“Boy sleepovers are gross,” Remi observed.
Brick played dirty. While Spencer went upstairs to change, Brick hid Remi’s boots in the dining room so she couldn’t sneak out before they’d had their little talk.
He bided his time through the inevitable catching up portion of the evening. Through the popcorn making and the ensuing rounds of competitive Jenga. Nostalgia slapped at him. The three of them had done just this in this exact room. A fire roaring in the fireplace. A movie no one paid attention to on the TV. His grandmother providing the popcorn. His grandfather, the commentary.
His grandparents would have approved.
It felt…right. Like they all belonged here. But anyone could stick around for the good times. That wasn’t the true test. And Brick knew from experience that most wouldn’t stick through the bad, the hard, the inconvenient. The new, shiny adventure would always beckon to some to shake the dust off their shoes and move on.
Spencer seemed good, happy even. He worked in sales in a complicated position Brick had given up on understanding years ago. He kept them entertained with stories about Detroit and his friends, razzing Remi, reminiscing with Brick. The mood was light like it always was with Spence around.
But every few minutes, Brick would lock gazes with Remi and the smolder there threatened to ignite again. He couldn’t ignore it. And if he wanted answers out of her, he was going to have to embrace it.
So he waited until Spencer was snoring in the recliner. Remi was curled in a ball on the end of the couch under a throw his grandmother had knitted. Brick occupied the opposite end, his feet propped on the coffee table. Something his grandparents would not have approved of.
Remi stirred.
“Do you want me to turn on more lights?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
She shook her head. Those emerald eyes searching his face.
“Are you hungry? Cold?”
“No.”
He kicked off the quilt he’d used to cover his legs. “Then come here. I want to show you something.”
He towed her off the couch and back into the dark hallway, noting how she drew closer to him in the dark. She might not like him right now, but he damn well made her feel safer. He led her to the door and nudged it open.
“I did a little rearranging,” he said, fumbling for the light switch. Finding it, he moved aside so she could step out first.
“Oh, come on,” she groaned. “Why’d you go and show me a thing like this when I’m trying to stay mad at you?”
She wandered down the ramp into the room. Where kayaks and outdoor gear had once hibernated, clean work tables and empty shelves stood, waiting. He’d put down drop cloths in the center of the space and built a framework for her to hang larger canvases.
He’d rescued several of his grandmother’s glass canning jars from the basement and grouped them on the work tables.
“I changed out the lightbulbs in here to those smart LED ones,” he explained, pointing at the pitched ceiling. “You can download an app and change the color and brightness.”
She looked up and sighed.
“I also cleaned out Pop’s old tool cabinet,” he said, gesturing at the red metal chest. “You can use it for storage. Or whatever.”
He watched as she wandered the space, pausing to run a hand over neat stacks of boards. “Those are if you decide to make your canvases.” He scraped a hand over the back of his neck, wishing she would say something.
She glanced his way again, a considering look on her pretty face.
“I honestly don’t know what the hell to do with you,” she said finally. “One minute you’re pushing my buttons, the next you’re stealing my breath. You make my head spin.”
“Talk to me, Remington. Tell me what happened.”
“You never give up, do you?”
“Not when it matters.”
“Fine. You asked for it.” She hopped up on one of the folding tables and let her legs dangle. “There was an accident. My friend and I were driving back to her place after my showing at a gallery downtown.”
“You had a showing?”
She bit her lip. “I’m gonna say this, and it’s gonna sound like I’m being funny, but I’m kind of a big deal. Or I was. Or I still might be. I don’t really know. I’ve been painting. But not as Remi Ford. To the art community, I’m Alessandra Ballard.”
“Why?”
She swung her legs. “Because Remi Ford got arrested for skinny dipping. Because she’s a troublemaking screw-up who’s always on the brink of disaster.”
“That’s not who you are.”
“That’s who people here see me as. I’m the girl who fixed the street hockey championship. Or the one who got in a bar fight when she was nineteen. I didn’t want that girl following me into the world. So I’m Alessandra Ballard who wears beautiful clothes, goes to fancy parties, and paints music.”
He didn’t much care for the idea that Remi felt she had to hide who she really was. But he decided not to derail the conversation into an argument. Yet.
“Anyway, my friend Camille was driving us back to her place. It was late. The roads were icy. We ended up going through a guardrail. I broke my arm, but Camille was really hurt. She was knocked unconscious. And there we were, stuck in the dark. I felt so…helpless. So alone. I didn’t know if the car was going to slide into the blackness. I didn’t know what was in the blackness. A ravine. A river. A gentle slope. I didn’t know.”
Not wanting to distract her from the tale, he was careful not to move a muscle. But his arms ached to hold on to her so she’d remember she wasn’t alone.
“Anyway, we were finally rescued. I didn’t realize at the time that my arm was broken. I was more worried about Camille. She still hadn’t woken up. They wouldn’t let me go to the hospital with her, and I was rightfully very upset. They had an officer drive me home.”
She bit her lip and looked to the side.
“Rajesh—that’s my agent—showed up at my place to tell me how the showing had gone, but I ruined his fun with an asthma attack. The cold, the adrenaline. Being upset. Anyway, he called an ambulance, which, for the record, I still think was overreacting.”
“And that’s when they noticed your arm?” Brick guessed.
She nodded.
“And that’s why you’re afraid of the dark.” Because she thought her friend was dying next to her in the dark and there was nothing she could do. Her pain, her fear was agony for him.
She nodded again, eyes closed.
“Breathe.”
He closed the distance between them and took her hands, hating the feel of the cast. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, then took a slow, deep breath. She kept on breathing until her shoulders lowered.
“You look like you could use a breath or two,” she observed.
“You could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“You broke your arm. That’s still too much for me.”
“Before you go all big brothery, you might as well hear the rest.”
“There’s more?”
“Camille is still in the hospital. I don’t know how badly she was hurt. I don’t even know if she regained consciousness. She hasn’t answered any of my calls or emails. So it’s hard not to imagine the worst.”