Page 140 of Before Now

Except, on this stretch, lights come from inside one house. I stop across the street, a tree-lined divider separating me. A big oak towers in the side yard, and on the porch, there’s a vague shadow in the corner, hinting at a swing.

I stay in the rental a little longer. I want a sign that what I’m doing is the right thing or if I should leave. Let Remi Sinner live the life she’s chosen instead of the one I desperately wanted to start with Remi Saint.

A sinner disguised as a saint.

When I climb out of my car, the only sound is the leaves scraping over the concrete in the icy breeze. There’s a picture window in front of the little house. It’s cute, picturesque. The kind of place I imagine Remi would love, where she would chase shots.

I’d smile if I weren’t feeling less and less like I belong here. I haven’t brought myself to move yet when I see movement inside. And there she is. She walks into the room and then to the open kitchen, leaning over the back of a chair and looking at the laptop on the kitchen table. She moves the hair from in front of her face, and my chest constricts. It’s her. She’s fucking gorgeous. She’s real. She’s here.

I’m about to cross the street when headlights flash from a car rounding the corner. I stop, watching it slow and pull into the house’s driveway and then wait for the door on the detached garage. Remi glances over her shoulder as the hum from the motor reaches me, and I’m frozen in place.

Someone just came home.

Came home to her.

As a guy climbs out of the car, Remi abandons her laptop. She rushes through the kitchen in that direction, disappearing while he grabs a grocery bag from the back seat. It allows me a direct, unmistakable view of him.

Roman. Her friend.

Within seconds she reappears through a side door. She runs across the wooden deck and down the steps toward him. He’s barely turned around as she reaches him, but he manages to catch her, dropping the bag. Her arms go around his neck, his lock around her. She buries her nose in his coat.

And every millisecond is soul-crushing.

My nostrils flare as I watch them, reality unavoidable. The lies swimming in my mind.

She backs away, and he dips down for the bag before pulling her to his side and under his arm. Then they walk inside together. I nod to myself, forcing it all down.

Remi said she didn’t want it to be real, and I’m the clueless fuck who decided it was.

The shock and disbelief of having everything I ever wanted within reach and then watching it be ripped away has already turned. She knew. Sheknewwhat happened with my dad, and she still led me on like that?

Even though my phone vibrates in my pocket, I dig out the other one. The sparkles on the cover glint in the moonlight.You can always run to me, darlin’repeats in my head. And I hate every memory cycling in there too.

“Goodbye, Remi.”

I draw my arm back and launch the phone toward the house, bouncing it off the porch railing into a bush.

Climbing back in the car, I text Sage.

You were right. About it all.

I crank the engine and tear down the street, needing to get the fuck away from here. To leave her with him at Echo Lake. The illusion of us over.

When I reach the main road, Chase has singed my last damn nerve with the incessant calling and texting. Sometimes it’s not fucking about him, and he needs to back the hell off.

I dig out my phone at the stop sign, over it all.

“What, Chase?” I snap, not even checking the stupid picture on the screen. “It better be fucking life or death because I’m not?—”

“Foster.” The panicked voice that’s not quite Chase’s has never sounded so fucking serious in our entire lives. I glance at the screen, see Colton snarling in the contact picture, and he croaks it again, “Foster.”

Even more broken.

“What happened?” I ask.

As Colt fights to talk through tears, existence altering the more he says, I stare into the rearview mirror at a sliver of the light across the lake. Light from the window of the house of the girl who I would have given up everything for.

The girl who was supposed tobemy everything.

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