Chapter 38
38
FOSTER
Before…
“Let me get you my card, son,” Daniel says. “In case you hear from her.” His gaze falls to the hardwood between us. “I don’t think any of us will, but my wife loved her. If I can ever get a part of Rebecca back in my life, I’ll find a way to forgive.”
I nod, still not paying much attention. The razor edge between heartache and doubt I’m teetering on requires a hell of a lot of resources.
Daniel reaches into the pocket of a black police jacket hung on a hook by the door. “Damn.” His hand returns empty. “I have some stashed in my office. I’ll be right back.”
He disappears through the arch, and I run a hand through my hair again. I’m still holding the funeral program in the other, and when I set it down, my gaze lands on what was beneath it. The corner of a blue sparkly phone case sticks out with half of a camera lens exposed.
I lift the program and uncover exactly what I expect.
Remi’s phone.
My heart shutters to a stop for a beat, but in the next one, I swipe it, letting the rest fall back into place. I check for Daniel as I pass the archway, and then I’m out the door. Fuck his card. King of Deceit, after all.
Given I took it from the police chief’s house, sticking around sounds like the worst idea. I drive a couple blocks before I park. The phone’s dead, so I plug it into my charger, a spiderweb of cracks on the screen.
As the longest wait of my life commences, mine goes off again. As unhelpful as Chase’s thoughts proved earlier, I pull it from my pocket. I need to do something.
“Hey,” I answer, eyes on Remi’s screen, waiting for it to come to life.
“Fuck, you make me feel like an ex with the way you ignore me,” he gripes. Then, without a chance for me to respond, “Where are you, brother? You ducked out last night and have been MIA since. We’re going to fucking climb.”
“No, we’re not.” I say, earning a groan.
“Come. On. I want to scale a wall, see the world from above. Or at least the rest of the rock climbing gym,” he says fast. “We need to get you out of this funk, so get your ass downtown. We’ll drink away your sorrows after—find a roof, cry it out, rise from the ashes.”
“Dude, I’m in Ohio.”
He’s silent for several seconds. “I thought you were kidding. You actually went after this chick?”
“She wouldn’t just?—”
“She fucking did, Foster. Jesus, what is it going to take for you to realize you got played? You need to watch her fuck another guy? Or will you still claim some bullshit excuse?”
“Could you not be a dick for once?” I bite back.
“Right. I’m the problem.” A car door slams. “I’m not the one constantly choosing some imaginary relationship over his family. And before you defend her yet again, it was imaginary. Whatever you have in your head is wrong, and it’s time you finally admit it. This bored cocktease used you for entertainment purposes and fucked off before your clingy ass found her.”
My jaw clenches. The urge to lose it on him is as real as the last time he pulled this shit. But the words stay locked behind my teeth.
“What, can’t argue because you know it’s true?” he says after a beat. “Maybe you deserve this.”
“Maybe I deserve a best friend who isn’t so goddamn jealous anytime I want to have a life outside of him.” I grip the steering wheel hard enough my knuckles turn white. “I get it, Chase. You don’t have shit going for you, and you want me at the bottom with you. So, yeah, you are the fucking problem.”
He’s taking the brunt of the mess of thoughts and emotions inside me right now, but I’m so fucking tired of him deciding when he’s going to support me and when he wants to turn on me. The last few months, it feels like I breathe wrong, and he’s pissed.
Chase’s laugh sounds cruel. “Yeah, brother. I’m jealous and want you at the bottom with me. So much for us being in it together—all sides, right? Guess that only applies until something better comes along.” His car starts, music blaring through the speakers. He shouts over it. “Hell, Foster, your old man is peeking through. He chose his other kid over you. Now you’re choosing the cu?—”
I end the call. Close my eyes and breathe before I lose it.
Second time. The second fucking time he’s used the truth to damage. Every word slashes at what’s already been raw and throbbing.
My eyes land on Remi’s phone in the cupholder when the screen lights up, charged enough to turn on. Swapping out mine for hers, I hit the power button. And then after a couple excruciating seconds, I’m staring at a passcode screen and a keyboard full of letters.
I run through conversations in my head I’m not even sure matter anymore before I start trying. And on the fourth attempt, when her phone unlocks, I can’t tell if it hurts or soothes that it worked.
D-A-R-L-I-N.
Then I sit there. I stare at the plain black background, the apps for recording and editing, the text messages and photos icons.
What the fuck am I doing ? Why am I here ?
Now that it’s all at my fingertips, it feels wrong to go through her phone, an invasion of her privacy. Although, if she left it behind, does it even matter? Fuck. It matters to me. I can’t stop feeling like one more missing detail and everything will make sense, and at the end is Remi.
The doubt continues chipping away at me, and not only about going through her shit. I’m stuck in a loop of trying to decide my next step when a text comes through on my phone.
Chase .
Even though I still haven’t read most of the others he’s sent, with a swipe, I read this one.
I am so fucking sorry, brother. Please answer so I can apologize.
But I don’t. I hit ignore when his stupid picture pops up. Let him wade through the guilt. If I have to hurt because of what he said, he deserves some of the pain too.
Instead I decide to open Remi’s messages. I’m in the running for the most recent unread messages, and I copy the number for my competition into my own phone, then I call.
* * *
Walking into the coffee shop for the second time today, I scan the tables. I stall on the only familiar face—and the face itself is only newly familiar thanks to her contact photo.
I drag out the chair across from Sage and drop into it.
Her eyes flit up to me, a flash of disbelief in her stare as she looks me over. “Well … at least she had good taste.”
“Has,” I reply. “Here. It was on the table at her stepdad’s house.”
I set Remi’s phone on the table between us, and she snatches it before I even retract my hand.
“The passcode’s…” I trail off since she already has it unlocked.
She raises her brows but keeps her attention on the screen. “My best friend might not be a sharer, but you won’t find anyone who knows Remi Sinner better.”
The name’s still odd, and I avert my gaze. My phone goes off, and I fish it out long enough to see Chase’s picture before hitting ignore. Again.
“Damn, bitch,” Sage whispers, bringing my attention back. She has the phone flat on the table. “What were you doing?”
I glance down at the text thread she’s scrolling through—with R . All emojis. Single ones and combinations. Sage pauses every now and then, deciphering them maybe. That’s what I’m doing upside down. A plane and pleading face a few weeks ago. Folded hands, a heart, the world from last month. A calendar and a shrug. Car, arrow, house.
But not a single one since the day before she disappeared on me.
The gut-wrenching one is what she sent him on Halloween. A heart and a fairy.
I swallow, regretting not going through the phone before coming here. Such a great fucking guy—upholding her privacy so I could be flayed open in public.
“You really think they were together?”
“I mean…” Sage’s eyes rise to mine, and she half-shrugs. “I thought they might have been before she left with him. And seeing these messages…”
I watch the phone, my leg bouncing under the table. “But does it feel right? She just vanishes without saying anything to you? I can’t believe she’d screw me over like that either. Planning shit with me and then running off with some guy?—”
“He’s not just some guy, Foster.” An apology floods her eyes, and I hate it. “Roman’s always been there. They’ve been close for a long time, even closer the last two years. Feelings evolve. I’m sorry you got caught up in it.” She huffs, folding her arms on the table in front of her. “As for her ditching me? I was never part of Remi’s escape plan. She just executed it sooner than I expected. I thought she’d at least tell me and give us a chance to stay friends, but I guess not.”
I shake my head, teeth grinding, and then I scrub a hand over my face before dragging it through my hair. “She wouldn’t do that to me,” I finally get out.
The teary look I’m met with hits so deep in my chest I sit back. It isn’t apologetic anymore but filled with pity, like I’m so wrong it should pain me.
I’m not, though. Despite what Daniel said, what Sage confirmed, Remi Saint would never hurt me this way.
But Remi Sinner…
A tightness creeps into my throat, and I tongue at my cheek, swiping Remi’s phone as I stand. “Thanks for meeting me.”
I swerve around people on my way out, needing air. Needing answers. Or maybe I’m just desperate for better ones. Ones which don’t scrape. She’s not supposed to scrape.
Pushing out the door, I head across the street toward the square. Going where, I don’t even know, but I want distance from everything right now. I want to go lie on a park bench and call the only person in this world who feels like they were made for me. Who the universe lined up with my broken pieces. Unless it never did, and she used them to cut me instead.
My phone starts up again, and I ignore Chase without looking. As I step onto the curb, I hear my name.
I glance over my shoulder, and Sage has her arms crossed over her chest, her long sweater pulled tight around her as she rushes after me in the cold breeze.
“Wait,” she says.
I turn the rest of the way around, and she sighs and comes to a stop in front of me, chewing on her lower lip. Her long ebony hair blows over her face, and she brushes it away.
“She talked about you.”
My gaze falls to the sidewalk. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
“She never gave me the juicy shit, but she admitted to having a Foster. Foster the wandering boy.”
I shake my head. “Why are you telling me this?”
She shrugs with one shoulder. “Because I want to be wrong, and maybe you want to wander a little more.” She pulls out her phone, thumbs moving. “Roman mentioned a lake house up north a couple times—he’d go there some weekends. I don’t know the exact address, but I remember a few things.”
A text comes through, and I check what she sent. The lake’s name and details to help find the house. A huge tree in the side yard and a porch swing.
“It might be a long shot. I planned on checking once the idea of her abandoning me doesn’t hurt as much.” She blinks away tears and tips her chin a little higher to deny them.
“I’m sorry she left you,” I tell her.
Sage nods and forces a sad smile. “I’m sorry she left you, too. Let me know if you find her? We can start a support group or something.”
She has a begging in her eyes that I feel in my bones as I back away from her. I spin, heading to my car while another round of messages I won’t read floods my phone.
* * *
I pull up shortly after dark. A few cars were parked in driveways as I drove in, but otherwise the street’s abandoned where it circles the lake. It looks like a majority of the community has been for the winter.
Except, on this stretch, lights come from inside one house. I stop across the street, a tree-lined divider separating me. A big oak towers in the side yard, and on the porch, there’s a vague shadow in the corner, hinting at a swing.
I stay in the rental a little longer. I want a sign that what I’m doing is the right thing or if I should leave. Let Remi Sinner live the life she’s chosen instead of the one I desperately wanted to start with Remi Saint.
A sinner disguised as a saint.
When I climb out of my car, the only sound is the leaves scraping over the concrete in the icy breeze. There’s a picture window in front of the little house. It’s cute, picturesque. The kind of place I imagine Remi would love, where she would chase shots.
I’d smile if I weren’t feeling less and less like I belong here. I haven’t brought myself to move yet when I see movement inside. And there she is. She walks into the room and then to the open kitchen, leaning over the back of a chair and looking at the laptop on the kitchen table. She moves the hair from in front of her face, and my chest constricts. It’s her. She’s fucking gorgeous. She’s real. She’s here.
I’m about to cross the street when headlights flash from a car rounding the corner. I stop, watching it slow and pull into the house’s driveway and then wait for the door on the detached garage. Remi glances over her shoulder as the hum from the motor reaches me, and I’m frozen in place.
Someone just came home.
Came home to her.
As a guy climbs out of the car, Remi abandons her laptop. She rushes through the kitchen in that direction, disappearing while he grabs a grocery bag from the back seat. It allows me a direct, unmistakable view of him.
Roman. Her friend.
Within seconds she reappears through a side door. She runs across the wooden deck and down the steps toward him. He’s barely turned around as she reaches him, but he manages to catch her, dropping the bag. Her arms go around his neck, his lock around her. She buries her nose in his coat.
And every millisecond is soul-crushing.
My nostrils flare as I watch them, reality unavoidable. The lies swimming in my mind.
She backs away, and he dips down for the bag before pulling her to his side and under his arm. Then they walk inside together. I nod to myself, forcing it all down.
Remi said she didn’t want it to be real, and I’m the clueless fuck who decided it was.
The shock and disbelief of having everything I ever wanted within reach and then watching it be ripped away has already turned. She knew. She knew what happened with my dad, and she still led me on like that?
Even though my phone vibrates in my pocket, I dig out the other one. The sparkles on the cover glint in the moonlight. You can always run to me, darlin’ repeats in my head. And I hate every memory cycling in there too.
“Goodbye, Remi.”
I draw my arm back and launch the phone toward the house, bouncing it off the porch railing into a bush.
Climbing back in the car, I text Sage.
You were right. About it all.
I crank the engine and tear down the street, needing to get the fuck away from here. To leave her with him at Echo Lake. The illusion of us over.
When I reach the main road, Chase has singed my last damn nerve with the incessant calling and texting. Sometimes it’s not fucking about him, and he needs to back the hell off.
I dig out my phone at the stop sign, over it all.
“What, Chase?” I snap, not even checking the stupid picture on the screen. “It better be fucking life or death because I’m not?—”
“Foster.” The panicked voice that’s not quite Chase’s has never sounded so fucking serious in our entire lives. I glance at the screen, see Colton snarling in the contact picture, and he croaks it again, “Foster.”
Even more broken.
“What happened?” I ask.
As Colt fights to talk through tears, existence altering the more he says, I stare into the rearview mirror at a sliver of the light across the lake. Light from the window of the house of the girl who I would have given up everything for.
The girl who was supposed to be my everything.
Only she wound up destroying part of me instead. And I might have just lost the rest because of her too.