Page 41 of Broken

Eventually.

Imagine my disappointment when, with my heart in my throat and my hands shaking in excitement, it turns out to be Bethany calling instead of him.

Fucking fantastic.

I haven’t talked to Bethany since The Rosemont. Whatever she wants this late on a Thursday four days before Christmas, I’m sure I want no part in it.

“ssit Remi?” Julia asks in a sleep-addled slur. I answer the call so it doesn’t go to voice mail, but don’t bring it to my ear yet. I lean down over Julia and whisper into her hair.

“No, baby girl. It’s just Beth. Go back to sleep.”

She’s snoring before I even finish.

“Whatever party favors you ladies are selling this fine night, I’m not buying,” I say by way of introduction, crossing my legs at the ankles.

“Justin,” Bethany intones, and just that one word sends alarm shooting down my spine. It’s not my name, but the way she says it. Tight and laced with panic and fear.

“What?” I demand, already sitting up in bed and throwing my legs over the edge.

“When’s the last time you talked to Remi?” she asks, and I don’t know if the knot in my stomach loosens or tightens.

“Almost two weeks ago, why? Did something happen?”

Bethany’s next inhaling is audible, and her breathing trembles through the phone.

Fuck.

What’s happened to Remi?

“When’s the last time you’ve seen him, J?”

I can barely hear Bethany over the thudding in my ears. My leg is bouncing so hard under the table it knocks the top, and I have to grasp the edges of the bedside table to keep it from tipping to the side.

“Not since—”

Not since what? He broke my wife’s heart? He broke my heart? He almost destroyed my marriage? We told him we loved him, and he said that wasn’t enough.

“Not since it all went down. It’s been a while. A couple of weeks. Why? Is he okay?”

I can’t hear where they are or what’s going on in the background, but whatever it is, it can’t be good.

“In short, no. I mean, he’s alive, if that’s what you want to call it. He’s not in jail or the hospital.” Yet, hangs unspoken in the air.

I’ve never been prone to panic attacks like Julia is. But I watch from outside myself as I see her classic warning signs flit across my membranes.

No.

I can’t break. Not here. Not now.

I breathe in through my nose to a count of four, then out through my mouth, my lips silent as I count out six. In, and out. The room tilts, but slowly it rights itself, as the context of what she’s said and what she hasn’t settles in my chest.

He’s alive for now.

God, Remi. What are you doing to yourself that there’s a possibility you won’t be alive if you keep at it?

“What did happen between you guys, if you don’t mind me asking?” she prompts.

Anybody else, and I’d laugh it off. I’d tell them to mind their fucking business. But Bethany and Raine saw us that night. They saw us. Everything we were and everything we could be.

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