I watched his throat move as he swallowed hard, and I pressed my lips together while I thought about what had to come next.
He nudged my chin until I looked up and saw the love shining in his eyes. My heart raced, and my chest began to hurt like a vise had wrapped around my body, squeezing until the pain was almost unbearable. I must not have done a good job hiding it because his furrowed brow appeared a moment later, then he rested it against my forehead.
He lowered his voice, speaking as if he were praying. “Just tell me.”
My hands were clutching his forearms, and I didn’t remember moving them, but the support he offered was the only thing keeping me on my feet.
“It’s going to change everything,” I admitted. “I’m afraid.” Afraid was the understatement of the century. I was horrified, more than ready to run away from my problems than face them. It scared me so much, I didn’t want to even think about what might happen between us.
“Trust me.” His breath mixed with mine, and the emotion of the moment caught me off guard.
I’d started the night with much different expectations than where we were at, and I couldn’t even concentrate on anything but Remy’s smell. Or his touch. Or the way he felt against my body as he held me.
I trusted him. He might very well be the only person I did trust.
Time to put your money where your mouth is.
“That night…” I took a deep breath and kept going, even though Remy froze. “That night. I didn’t sleep with Danny to hurt you. I know you think I did. I didn’t love him, and I don’t think he loved me either.”
“He did,” Remy interrupted with a melancholy whisper. “He loved you.”
I shook my head, ignoring the thoughts that came with his words, the memories I’d never be able to get rid of.
“I don’t care what happened between you. I don’t care if you loved him, if you screwed him for revenge, any of it. I don’t care that you picked him.”
“I didn’t pick him,” I blurted as I pulled out of Remy’s grasp.
Shock and confusion lined his face as I stepped back, pulling away from him. Until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the couch and I sat down with a small sigh.
“We went back to their house and broke into Rose’s vodka from their trip to Mexico. We were drunk, Remy, and that’s no excuse. But by the time I told him to stop, it was too late. We, the both of us, were too far gone.”
I put my head in my hands, too ashamed to look up at him. Too distraught at the idea that he’d know my biggest regret.
“I didn’t stop him,” I whispered brokenly. “Because I was caught up in the moment and for a minute, I thought it was you with me. But it wasn’t you. It was Danny.” The tears I hadn’t yet cried started to stream out of my closed eyes in rivulets that I didn’t think were possible.
My eyes were clenched so tightly and my heart pounded so loudly in my ears that I didn’t hear Remy move until he was pulling my hands away from my face.
“Parker.” His soft voice filtered past the tears and into my mind. “Parker, you didn’t do anything wrong.” There was a steely undertone to his voice, a silent rage that I’d never heard before, and I couldn’t figure out why. Why would he be so mad at me for telling him the truth?
“I swear, if Danny wasn’t dead, I’d rip his fucking heart out of his chest and make him eat it,” he growled.
I opened my eyes in shock, unable to see Remy’s face clearly through my veil of tears.
“Parker, you told him to stop. It doesn’t matter how much he’d had to drink. Or how much you’d had to drink. When you say ‘no,’ there’s no pushing that aside.”
He rocked back on his heels, holding on to my hands like they were his only lifeline.
“Fuck, Parker. All this time, you’ve held on to his secret. Why?”
I sniffled, hiccuping when my nose finally felt clear. “I didn’t tell him to stop until it was too late to stop.”
Remy cursed and then leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “It’s never too late to stop.”
I opened my mouth, ready to defend Danny again, to tell Remy that I’d wanted it, and then I shut my mouth because it was a lie.
I didn’t regret Nox, not in the slightest. But I hadn’t wanted Danny, and he’d known that. Even in the aftermath of that night, Danny kept apologizing and telling me that he’d make it right. He knew.
“I love you, Parker.” Remy kissed me on the lips, a soft and promising kiss of what was to come. “And if you don’t want anyone to know, I’ll respect it. If you want to tell the world, I’ll stand by your side while you do it. No matter what, I’m here for you. I love you, and it doesn’t change anything.”
“No,” I told him. “I don’t want anyone else to know. I don’t want Nox to know. I just… I needed you to know that I didn’t choose him, Remy. It was you. It’s always been you.”
When he carried me into the bedroom a few minutes later, refusing to let me out of his arms, I felt the final piece of the wall I’d surrounded myself with fall away. I could breathe again after six years of pent-up secrets hanging over my head like a rusty guillotine. For the first time, I felt like our future could be perfect. I didn’t have to run away. Not from Remy. He held me in his arms, wrapped in a blanket while I cried for the past.
“I’m here, Parker.” His soothing voice filled the cracks and holes in my heart, healing the broken pieces of my soul. “I love you, and I love Nox. We’re going to be a family, I promise.”
Sometime in the middle of Remy telling me everything I’d ever wanted to hear, I think I fell asleep against his chest. That didn’t stop him, though. Every time I woke up, shifting in his arms, Remy was there with a sweet word and a kiss in the dark.
The phone rang about the time the sun started to filter through the window, and Remy groaned when I moved off his chest to answer it.
“Hello?” I mumbled, not even sure whose phone I answered.
“Oh, thank heavens,” Rose gasped, crying through the other end of the call. “Parker, I’m so sorry. Nox is gone.”
“What?” I had to be mistaken. But my heart stuttering in my chest betrayed my doubt.
“Nox is missing, Parker. I’m so sorry. We didn’t even realize he was gone. He disappeared in the middle of the night.”
25
Remy
Parker fell out of bed, a scream leaving her lips as she hit the floor. “Check the fucking cemetery, Rose,” she shouted into the phone, and I was up out of bed immediately. “That’s where he was found last time.”
Her panic-filled eyes met mine, and I was already putting clothes on. Faint strains of conversation hit me, enough to make it clear that Nox wasn’t at Rose’s house and that they couldn’t find him.
“Daisy.” I whistled sharply and Daisy appeared from wherever she’d been camped out in the house, most likely in the room that had quickly become Nox’s. Her ears were standing at attention, waiting for an order. “Time to go to work.”
Keeping the terror and tremor out of my voice so that I could do my job and handle Daisy took an inhuman effort that I wasn’t entirely sure I had at the moment. Nox meant everything to Parker, and to me. Once I had my shoes on, I walked into Nox’s room, grabbing his jacket from the top of his bed, just in case.