Chapter Three
Caleb
The neighbors must have heard Indi screaming, because the police arrived not long afterward.
By then, she’d completely shut down.
One minute she’d been hysterical in my arms, fighting me to get back to her mum, and the next it was like every ounce of energy had drained from her body.
She just sat there limp against my chest while I held her on the bedroom floor surrounded by flashing lights, blood, and the worst night of our lives.
A female police officer crouched beside us carefully. “Hey, sweetheart, can you tell me your name?”
Indi didn’t answer.
“Her name’s Indi,” I said quietly. “Indica Malone.”
The officer looked at me gently. “And you are?”
“Caleb Slade.”
She nodded slowly, as if she recognized the surname, but thankfully didn’t comment on it.
Everything after that blurred together.
More police arrived—detectives.
Then paramedics.
Then the coroner.
I stayed on the floor with Indi while people moved around us quietly, removing her parents’ bodies from the house. Now and then, Indi would tense in my arms when she heard movement from the hallway, but otherwise, she barely reacted to anything, and I’d never felt so helpless in my entire life.
Eventually, I asked the policewoman if she could call my parents.
Mum and Dad arrived quickly.
The second Mum saw Indi, her face crumpled. She rushed over and wrapped her arms around her carefully. “Oh, sweetheart,” Mum whispered, stroking Indi’s hair. “Oh God…”
Indi clung to her without saying a word.
Dad crouched in front of me next. “You okay, kid?”
No.
Not even close.
I’d seen two dead bodies in less than an hour.
I’d watched the girl I loved completely break apart in front of me.
But I nodded anyway because I didn’t know how else to answer.
Dad studied me for a second like he knew I was lying, then squeezed the back of my neck gently. “You did good tonight,” he said quietly.
I didn’t feel like I had.
Eventually, the police finished questioning us, and Mum helped Indi shower and change clothes because there was blood all over her nightie and legs. I remember sitting outside the bathroom door waiting while Dad made phone calls downstairs.
When Mum finally led Indi out, wrapped in one of Mum’s oversized hoodies, she looked tiny.
Broken.
And something inside me shifted permanently right then.
Because I realized nobody else was going to take care of her now.
So I would.
We brought her home that night, and she never went back to live in her old house. There wasn’t even really a discussion about it.
Mum and Dad took one look at her and decided she’d stay with us permanently. She was still seventeen. Still a minor. If they didn’t take her in, she’d likely end up bouncing between relatives or foster placements.
None of us was letting that happen.
Over the next week, Dad and I packed as much of her stuff as we could manage while Mum handled the legal side. The spare room across from mine became Indi’s bedroom, though half the time she still ended up asleep in my room anyway after nightmares woke her up.
I felt so damn sorry for her.
And angry.
Christ, I was angry.
At her parents.
At the world.
At whatever cruel force decided that Indi deserved this kind of pain.
I knew deep down it would scar her forever. There was no surviving something like that without damage lingering behind. My only hope was that maybe I could help carry some of it for her.
Because I would have done anything to ease her pain.
Anything.
The weeks afterward were rough. Indi barely spoke to anyone except Mum and me. She stopped answering texts from people, stopped caring about school, and stopped caring about almost everything. Most days, she stayed locked in her room, listening to sad music while staring blankly at the wall.
It scared me sometimes.
Mum eventually arranged counseling for both of us.
I needed it more than I wanted to admit. The nightmares alone were brutal. Some nights I’d wake up sweating after seeing the bathtub all over again. Other times, I’d hear Indi screaming in my dreams so vividly I’d run across the hallway to check she was still there.
Usually, I’d find her awake too.
Neither of us slept much after that night.
But while I slowly learned how to process what happened, Indi seemed to drown in it instead. She hated her parents for leaving her behind like that, and I didn’t blame her. I would’ve hated them too.
Still, even while grieving, she kept trying to push me away emotionally, and it frustrated the hell out of me sometimes because now we lived under the same roof.
“You can’t just stop living, Indi,” I snapped at her one afternoon after she skipped school again.
She glared at me from the couch, wrapped in a blanket. “Watch me.”
“Jesus Christ.” I dragged both hands through my hair. “You’re smarter than this.”
“What’s the point?” she shot back. “I couldn’t even save my own parents.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“It feels like it.”
“It isn’t.”
She looked away instantly after that.
And that became our pattern for a while.
Me pushing.
Her retreating.
Especially when it came to school.
Indi had always dreamed of becoming a nurse, but after her parents died, she stopped believing she deserved a future. Her grades started slipping badly because she couldn’t focus long enough to care.
The counselor kept trying to make her understand the truth—there was nothing she could have done to save them.
Nothing.
But grief doesn’t work logically.
About six months after her parents died, things finally started shifting slightly.
Tiny changes at first.
She started leaving her room more.
Started eating properly again.
Started listening when Mum talked instead of shutting down.
And now and then, she’d wander into my room while I practiced guitar or studied.
Those became my favorite moments.
I’d play for her sometimes while she sat cross-legged on my bed listening quietly, and I’d catch a glimpse of the old Indi again when she smiled at me.
Those smiles felt like oxygen.
One night, she walked into my room while I was buried in study notes for exams.
I looked up because something about her felt calmer.
Not healed.
But steadier somehow.
She sat down on my bed silently while I closed my textbook and turned fully toward her. “You okay?” I asked carefully.
“Yeah.” She gave me a small shrug. “Better today, I think.”
I nodded slowly.
Then she surprised me completely. “I might actually start studying again tonight.”
A grin broke across my face before I could stop it. “Seriously?”
She laughed softly at my reaction. “Yeah, seriously.”
“Indi, that’s huge.”
“I know.” She tucked her legs beneath herself on the bed.
“Watching you study your ass off when you don’t even want a normal career anymore kind of made me realize I need to stop wallowing and sort my shit out.
” The laugh that escaped her afterward nearly wrecked me because I hadn’t heard her laugh properly in months.
“You have no idea how proud I am of you right now,” I admitted quietly.
Her smile softened slightly, then she looked nervous all of a sudden. “There’s something I wanted to try.”
I frowned. “Okay…”
My idiot brain immediately went off on a stupid tangent.
“What? Like sushi or one of those weird healthy cereals Mum keeps buying?”
She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“Then what?”
She bit the inside of her cheek and looked away from me, and the air between us changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that I felt it instantly.
“Indi,” I said more quietly. “Talk to me.”
She looked down at our hands resting beside each other on the mattress before slowly threading her fingers through mine.
Every nerve ending in my body lit up.
Spending so much time together over those six months had changed things between us, whether either of us admitted it out loud or not. Even in silence, something existed there now.
A tension.
A pull.
And God, I felt it constantly.
I was seventeen, completely gone for her, and trying desperately not to be an asshole about it because she was grieving and vulnerable, and the last thing I wanted was to take advantage of that.
But Christ… some nights it was torture.
I thought about her constantly… the way she smiled. The way she looked while listening to me play guitar. The way her body curled against mine during movies when she fell asleep. And sometimes those thoughts followed me into the shower, where I’d spend way too long imagining things I shouldn’t.
I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything…
But I also loved her too much to ruin what we had.
That was the problem.
I could never tell what she felt.
Until now.
Because sitting beside me on that bed with her fingers tangled through mine, her breathing had changed.
Quicker.
Shallower.
And when I looked at her, really looked at her, I realized she was nervous too.
Nervous because of me.
The realization hit me like a freight train.
“You’re not being silly, Indi. Tell me what’s going on in that gorgeous head of yours.” I leaned closer and tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear, and she melted into the touch instantly. The soft little nuzzle against my palm nearly destroyed me.
My hand slid naturally to her cheek, holding her there gently while I stroked my thumb over her warm skin. She looked flushed, nervous, beautiful… and I could barely breathe properly.
Something was happening between us.
Something huge.
“I’ve been thinking about something for a while,” she admitted quietly. “Even before I moved in here.”
I swallowed hard. “Okay…”
Her tongue darted out nervously, wetting her bottom lip.
Big mistake.
My entire body tightened instantly.
Jesus Christ.
I had to force myself to look back into her eyes before my brain completely short-circuited, and I embarrassed myself by getting hard right there beside her.
“Indi,” I said softly, brushing my thumb over her cheek again. “Talk to me.”
She stared at me for a second like she was trying to gather courage. Then she whispered, “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to kiss someone.”
I blinked. “Someone?”
She smiled slightly and shifted closer. “I’ve never kissed anyone before.”