Page 76 of Before Now

One side of that mouth hitches. It’s all I see other than part of her jaw pressed against a pillow. “Why are you giving tours in the middle of the night?”

“Why are you taking them when it’s the middle of the night in Europe?”

“One of my favorite guides signed on, so?—”

“Baby, don’t make me track down everyone in the beta program when I get back to America. Try again. Tell me which guide signed on.”

“My favorite,” she mouths, over-enunciating. Such a fucking tease.

I lean against a building near the bridge, in no hurry to return to the tense bubble waiting for me. “I can’t stand being still for too long. Music usually helps, but I needed to move tonight. Explore.” My head rests back on the stone facade. “Plus, Chase is mad at me, and I don’t know why. Being in the flat with him acting like I don’t exist is getting to me. It added to me wanting to be anywhere else.”

She knows the trip originated thanks to my best friend’s impulsiveness. I know I have hers, Sage, to thank for the Halloween costume.

“I’m sorry.” Her mouth downturns, and she sighs. “I requested the tour because I want to be anywhere else right now, too. And my favorite guide is also my favorite escape.”

Fuck, I like that way too much. Being her favorite, her escape—her anything. This woman took me hostage, turned me into the one seeking her out, and now I might very well become a beggar at her feet. All without letting me see her face in its entirety.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.

She bites her lip like she’s unsure. I won’t push. I know what it’s like to have shit in your life that feels worse to talk about than dealing with it in silence. Chase dragged me onto their roof half a dozen times before I said much more than, “I fucking hate him,” or some variation. But after a second, her teeth slide off her lip.

“If I tell you, can we pretend I didn’t?”

“Whatever you need, Remi.” I say it before I realize I mean it.

She takes one of her sad breaths. “My mom’s an addict. She’s used most of my life. Pills almost constantly, and then she cycles to heroin or meth or whatever else she can get her hands on. Her husband’s a complete piece of shit. He’s the chief of police, and yet he…” She trails off, and an even sadder smile appears for a second before the expression falls flat. “Everyone treats him like a king when his crown’s made of deceit.”

I clench my jaw to avoid telling her how sorry I am. I want to tell her she deserves better, like when she talked about losing her dad. Her home.

Then I remember something she said, and I push off the wall.

“My dad was an abusive prick to me when I was a kid.” I show her the baroque architecture as I start to walk, a new destination in mind. “Other than my wrist, he also fractured my orbital socket when I was ten. Those are the injuries I was treated for anyway. I got tackled playing soccer a while ago and needed X-rays. The doctor asked if I knew I’d had four healed rib fractures because I didn’t put it on the forms.”

“That’s terrible,” she says. “What about your mom?”

I laugh once. “He never touched her. He never needed to because she was subservient. My mom was perfectly happy being submissive, which means she didn’t dare intervene on my behalf.”

My screen darkens, Remi covering her lens. I’m about to complain when she reappears—her eye, gorgeous dark lashes, and part of a sculpted brow, that is. She has devastating eyes. Mossy irises, enough sorrow deepening them to make me want to take whatever hurts her away.

I am so over my head when it comes to Remi Saint. I can barely make out shapes on the surface anymore.

“We moved from Texas before he fucked up my wrist. He was a management consultant. His firm had transferred their headquarters to New York two years earlier, and he’d been bouncing between there and Texas, more frequently at the end. He still traveled every couple days but claimed it was easier staying in the tri-state area.”

“Is that why you don’t have much of an accent?” she asks.

“I don’t have an accent at all anymore.” I switch hands with my phone. The first goes in my hoodie pocket. I’m colder than I’ll admit, but I’ll survive.

Her eyebrow lifts, a spark in her eye. “You did last night when you told me to come.”

I scrunch my face. “Fine. I have a little bit of an accent when I’m hard as hell and watching you finger-fuck yourself.”

Eyelid flutters shut. “You moved to New York,” she says, moving us along.

I wait until it opens. “We lived in a suburb at first, which is where he fucked up my hand. I’d deal with Andrew West two days on, two days off. My mom would dutifully wait for his return.” We’re getting close, so I slow my steps, taking it to a leisurely stroll. “After three years, we moved to a town not far away. A nice neighborhood, great for kids. It had a wonderful medical staff for when he broke my face.”

More sadness in her eye, maybe an apology in there too.

“He quit messing with me after I shot up at thirteen and hit back.” My lips twitch, remembering how goddamn good it felt the first time my fist connected with his jaw. “As a freshman, I tutored as an excuse to not be there when he was. I went to three houses twice a week. My favorite, Landon, was nine and only a twelve-minute bike ride.”

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