Page 52

CHAPTER

THIRTY-NINE

CORTLAND

The next morning, after I gas up the truck, I get in, pulling the door shut and tossing a bag onto Remi’s lap.

She catches it as I start the engine, turn up the music.

“Black Honey” by Thrice.

My phone buzzes in my pocket and I think about ignoring it, but my mind goes to Tristan and I pull it out, checking my screen.

Two messages.

Dad

I found a house. Come for dinner after the game next weekend?

And Storm.

Storm

We’re great, thanks for asking. All of us survived the night at the drug den, and Chase is sleeping in a puddle of his own vomit. Have fun with her, but tonight, we’ll all be at the cabin.

I laugh, shaking my head, but turn my phone on silent, flip it face down in the center console and pull out onto the road.

Remi doesn’t say anything about me checking my phone, instead she’s busy opening up the package I tossed her way. “How did you know?” she asks me. “You creepy stalker.”

I smile as I rest one arm on the window ledge, the other on the wheel as we merge onto the highway, determined to forget about my dad and Maya and Chase for today. “You just answered your own question.”

I hear her laugh, but her mouth is full of Reese’s, so it’s muffled.

I glance over at her, see her sleepy eyes, messy hair.

She’s in one of my red and orange flannel shirts.

It swamps her, and I drove her back to her cabin so she could change, but she insisted on staying in it.

She’s got on leggings and her white Chucks, and she said her cousin, Van, wasn’t there.

Which means he’s probably at the drug den too.

I grind my teeth thinking of him, but don’t say anything. Turns out, at best, he’s her step-cousin, not that I would care either way. Not about that part.

I just don’t want anyone else touching her.

There’s so much between us besides the giant center console and the touchscreen of my truck.

Oceans of memories and shit we could psychoanalyze.

But I think about Tristan sleeping in that hospital bed, Dad on the chair next to him, his head bowed over the Bible, praying for his soul.

I know it’s all bullshit. We only have the now.

There’s no God to pray to. No higher power that’ll forgive us our sins.

And if we fuck up the now, just like with me and Remi, there’s nothing to make that all go away.

I was raised in church, crowding into that stuffy Baptist building every Sunday like most of the town of Beckley, West Virginia.

But I knew better. I saw the devil in my mother’s eyes every day when she looked at me like I wasn’t shit.

When no matter what I did, I couldn’t please her.

Tristan had it worse, because he’s smaller, non-athletic. She dominated him physically.

With me, she just tore me down. Humiliation was her favorite game. When I was six years old and we went camping, Mom deciding to tag along this time, I’d been wetting the bed at night. We went out to the crowded lake, but before I could go out, she took me to the bathroom and handed me a diaper.

I had to wear it under my swimsuit, and because it wasn’t waterproof, I was terrified to go past knee-deep in the lake, in case anyone saw my fucking diaper.

“Learn to pee on the potty like a big boy and you won’t get treated like a baby, Cort,” she’d said, kissing the top of my head when we all walked home from the lake that day, her laying out in the sun and grinning at my obvious discomfort every few minutes while she applied suntan lotion.

Tristan wet the bed not long after that. He came to me. I changed his sheets, did the laundry myself so Mom never found out.

I hold all of that shit down, knowing nothing could make up for my mom’s cruelty, even if she decided she wanted to be sorry.

Nothing can make up for what’s between me and Remi either.

So we don’t bring up the shit that doesn’t matter.

What happened to her. What happened to me.

What’s going to happen when this is all over.

It’ll hurt. I know that. But I can’t give her up just yet. And she’s nothing like my mom. Even when she went to the cops, even last night in the party cabin when she could have, I don’t think she’d ever intentionally try to humiliate me.

I always saw that goodness in her. Always.

“How long have you been stalking me, Cort?” she asks after a moment, and I see she’s gone through three Reese’s cups. She deserves them for all the work she did in my truck last night.

Holding her close to me in the little bed of the empty cabin—thanks to Storm’s distractions—was like… heaven on earth.

I steal another look at her. Her hair is in braids again, the orange fading just enough to show hints of her natural dark blonde. She’s fucking beautiful.

“Cort?” I counter, answering her question. It’s what most people call me. But Remi Ocean is not most people, and she gave up that nickname for me after that night. I think she used it then to get my attention. To tell me she was scared.

I push that aside as I stare at the road.

The traffic is nearly non-existent as we head down the highway, the foliage of the mountains already turning yellow and orange with the start of fall. It’s breathtaking to look at, and in West Virginia, it’s even better.

I wonder if Remi would like it there.

If she’d ever let me take her.

I wonder how temporary this is.

My chest tightens and I rub my thumb over my sternum, trying not to think about that.

“You don’t like it?” she asks me. “When I call you that?”

I shrug, glancing over at her and seeing her watching me. The entire bag of Reese’s is still on her lap, and she looks carefree, her feet tucked up under her, no doubt dirtying my seats.

“You can call me what you want,” I tell her, eyes back on the road. I brush my sunglasses up over my head. It’s kind of gray out now, clouds rolling through.

“What about asshole?” she quips.

“Good one.”

I hear her laugh softly. “Bastard?”

“I’ve got a dad, thank you.”

A moment’s pause, and I think about her stepdad. I know her mom died when she was younger and I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if I hadn’t had a mom.

Tristan would be so much better off.

But I don’t know much about Remi’s stepdad. We never really got to that point. Brinklin said his dad brushed shoulders with him, something about his company and political donations.

Mr. Sykes, Brink’s dad, is a raging dick underneath his quiet psychopath, so if he thinks someone is bad, they probably are.

“How’s your stepdad?” I ask her, keeping my tone light.

She clears her throat. “He’s good.” Her words are stiff, almost robotic.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and I grip my steering wheel tighter. “Just good?”

Another pause. Then, “I’m meeting him in a couple of weeks.

In Raleigh. Where he moved to. Although our house hasn’t sold yet.

” She sounds despondent. Unease crawls down my spine.

It’s the same tone she had that night… when Chase was fucking her.

I should’ve paid more attention to that.

I was too out of it, but I remember it. I’m sure she does, too.

I shift in my seat. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she mutters.

A tense silence stretches between us. I know her stepdad is wealthy, and I was concerned about that, in the aftermath of what went down.

With all the bruises on her body—bruises I don’t even remember causing—and the money her stepdad would be able to throw around for bribes or whatever illegal shit went down in small town court systems, I was terrified.

But it didn’t pan out. He didn’t have the connections mine and the pack’s family did. It was wolf territory, like it or not. Not anything to do with us, as football players, but with our families, with money. Influence.

The football probably didn’t hurt.

I think about those bruises my lawyers informed me she had. About when I accused her of lying in the cemetery and she didn’t deny it.

“You get along with him?” I try to keep my tone casual, but there’s an edge to my words that I can’t quite bite back. I’ve become used to protecting her. From everything except myself.

I hear the rustle of the bag of Reese’s and see she’s pulling one out, but she doesn’t answer me.

I flex my jaw. “Remi? You can talk to me, you know.”

She stuffs the chocolate in her mouth, like she’s looking for an excuse not to speak. Or just shutting down.

Frustrated, I hit my open hand against the steering wheel. I see, out of the corner of my eye, she flinches, swallowing down her chocolate, fisting the bag in her hands until her knuckles blanch.

“Has he hurt you, baby?” I ask, my temper rising as I think about my mother. “Ever touched you?” I look over at her, my heart racing as I try to breathe. She’s staring straight ahead, her face pale white.

I keep my eyes on the road, my speed even, despite the fact my fingers are aching on the wheel.

“Jesus Christ, don’t do this shit. Talk to me.”

She doesn’t say a word. I think about Mom slapping me in the face.

Her eyes sparking at my mortification. Her screaming at Dad.

The way she cut him down. “Fucking redneck, piece of shit truck driver. You’re a fucking truck driver, Ray.

You’re fucking nothing. I shouldn’t have to do shit in this house, because you do nothing! ”

I want to yank the wheel, pull over on the side of the road and scream at her to talk to me. If her dad has treated her like my mom treated me, I’ll fucking kill him.

“Remi!” I shout her name and she flinches again, turning her head to me.

“Don’t yell at me.” Her words are quiet, and I try to catch my breath.

I reach across the console and grab her hand, yanking it over to my lap, gripping it tightly. “Fuck, I’m sorry. Just… please don’t shut me out. Answer me when I ask you a fucking question.”