned him there, taking in his wild eyes—I kept a close watch for that flame color to appear.

“Stop it,” I said low, not looking away. To my relief his eyes didn’t have any of that orange color, but they were still a little off—familiar but not. The hound in him was warring with his human side… hopefully, this time, he would win as there was no wildlife in here for him to take his aggression out on.

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.

“Not long. I can smell him and I heard you talking.”

“He kissed me,” she admitted, looking down and I smiled because I had been right. But my smile was short-lived because the words were a lot harder to hear than I thought they would be, even after witnessing it. The thought of his hands—his
lips
—on her made me crazy.

Did you kiss him back?
I said the words into her mind because I couldn’t say it out loud.

No. It was all wrong. It wasn’t anything like you. Nothing could be like you.
More of that smug satisfaction purred through me and I grinned. But she didn’t see it because she was too busy avoiding my gaze.

I walked across the room, stepping right up in front of her.
I heard you tell him you love me.

“I do. More than anything.” She finally looked up and I saw the truth in her eyes.

“I believe you, Hev.”

I don’t know why, but I feel close to him,
she said.
I tried not to, but I can’t help it.

I know. It’s okay.

I looked up at him.
You know?

He nodded.
We have a Mindbond, Heven. I’ve felt how torn you’ve been.