Chapter 47
47
FOSTER
We play MSG five nights later. Remi’s in the VIP tent, watching every second.
And when I play her song, she’s the only person in the world.
It’s the song that started as whispers in Paris, then built more as my muse began to reveal herself in pieces. I wrote the lyrics while we found each other again, not even realizing what they were until they were complete. Spread across different pages in my notebook and in different places on my phone.
The guys and I finished the details in the final week of the tour.
I go rogue, performing it to a sold-out crowd.
But I made a promise.
We fly to Utah the next day so Remi can touch every picture and camera in the gallery.
“I think I like this place,” she says, dropping onto the chaise in the center of the room.
“I know I like it with you in it. Maybe we should stay.”
Hammers bang on the other side of the wall, saws buzzing, music blaring from the construction workers, and her lips twitch. “Home sweet home.”
We don’t stay—yet.
Nine weeks after Daniel dies, Remi receives a call neither of us expects. After we walked out of the hospital, she washed her hands of it all, ready for a life beyond the muted one she endured for so long.
But sometimes an opportunity is too delicious to pass up.
“I thought I’d get you to a chapel before a funeral parlor.” I meet her at the front of the car, running a hand through my hair, and she tosses me a sassy look.
Colt’s already reclined in the driver’s seat, arm over his face. My brother’s been dealing with shit the last two months—avoiding working through it might be more accurate. The need to feel in control and to protect everyone was always a trait in him, but it amplified after Chase’s fall.
Since everything went down with Felix after the tour, his struggle has intensified again.
And my drummer is our next destination as soon as we finish here.
I sling my arm around Remi and pull her to my side as we cross the parking lot.
“I haven’t been here since my dad’s funeral,” she says, leaning into me. “Sage said this is where they held my mom’s too.”
At the solid white double doors, I release her, but my hand settles on her nape once we’re through. Soft piano music plays in the entry, a musty smell hitting us from the get-go.
“Hello,” a man calls through an open door off to the side. He appears a second later, in a dark sweater and slacks, wearing a comforting smile. Well-practiced and intentional. “Oh, Remington.” Closing the distance, he takes her hand from her side. “It’s been a long time. Not quite the little girl I remember.”
She tries to return his expression. “It’s nice to see you, Mr. Stenon. We’re here for Daniel’s ashes.”
“Yes, yes.” He nods, releasing her hand and threading his fingers together in front of him as he walks, expecting us to follow down a side hall. “The kinship laws become so murky in situations like this, but you’re his last connection through the hospital paperwork.”
Remi glances at me out of the corner of her eye, and I squeeze the back of her neck. She didn’t have to accept the piece of shit’s remains, but if she refused, the funeral director said they’d go to the police department.
But my woman isn’t letting Daniel Kane rest in peace.
I fucking love it.
We reach a staircase, and down he goes, but as we reach the bottom, he stops and turns by a closed door. His face dips closer to us, voice lower even though it appears no one else is here. “The entire affair has been odd between you and me. First the estate not having money for a funeral and burial, and then the department held a service, even though I couldn’t release the remains. Then,” he almost whispers, the gossip heating up, “he’d defaulted on the payments to the cemetery, and they reclaimed his plot.”
As he rotates, Remi presses her lips together. The man twists the knob and steps into the room, and her lips turn up as she drags me along by the front of my coat.
At the next door, he indicates for us to wait. He’s only gone for a second before reappearing with a gray plastic box, a sticker on top identifying the contents.
Mr. Stenon hands Remi the box, but I intercept it. She gives me an appreciative look.
“I’m sorry for the box,” the man says with an expression to match the apology. “We don’t have unclaimed remains often, but when we do, I like to provide an urn for dignity’s sake. With you coming, I didn’t order one for the chief.”
“Not at all a problem.” Remi tacks on a smile. “I’m glad you didn’t spend the money.”
Mr. Stenon nods, but when we turn to leave, he stops us. “Uh-uh.” The quirky man holds up a finger before stepping back into the room. “I didn’t think of it until after we spoke,” he calls out, voice a little muffled. “But I meant to find you after you graduated. I wasn’t sure when you’d be of age, so I was playing it safe. Then you were gone before I got a chance to…”
Remi’s brows slant in as he trails off, and then he steps out with a white urn. The design is kintsugi-inspired, lines of gold meant to resemble filled cracks. I know right then, setting my hand on her shoulder, and she reaches up to grasp it, squeezes.
“Your dad’s been with me a long time,” he says, gently lifting it toward her.
Her head jerks to me, eyes shiny as I smile at her, then she looks to him. “This is…”
“Dimitri Sinner was such a pleasure to know. I knew I’d get him back to you one day. It just took a while,” he says, emphasizing.
I stroke the back of her hair. “Time to bring him home, darlin’.”
She breathes deep, taking the urn, and then exhales, “Yeah. Home.”
* * *
Colton waits in the car again as we make our last stop before leaving Ohio. We stayed in Hunts last night after seeing Sage and Miles—and he and I and Colt endured wedding planning that none of us wanted to be a part of—and we fly to Utah this afternoon.
Remi and I have been out here ten minutes, our asses on the cold ground. I’ll sit here forever if she needs me to, though.
“Sometimes I realize I haven’t thought about her in a long time, and I feel guilty.” Remi crashes her head into my arm, eyes trained on her mom’s headstone. “I just can’t remember enough good to outweigh the bad, you know?”
I rest my cheek on her head, entwining my fingers with hers. “I do know. My relationship with my mom was very different than the one you had with yours. Mine showed love and affection but never once when I needed it. Crying and having my mom walk by, pretending I wasn’t there so she didn’t upset her husband, kind of beat the clapping when I learned to ride a bike into submission.”
“We deserved better,” she says.
“We get the better now.” My gaze falls to our fingers as I link and unlink them. “It doesn’t take away the before, but we get to live knowing we won’t be treated like that again.”
I move when she tilts her face up, showing me those mesmerizing orbs. “I’m still so mad at her for not being my mom.”
I lick my lips before nodding. “I know, baby.”
The sadness in her exhale mirrors the one I feel when the thought of my mom pops in. I haven’t heard from her. I won’t.
“What if now she can be?” When Remi looks over, I push her hair back, hand lingering. “She wasn’t your mom because of her addiction. But you once told me you tried so hard to love her for the woman you thought she might be underneath. The addiction isn’t in play anymore. Maybe she can be your mom now that her demons aren’t weighing her down.”
“I think I like that,” she says after a second of consideration. “It means yours will be able to be your mom one day too.”
She’s right. Mine couldn’t be my mom because she needed to be his wife. Even when she wasn’t anymore. She can’t be there for me now either, and I resent her for it. But when she doesn’t need to be connected to him, pleasing him, glorifying him, I can try to see her for who she could have been without the mental blocks. Talk to her like I did, but hear what I needed in response.
Morbid to think about, sure. But I’m not rooting for the day to come soon. It might help me hurt a little less when I feel the sad, though.
“I’m cold.” Remi wraps her arms around mine. “Let’s go home and stay there.”
“No better place to be,” I tell her.
I kiss her forehead and then stand, dragging her up with me.
She cautiously approaches the headstone and touches the top. On her way to me, she smiles, and I slide my hand into hers. We walk toward the car, and her eyes focus beyond the iron fence surrounding the county cemetery.
Remi slows, and I let her go.
Colton’s leaning against the driver’s door, arms crossed, when I open the passenger side.
“This one won’t take long.”
He nods. “No rush at all. Piss on the fucker.”
I snort, snagging the box from the footwell.
Remi wraps her arms around herself as gravel crunches under our feet. Once we pass through the gate, she stops and holds out her palm.
“Your therapist check the legality of this, baby? I’m down either way, just need to give the guys a heads-up if a camera catches us.”
Her mouth turns up, and she flutters her fingers to prompt me. It’s legal. Colt checked. But I’d be right here with her regardless.
I’m so fucking proud of the progress Remi’s made the last two months. She still has her moments of panic—such as when her name was first officially linked to me—but she breathes through them quicker each time. Not even the incident with Felix dragged her backward beyond the effect it had on all of us. Now she’s here, more determined than ever to close the chapter.
After she scatters Daniel’s remains in the ditch, I toss the box and bag in the trash can on our return trip to the car.
Colton insists on driving, so Remi climbs in the back seat with her dad’s urn. He’s going on the mantel in the gallery. She hasn’t said it, but I know. He’ll be nestled between the picture of us and the one of him and her—because we looked at the SD cards. Right there in that room.
Colt’s eyes flash to her in the rearview. She told him everything after we flew back to New York, and I think he’d save her over me now. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Everyone cool?” he asks.
“Yeah, brother.” I glance over my shoulder, and she smiles at me. “Get us the hell out of here, and we’ll be perfect.”
And when we arrive at the house late that night, Dimitri Sinner goes right where I expected. She smiles as I wrap my arms around her from behind and press my lips to her neck, brushing over the curves of the urn. “I can’t believe this room exists.”
“It’s real.”
She rotates in my arms, and I kiss her. Her fingers twist in my hair when my tongue strokes hers, and a soft moan from her wakes up my dick.
“Now I want you real wet in our bed.” I slide my hand up to her throat, palming her ass while she drags my mouth back to hers. I groan and back up, bringing her with me. “Or shower. Fuck, I’ll bend you over the banister, so long as I’m inside you.”
I make it to the door and decide fuck it, picking her up. Remi throws her limbs around me and laughs until I crash her lips into mine, then she’s rocking against me as I walk through the house we decided to call home.
We only have two days before I need to be in the studio to pick back up on the album. Ideally I’d spend as much of it as possible buried in Remi. Literally, figuratively, or both simultaneously.
But Dev and Felix get in tomorrow, and we want to see them. Felix especially. I’ve only seen him once since he got out of rehab earlier this week, and then we left for Ohio. Remi hasn’t seen him since before he went in two months ago.
Since then we’ve bounced between here and the coasts, refusing to lose time together. The last of her stuff is being shipped to my apartment, but we’ll live here while we record.
A clause in our label contract requires all three of us for performances and in the studio unless agreed otherwise. It saved our asses from having to use a session drummer and finish the album without Felix. The guy would have flat-out refused the program otherwise.
Logistics turn messy for a while once we finish. We’ll stay in LA most of the time. She’ll work with Heath when he’s there and complete anything outstanding with the documentary, and the band will have music videos to shoot and appearances. The documentary coincides with the album release, so we’ll have crossover there. Of Men and Wolves also has to decide if we re-sign with Mac Records once our contract ends.
And if I know Christian, my Cali-boy roommate is already playing with scheduling another tour.
Then we’ll have different reasons we want to visit Philly and Austin. Remi says Roman has a soft spot for me that he hopes I don’t notice. I have one for Imane that I openly admit. That little girl is cute as shit.
Watching Remi with her gives me a lot of fucking ideas, and soon enough, a mini-Chase will be unleashed upon the world. And my best friend and I have a dangerous habit of one-upping each other.
But despite all of those things, I still plan to steal Remi away every chance. Probably even when there isn’t one. My beautiful thing has a lot of beautiful things to see. I want to show her all the places I have before—only I want her to really see them this time. I want to wander with her, not know where we’re going, but always be where we were meant to be.
I’m there by simply being with Remi.
I don’t set her down until I toss her on the bed. She bounces as I strip off my shirt, and then her eyes are crawling down my chest and abs.
“My eyes are up here, baby.”
Somehow, after all the ways she’s taken my cock, that turns her cheeks pink. She kneels at the end of the bed, and I push her skirt higher up her thighs.
“When did you get this?” she asks, trailing her hand across the restless tattoo above my jeans. “I’ve never asked, but I’ve wondered a thousand times.”
Her gaze rises to mine, searching for the answer, but I’ll willingly give it. I’ll give her everything.
“After Chase started to recover.” I press her flattened palm over the ink, my hand over hers.
She stares up at me confused. “But you thought I?—”
“I was going to stay restless because I’d never have you,” I admit, stroking my thumb down her cheek.
“But now I’m yours.” She turns her hand over underneath mine, links our fingers, and lies back. She pulls me with her, and I willingly follow, coming down between her thighs and bracing my other arm by her head.
“You are.”
“So you’re not restless anymore?” she says, her touch dancing along my jawline.
“Nah, I’m settled.” I drop my lips to hers, feel her, taste her, love her like she’s always deserved. “But now I’ll never forget what led me to you every time.”