Page 51

CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

REMI

He pulls me closer in his bed. The cabin is empty, all of his friends at another. I don’t know who all is supposed to be staying here, and I didn’t ask.

Van texted me that he’d be away all night with Ryann and asked if I was good.

As I let my eyes flutter closed in the quiet darkness of this small room, I know I’m more than good.

Cortland’s body is so hot behind mine, and I can feel his erection against my ass. But he doesn’t say anything or try to press it further against me. He doesn’t even have wandering hands. I’m not sure why I give him bonus points for that, but I do.

I feel him press a kiss to my head and I twist in his arms, butterflies not just in my stomach. They’re in my bloodstream, and I feel like they might actually kill me.

A sliver of moon peeks through the sheer curtains hung over the window just beside the bed, and I see his lip ring glinting in the moonlight.

He has one arm still around me, his shirt off, and I watch the muscles in his shoulders flex as he tucks a lock of hair behind my ear before resting his hand on my face.

I’m in one of his T-shirts that he gave to me before I changed in the bathroom, still not quite ready to—willingly—get undressed in front of him. Or anyone.

“What’re you thinking about, baby?” he whispers in the dark.

So like the boy I knew.

Kind. Gentle.

Safe.

My eyes search his, my fingers grazing the muscles of his chest. “Why did you come back here?” I ask him quietly. He knows I mean to North Carolina.

For a moment, he looks down between us, his jaw clenched tight. He pulls his lip ring between his teeth, and his hand drifts down, over my shoulder, kneading my flesh.

Then he meets my gaze. “A few reasons,” he finally says, and I feel my pulse speed up in my chest, my fingers pressing into his hot skin.

I arch a brow, waiting, holding my breath as I do.

He keeps massaging my upper arm, as if he’s trying to relax me.

“One of them…” He trails off, looking down again. I see his long lashes nearly graze his cheekbones. Then his throat bobs as he swallows. “I’m not sure we ever finished what we started,” he whispers in the dark.

I think of when I first saw him, in front of the student service’s building. Then the next night, so cruel at the party. Slamming me against the wall in the bathroom.

He was so fucking angry.

I think back to that night . I remember leaving his room the next morning, bile working its way up my throat, thinking about all the boys who had seen me naked.

I think about something else, too.

The movie he played after he washed me off in the bathroom.

His eyes meet mine. “I don’t know what happens next, Remi,” he says softly, and his voice sounds hoarse.

His fingers stop working my flesh, but with the arm he has tucked up under me, he pulls me closer.

“I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing any more than you do.

” He presses his brow to mine, and my throat feels tight.

“But I was so fucking mad at you because…”

“Because I tried to send you to prison?”

He shakes his head, but a shadow crosses his face. “Yeah,” he admits. “That, too. But also…”

I feel like I can’t breathe as he pauses, staring at me.

“I thought you forgot. How everything else felt.”

The box of memories in the basement of my mind doesn’t rattle, but another memory surfaces.

Me in his lap, in his truck. At the park. Young love, or the spark of it anyway. Two souls who saw one another. I always thought him and Maya seemed an odd pairing. She seemed cruel and he seemed… kind.

I’d had a crush on him for a while, but from afar. Girls like me—no parents, no prospects, no big, bubbly personality—didn’t get guys like him. The center of attention. Wealthy. Adored.

There wasn’t a world we came together in, until he made it happen.

Before he ripped it all to pieces.

“Then I saw your phone screen,” he continues, and I suck in a breath, thinking of it.

Dawson’s Beach.

I look away, my body hot, but he moves his hand from my arm to my chin, tipping my face up so I look him in the eye.

He put that movie on, after he cleaned me off. Changed me into one of his T-shirts. He was still drunk, as was I, and he was clumsy and he turned the volume down low, but it was my favorite movie.

He knew that from our run-in that time at the park. Before we dated.

“And I knew you didn’t forget. Maybe you can’t.” He runs his thumb over my bottom lip. “Or maybe, Remi… you just don’t want to.”