Page 141 of Before Now

Only she wound up destroying part of me instead. And I might have just lost the rest because of her too.

39

FOSTER

Now…

She blinks at me,like her mind wants to reject what I’m saying.

“You…” Remi takes a shaky inhale, stepping back, so my hands fall away from her face. I want to move with her, touch her. But even though it kills me, I don’t move, needing to serve my penance.

“I’ve spent all this time thinking it was my fault. I led Daniel to us. Now you’re telling me you left my phone so he could track it when he noticed it missing?”

“I had no idea there would be a tracking app on it, Remi.”

Her head quickly shakes, her fists clenching at her sides. “Roman almost died, Foster. He suffered for weeks—no pain meds because he refused to compromise his sobriety. I’d have panic attacks when someone knocked on the door or I received mail.”

“I’m so fucking sorry. God, I would have done so much differently that night if I’d known.”

That’s the second time I’ve said it to her. If I’d known. But I didn’t.

Doesn’t mean I’m not to blame.

Remi licks her lips like she’s about to say something, but then her eyebrows slant in. “Chase … his accident was the night you came to the lake house?”

I force a hard swallow. “Yes.”

She tightens the space between us, not entirely, but she’s close enough to feel. “What happened?”

My gaze averts to our feet, jaw locking. The need to avoid pounds through me, but I can’t anymore. I can’t stop.

“After our fight,” I tell her, “Colt met up with him to go climbing, but Chase was upset and just wanted to drink. I guess Chase was pissed I abandoned him one second and calling to beg for forgiveness the next, and Colt began picking up on what I’d been missing for months.”

I shake my head at myself before looking up. Sad green eyes stare up at me, so tragically beautiful, and I reach out enough to brush my fingers over hers.

She lets me. Fuck, I’m glad she lets me.

“I was too wrapped up in us at the time to notice what was going on with him. Looking back, it started before Prague, but especially while we were there. Chase would mope around for days and then suddenly drag me out all night. Minor things I said or did set him off. He’d take them as a betrayal, only to suddenly act like nothing happened. Like when he refused to talk to me for almost a week, avoiding me and staying in his room.”

She nods a little, the movement slight. “I remember you’d said Chase was acting like you weren’t there, but when he answered your phone a few days later, he denied ever being mad at you.”

And I dismissed it as pettiness, even though he never held a grudge against me in our lives.

“He was mostly back to being Chase after that, but once we were back in Austin, he wanted to go out constantly and pushed to do risky shit. It was almost overwhelming. Then he lashed out at me again when I went after you. The patterns were obvious if I’d have paid attention. Chase wasn’t being reckless and moody. He was struggling with undiagnosed bipolar disorder.”

“And this led to his accident?”

“When Colt decided something was off, he tried to take Chase home, but Chase was trashed and still upset.” I blow out a breath, my heart cracking all over, fracturing down the same line as then. “We have a thing with roofs. Since we were teens, we find one to sit on and vent about shit. He said he was going on one that night, so he could call me again. We’d snuck onto the one of a little café a year earlier, and they were near it. It had a ladder on the side of the building. Colt tried to stop him, but Chase climbed it anyway. Halfway up, he yelled at Colt to follow him while trying to get his phone out.”

“Oh my God,” she breathes.

The sound of Colton’s wrecked voice hammers through my mind. How alone he must have felt, watching him fall. Alone because of me. Then come the memories of the hospital, walking in for the first time, Chase’s body fighting while he was in a medically induced coma. Not knowing with each surgery if he would make it out. The pain in his eyes when he found out he wouldn’t regain full use of his legs.

I sniff back the assault and admit the harshest truth I’ve ever had to live with out loud. “If I would have answered or been there, it wouldn’t have happened. Chase wouldn’t have climbed up there, feeling like I hated him and like he needed to fix it. But I was chasing you. Chase was broken and bleeding on a gurney—Colton was destroyed in ways I can’t even understand, blaming himself. And I was at a fucking lake.”

Her lashes flutter over building tears. “And you thought I was there because I abandoned you and wanted someone else.”

“It crushed me. Even if it wasn’t real, I’d lost you, then I almost lost him. I was hurt and angry, and I stupidly blamed you for all of it.”

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