“Remi?”
“Yeah, no, this is Vanessa, I’m just ... stroking out over here about the nickname.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Good morning, Ness,” I amended.
“Firefly?That little shit, she did not share that with her friends.” Then she muttered something under her breath that I couldn’t catch.
“What was that?”
“Oh, just that the giant hickey on the side of her neck makes a lot more sense now.”
I slicked my tongue over my teeth, resting my head back as I slammed my eyes shut, thankful Vanessa couldn’t see the heat climbing up my cheeks. “What can I do for you?”
“Right.” She cleared her throat. “Remi won’t call you because she’s been handling her own shit for ten years, and while I’m all about being an independent woman, I’m also not a huge fan of arriving at work to see my friend being harassed by paparazzi.”
My head snapped up. “She was what?”
“Maybeharassedis a strong word, but she was unloading some stuff from the parking lot, and those nosy little fuckers were snapping pics and asking her questions about you, and it was a whole thing. Had her pretty flustered, and I told her to call you, but she insisted on not bothering you because it wasn’t your fault.”
The silence that came after this statement very clearly pointed to the fact that it was, in fact, my fault, and we both knew it.
“They still there?”
She hummed. “Hanging just past the property line. I think they’re waiting for you, pretty boy.”
I clenched my jaw and turned the truck on, the roar of the engine ratcheting up the pulse racing in my ears to an unhealthy level. “Give me fifteen minutes and they’ll get what they want.”
“Glad to hear it. I may go entertain myself in the meantime, but it’s good to know you’re so responsive.”
The drive over wasn’t just tense—I thought I’d snap the steering wheel in half from the pressure of my clenched fists.
This was my dad. It had to have been.
The cavern inside my chest was brittle, like if I breathed in too deeply, hairline cracks would appear. This was Remi’s nightmare, playing out on her metaphorical front yard. It was so much more pleasant to spend my morning obsessing over the way she tasted, over the feel of her soft skin under my hands, the noises she made when my tongue touched hers. Even though she’d pulled back, our parting hadn’t felt like a rejection. It hadn’t felt like defeat.
But now defeat was the thing knocking at the door, an ominous tapping with cruel, bony fingers.
If my dad was behind it, he’d picked a hell of a weapon. The irony, of course, was that prior to this, I was always more than capable of detonating my own kind of destruction. Now that I’d started making better decisions—decisions meant to inject distance between us—he was snapping at my heels, trying to light fire to the entire thing.
When I was tiptoeing toward something good, something pure in my life, something untainted by him, he had to do this.
By the time I arrived at the shelter, I was well and truly pissed off, anger rolling off me in waves.
Except they were gone.
There were no guys with cameras. Only two cars were in the parking lot—Remi’s Toyota and the white Jeep that belonged to Ness.
I hopped out of my seat, slamming the door behind me so hard that the entire truck rocked from the force. The fact that they’d left was good, and yet I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that I didn’t get to smash someone’s camera.
And the moment I did, they would have another headline. Another piece of ammunition. I sank against the side of my truck and scrubbed my face with my hands.
“Ness is in so much trouble.”
The sound of Remi’s voice made me drop my hands and straighten. She approached, her arms crossed over her stomach. Her hair was down, covering the thin straps of a royal-blue tank that made her eyes bright like jewels.
Those eyes could hardly meet mine, and the realization slid like a knife into my gut, quick and sharp and soundless.
“What’d they say to you?”