Page 65 of No Broken Promises

Remy curses and then leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead. “It’s never too late to stop.”

I open my mouth, ready to defend Danny again, to tell Remy that I wanted it, and then I shut my mouth because it is a lie.

I don’t regret Nox, not in the slightest. But I hadn’t wanted Danny, and he’d known that. Even in the aftermath of that night, Danny kept apologizing and telling me that he’d make it right. He knew. And then, after, I couldn’t destroy the memory Danny left behind. The memory of a hero. That wasn’t my place.

“I love you, Parker.” Remy kisses me on the lips, a soft and promising kiss of what is to come. “And if you don’t want anyone to know, I’ll respect it. If you want to tell the world, I’ll stand by your side while you do it. No matter what, I’m here for you. I love you, and it doesn’t change anything.”

“No,” I tell him. “I don’t want anyone else to know. I don’t want Nox to know. I just… I needed you to know that I didn’t choose him, Remy. It was you. It’s always been you.”

When he carries me into the bedroom a few minutes later, refusing to let me out of his arms, I feel the final piece of the wall I’d surrounded myself with fall away. I can breathe again after six years of pent-up secrets hanging over my head like a rusty guillotine. For the first time, I feel like our future can be perfect. I don’t have to run away. Not from Remy. He holds me in his arms, wrapped in a blanket while I cry for the past.

“I’m here, Parker.” His soothing voice fills the cracks and holes in my heart, healing the broken pieces of my soul. “I love you, and I love Nox. We’re going to be a family, I promise.”

Sometime in the middle of Remy telling me everything I’ve ever wanted to hear, I think I fall asleep against his chest. That doesn’t stop him, though. Every time I wake up, shifting in his arms, Remy is there with a sweet word and a kiss in the dark.

The phone rings about the time the sun starts to filter through the window, and Remy groans when I move off his chest to answer it.

“Hello?” I mumble, not even sure whose phone I answered.

“Oh, thank heavens,” Rose gasps, crying through the other end of the call. “Parker, I’m so sorry. Nox isn’t here. Is he there with you and Remy?”

“What?” It must be a mistake. I had to be hallucinating. But my heart stuttering in my chest betrays my doubt.

“Nox is missing, Parker. I’m so sorry. We didn’t even realize he was gone. He disappeared out of the bedroom. Linc got called into work and when I went to check, he was just gone.”

26

REMY

Parker falls out of bed at whatever Rose says to her. I’m frozen, watching in confusion as she flops on the ground.

“Check the fucking cemetery, Rose,” she shouts into the phone, and I’m up out of bed before I realize exactly what’s happening. “That’s where he was found last time.”

Her panic-filled eyes meet mine, and I’m already putting clothes on because there’s no way in hell either of us isn’t jumping into action. Faint strains of conversation from Rose’s side of the call hit me, enough to make it clear that Nox isn’t at Rose’s house and that they don’t know how long he’s been gone.

“Daisy.” I whistle sharply and she appears from wherever she’s been camped out in the house, most likely in the room that’s quickly become Nox’s. Her ears are standing at attention, waiting for an order. “Time to go to work.”

Keeping the terror and tremor out of my voice so that I can do my job and handle Daisy takes an inhuman effort.

Nox means everything to me.

I’m thinking of his face the night I found him sitting at his father’s grave. The way nothing else mattered to him except making sure that he got to bring a piece of his dog to the same place where Danny had been lain to rest.

Watching Parker struggle to get dressed and deal with Rose isn’t the best use of my time, not when every second counts.

Instead, I rush into Nox’s room, grabbing his jacket from the top of his bed so that I’ll have his scent for Daisy to work with.

Just in case Nox isn’t sitting there with a smile on his face while he rattles off a story only making sense to him.

“Come on, girl. We’re going to the cemetery.”

Parker is crying, still on the phone with Rose. I stop in the doorway and wait for the half a second it takes until she sees me.

“Parker.” My sharp tone takes her by surprise and she immediately snaps to attention, glaring at me with so much emotion and fear that I hurt for her. In a few quick steps, I have her face in my hands and her eyes on mine, breathing with her until she calms down enough to listen to me. “I love you. But you need to focus and tell Rose to call 9-1-1. I’m going to call it in, too, but she needs to officially report it so that they can get details from her that we won’t know.”

Parker nods, and I hear Rose mumbling on the other end of the line before Parker drops her hand with the phone in it to her side.

“I need to go with you to the cemetery,” she mumbles and slaps the phone against her thigh.

---