Page 103 of Hounded: Ashes to Ashes

Inside the apartment, Loren took Sully to her bedroom while I stayed in the living area. I didn’t want to be there when she woke up. Didn’t want to explain… any of this.

A held breath left me as I surveyed the apartment that was so different since the hounds had arrived. Messier, but cozier too.Lived in. Full. Or it should have been. Now it was devastatingly empty.

We left them behind. We abandoned Dottie, Gunnar, and Abigail with a pack of hell-sent hounds and an angel who had burned them with heavenly light. He might have incinerated every sordid soul in the bowling alley, and we left them to that fate.

An hour ago, I’d been ready to celebrate that Loren and I had friends for the first time in a century. Now, it was back to the way it had always been: Brooklyn, Loren, and me.

And Sully. But I couldn’t think about her right now. Her relationship with Whitney was new, but it had been promising. So hopeful for them both. Considering how she would react when she found out her hellhound had been destroyed forced me to think how I would feel if I suffered the same loss. If the angel hadn’t appeared and stopped Loren from engaging in a battle he couldn’t win. If he had died for me…

A sob crept up my throat.

I needed him. I needed to be snatched up, held close, and squeezed until all the bad thoughts were wrung out.

Lurching into motion, I angled toward Sully’s room, ready to invade and latch onto Loren the way he’d latched onto me when he’d been scared and sad because now I was both of those things and more. Too much more, and I wanted to be less.

After taking two steps forward, I stopped.

I wanted to feel less, or differently, and Loren could help with that, but he was grieving, and I didn’t want to selfishly interrupt. But was it more selfish to remember the pills I’d given Sully last week? The ones she’d stowed in her kitchen drawer so we could dispose of them together?

Since we hadn’t done that, I could only assume they were still there. In fact, I counted on it as I skirted around the island andopened the drawer I’d watched Sully drop the baggie into days ago.

There they were. Bright and green with apples stamped on them. Like the fucking forbidden fruit.

How had I never made that connection before?

They were temptation. Small, sinful things that had led to my downfall over and over again.

Palming the bag, I stuck it to my sweaty skin then closed my fist around it.

I could take one. Just enough to blunt the sharp edge of all this hurt. To make the world beautiful again for a little while.

Or I could take them both. Go on a ride to the peak of ecstasy and remember what it felt like to fly…

My hand trembled, and I thought about Travis. Clean for eighteen months and why? His everything left and stayed gone.

Fed up.

Defeated.

Resigned.

I used to think disappointed was the worst thing a person could be in me, and I had certainly disappointed Loren more times than I could count. Most recently in my previous life when I overdosed and left him thinking I’d killed myself on purpose. I said it was an accident, but was it really? Completely? Was it accidental to do something while knowing the risks and disregarding them?

I hadn’t meant to die. I enjoyed living, but I took every one of those pills with intent. That same intent sat in my hand right now, and I wondered about my story. The one I never told in rehab because I didn’t remember, but I knew it now.

Opening my fingers, I unzipped the baggie and dumped the green apples into my palm.

All it took was a quick toss, one direction or the other. Down Sully’s sink drain or down my throat.

When I talked about this at my next NA meeting, I would say it was easy. Best decision of my life. A real pivotal moment. But the truth was I gritted my teeth and grumbled a whole string of swear words as I flung the pills into the sink and flipped on the garbage disposal.

The sound of the disposal blades grinding was incentive enough for me not to dive in after them. I cranked the water on full blast and turned it to hot, hot, hot. It ran, the disposal churned, and I wanted to cry. Then laugh. Then, fuck all, I didn’t know because it was a shitty night, and Whitney was dead, and Sully was hurt, and I was clean. And I thought maybe—finally—I would stay that way.

The sink racket lured Loren from the bedroom. He wandered out into the living area frowning, then squinting at the running water and the disposal putting out what must have been a roar to his sensitive ears.

I turned both off, and he seemed to relax while we looked at each other.

His face was fully healed and dry, but the whites of his eyes were squiggled with red. He broke our visual connection and raked his hand through his hair, combing the coffee brown locks over one shoulder.

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