Page 16 of Hounded

The movie wasn’t halfas interesting as the towering, tawny-skinned god of a man pacing outside my trailer. My trailer. Funny, it didn’t feel like mine. None of this shit did. Not the desk carefully arranged with stacks of canvases and cups of paintbrushes, or the jar of colorful bottlecaps on a low shelf, or the kitschy magnets on the fridge. I’d noticed those on my snack raid. There was a set of alphabet letters in a line along the bottom of the door, a few touristy icons like Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, and a flat, sticker-like sheet that said Always in a Mood with a grid of faces wearing varied expressions and a moveable box to frame one.

All of it was foreign, and I was ashamed to admit I’d hoped it wouldn’t be. I thought returning home would be the trigger I needed to get my mental gears turning again. Instead, I felt like a guest in the cramped camper. It was a place I could visit but didn’t feel inclined to stay.

That man, though. Loren. He rang truer than all the rest.

When he first showed up, I thought I’d sat too long inthe sun because everything in me warmed. I flushed from my gut to my face, and not in an embarrassed way. It was like the world was colder before he came into it, likeIhad been cold and hadn’t known it, and there he was radiating heat like a walking, talking fireplace. A fireplace I wanted to sit beside, bask in, and stare at like I was doing now, peeking around the corner of the stiff window curtain and hoping he didn’t catch me.

He claimed he was my friend.

I wanted him to be more than that.

Mate. The whispered word resonated in my hollowed-out brain, and that full-body flush came right behind it. The wafting heat left as rapidly as it came, and I was chilled again. Empty. Lonely.

Through the glass, I watched Loren, studying his body in the suit that looked like it was sewn onto his skin. Long hair, long legs, long dick, too, if I were a betting man. He was stunning.

Mine, the voice murmured, so faintly I might have imagined it.

“You wish,” I blurted and huffed a laugh. “He’s probably straight. That’s your luck. Or maybe you didn’t notice he left you to find your own way home from rehab, then stood around looking awkward as fuck with exactly shit to say about any of it.”

He was quiet, but every squint and twitch of his features seemed to say so much. Like he spoke a language that began and ended in the pools of his dark eyes.

As though my thoughts had alerted him, Loren glanced toward the trailer.

I slung the curtain closed and dropped onto thecouch, abruptly breathless and so, so warm. The movie was in full swing, but I couldn’t bring myself to focus on it. Instead, I scrubbed my palms down the legs of my jeans, wishing I could wipe away the image of Loren’s face as easily.

“He’s probably straight,” I reminded myself. “Don’t waste time thirsting over straight guys.”

Mate.

What did that even mean? And where did it come from? I was reluctant to add hearing voices to the list of things that were wrong with me, though it might give the doctors something to go on besides the whole lot of nothing I’d given them so far.

I was keyed up enough to move, maybe run, but the trailer didn’t have space for that, so I squirmed for a comfortable position on the couch. Gazing across the narrow tube of a room, I searched for something familiar.

The sticky notes were an odd touch. Neon orange and garish, they were affixed to every closed door, even the kitchen cabinets. I stood and padded down the alley that stretched from the living room to the bedroom of the trailer. Every one of the small squares was penned in with the same handwriting as the note left for me at Hopeful Horizons. These words weren’t meaningful, but they were informative. And detailed. Grabbing one from the pantry beside the fridge, I skimmed what looked to be an itemized list of every food inside.

Glancing at the cupboards on either side of the sink showed them labeled as glasses and mugs, dishes, stemware… Someone put a lot of effort into inventorying this place and spent an alarming amount of time in my home while I was away.

Not someone. I knew who.

Approaching the apron front sink, I leaned over it and peered outside.

Loren was gone. Not like I’d invited him to stay.

Maybe I should have, then I could have had a little more time to figure out what it was about him that made me sweat. Again, not in an embarrassed way.

Mate, the soft voice chimed again, and I shook my head.

“Oh, shut up.”

7

Loren

Sarah Sullivan—Sully, to herfriends—met me on the sidewalk outside the Urban Easel Art Gallery. She wore a black tank top and a beige broomstick skirt, and her dreadlocks were tied back to showcase an assortment of beaded necklaces. She waved as I drew near, then rushed forward to throw her arms around my neck.

My shoulders sagged as she did her best to wring the air out of me.

Pedestrians milled past, the standard foot traffic for an afternoon in Brooklyn. I’d taken my time getting here and had changed clothes in my truck after parking it in the lot behind the gallery. I’d traded the scratchy suit for jeans and a cowlneck sweater to obscure the choke chain that served as Moira’s proof of ownership. I had also done my best to ease the anxiety sparked by the Howl for Hope gala and muscle down the ache of loneliness that had plagued me for weeks.

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