Chapter 45
45
FOSTER
We’ve been writing almost nonstop for the last week.
Even our day off, we spent it with our heads buried in the music. We’re in a groove, and the end is in sight. And not only for the album, but for the tour.
More than ever, I want to finish, so everything can be Remi the second we walk offstage. She’ll have it rough convincing me to sit for our last interviews unless a lot of seducing is involved. So, not all that different than the other ones.
We’re on the bus outside tonight’s venue when I check my phone and see the text I’ve been waiting for the last several days. A smile tugs at my lips, and once I watch it through, I nod at Dev and Felix on the couch across the aisle.
“Colt break.”
Felix rolls his eyes. “Fuck that. I can take him if he comes for you again.”
Dev snorts. “I would fucking love to see a rematch, but without a solid door between us and him this time. Maybe we should skip it again.”
I would. Honestly, at this point, I’m more concerned with completing this than the very real threat Colt holds to my ribs.
But I have something better than the best, and I’m not fucking waiting to give it to Remi.
Moving my acoustic to the cushions, I step behind the curtain to snag a hoodie and grab Colton’s tablet from his bunk. He’s been inside, checking everything over for later, but he’s on his way back when I step off the bus.
“You going inside?” he asks.
“Nope. I have a woman to surprise.” I clap him on the shoulder. “I’ll stay in yelling distance.”
He waits until I drop to the concrete by the back of the bus before disappearing into it.
After sending the video, I use my bent knees to hold the tablet while I video chat Remi.
She answers and shows me a white ceiling before she picks up the phone. Her hair’s in a messy bun, wisps framing her face, and her pouty lips kick up at the corners. “Hey,” she rasps in the voice that melts my heart and wakes up my dick. Fuck, I’m so gone for her. Gone, gone, gone.
“God, I want to see your tits right now.”
She laughs. “One of those calls, I see?”
“Nah, but we can revisit later. Do you have your laptop with you?”
On a sigh, she shifts and holds it up. “It’s like you don’t know me.”
Colton steps off the bus and props next to the door, just watching from a distance. Because for as much shit as he gives Remi, neither of them ever stops.
“I’m sending you a video, but watch it on your computer. I get that sexy face.”
As I text it to her, she goes all skeptical on me. “Are you going to tell me what the video is? Because I don’t find a cryptic Foster nearly as cute as you do.”
“Fucking liar.” I chuckle when she glares. “Fine. The video’s from the guy about the thing.”
She bites down on her lower lip to suppress a smile.
“Tell me when you hit play.”
In the thirty seconds she takes to adjust and pull up the video, my pulse starts racing. Sending her Sage and Miles was risky, but this one has me nervous for an entirely different reason. This is what was already in the works when Chase said to do more, grovel, and build the life I’ve wanted with her.
Depending on her reaction, it could add a tick to all three.
“Am I actually allowed to watch it when I hit play?” she asks, brat fully engaged. “Or would you prefer I maintain the mystery and only listen?”
“You’re going to watch it, and I’m going to watch you. Hit play.”
I start it on the tablet, and then my eyes return to her. Her brow lowers as the camera pans the street, not showing much other than a few townhomes and parked cars. Without referencing the screen, I know the moment it comes into view. Remi’s lips part. Her eyes dart to me and then back to her computer screen.
“Foster…”
Only then do I verify the front of the three-story Victorian is fully in frame.
“What is this?” she asks. “I thought they were starting demo right away.”
“Which is why I bought it the next day,” I admit.
I planned on paying for it to be renovated and sold, simply to keep the beautiful thing intact. But as my trajectory tends to do with this woman, it changed direction to aim at her.
The paint on the house is still peeling, but the porch steps have been repaired, a few boards replaced.
“They’ve already fixed the foundation,” I tell her.
Her lips turn up, eyes fucking glowing.
“They stabilized the porch for now, but it wasn’t in too bad of shape. They’ll finish before they repaint the exterior.”
The contractor walks inside with the camera, and Remi gasps. Why, I have no idea, this isn’t the impressive part.
“It’s a work-in-progress.” I state the obvious with the ladders, drop cloths, and plastic sheeting. “Most of the crown molding has remained intact, so there’s not much to do there other than paint. They’re going to open up the floor plan throughout to make it flow or some shit.”
She’s beaming now as the video gives a wide sweep, pausing at the base of the stairs. “And the banisters?—”
“—are going to be a fucking pain, apparently. The guy has to bring in a specialist to restore them so they don’t lose the carvings.”
“I love the carvings,” she whispers.
And I love her. Deep love, scary love, addictive love, love I haven’t even figured out yet.
“They fixed the wall to the parlor.” She looks at me. “They didn’t want to open it up, too?”
I slowly shake my head. “They expanded it by knocking out the wall to the next room.”
She nods, and as she refocuses on the video, all my nerves and doubts vanish. I once told Remi she deserved the world. I plan on giving it to her. Because she’s mine. It’ll take a while, but giving her back a little bit of what she’s lost sounds like a damn good place to start.
“But the room isn’t a parlor anymore, Remi.”
“What is it?” she asks, watching as the video approaches the door.
I wait until right before the contractor opens it. “It’s a gallery.”
She has a tiny dip in her brow. “A ga?—”
The words stop, the rest of her stilling.
I don’t need to look to know what she sees. All I need is to stare at her while she experiences what I’m confident checks the box for better than best.
Remi swallows, her head slightly shaking as she blinks away tears. “This is … Foster?”
“I used the investigator who helped me with my parents. The private commissions were harder to track down, but most ran in the same circles. A lot commissioned more than once.” I glance long enough to see the close-up of a snow leopard, but then I’m right back to her. “Not many stopped at a single one-of-a-kind from Dimitri Sinner.”
I have the ultimate one.
She smiles and wipes her tears. “You bought all of these?”
“Every single one I could find. A few more are on their way?—”
“Foster.” She looks at me, and I look at the screen. The mantel. Stone with wrought-iron details. “Tell me those aren’t…”
“They are,” I say.
She inhales shakily, seeing the half dozen cameras the investigator recovered. “I don’t understand. Everything he owned passed to my mom because I was a minor, and she got rid of it all.”
“The investigator found records of a storage locker in your dad’s name. Your mom must not have claimed it, and they auctioned it off. I expected it to lead nowhere, but a lot of the equipment in there ended up with a collector. And it wasn’t just the cameras, baby.”
She stares at the screen, and I can barely make out the reflection in her gorgeous eyes when the video pans to the easel beside the fireplace. Her entire face crumples when she sees the photo of the little auburn-haired girl. What I know to be gorgeous green eyes are closed, her face tilted up while butterflies flutter around her. In the picture, Remi has her hands out where a butterfly landed in her open palm.
“The butterfly garden.” She swipes over her cheeks, only for a new set of tears to trail down them, but she doesn’t care. “But this was just us. He’d taken me along once for a commission, but that picture’s from when he took me back.”
I smile at her. “You have another SD card to not look at. Only this one’s personal pictures. I scanned through some Smith sent but stopped when I found that one. If you decide to look, I’ll see the others then.”
She is doing her little head shake, neither of us watching the video anymore. “I … you…”
“Tell me words, baby.”
“I don’t think I have enough,” she says. Disbelief and something else duel in her eyes until the something else wins out. “I love you.” She smiles, ending me—I said my ending was her. “I love you, Foster.”
Better the second time, and I have no doubt it will hit even harder the next.
“I love you too. Fuck, I’ve loved you, Remi.” I swallow and lick my lips before deciding fuck it. “Come to the last show. I told you I’d play your song for you at MSG, and I want you there when I do.”
She smiles even more. “You wrote me a song, Foster West?”
“I wrote you all of them,” I tell her.
She huffs a laugh and nods, and I nod along with her.
“Meet us before the show. Be with me after. I know that key has been driving you mad. It’s to my place in LA because the house in Utah currently has a fucking padlock. But I’ll be anywhere as long as you’re there with me.”
“Yes,” she says. “I’ll be there before and after.”
I smile, the rest of my life smiling back at me. “I’ll see you in two days then.”
“I’ll be seeing you in two.”
The call ends. I close my eyes.
Remi doesn’t come to the show.