Chapter 20 Remi
REMI
Now that they have a plan, I’m morbidly obsessed with how efficient Streeter is at handling things. I only have just enough time to recount everything that’s been happening to Quill while they’re gone.
“Where’s my sexy serial killer that’ll fuck me into a coma in front of a fireplace?”
Maybe the most shocking thing out of all of this is the way my best friend isn’t fazed by any of it. He’s interested, curious… and jealous, and I have to wonder exactly how many of the same books we’ve read after all if he’s romanticizing everything that happened.
I open my mouth to tell him that he should at least try to act shocked or upset over what I’m saying when a voice interrupts me. “Did someone ask for a sexy killer?”
Quill’s cheeks go pink for just a moment before he turns, sizing up Camden before rolling his eyes. “Yes, and yet… here you are. Ruining my dreams.”
I can tell it takes Camden a few seconds to realize he’s been rebuffed, but the smile that crosses his face when Quill turns back to me, rolling his eyes, tells me it might not have struck the nerve he’d hoped for.
“I could definitely show you—” Camden starts across the room, but Streeter comes in, catching him by the arm and looking around.
“We need to get Trevor’s bag packed so we can get rid of it. It needs to look like he left in a hurry.”
I shiver once at how much loathing I can hear in Streeter’s voice just saying his name, but Quill is already disappearing into the bedroom and coming out with a bag.
“Here. Already handled it. I left a few of his clothes on the ground.” He wrinkles his nose.
“That asshole was always a slob. It won’t be very hard for people to believe he was a killer too. ”
“You still looking for a killer of your own?” Camden asks Quill, and I have to bite back a smile.
“No,” Quill says, deadpan and uninterested as he turns to me, adjusting the hem of his shirt like he didn’t just turn down a potential psychopath after covering up a crime scene.
“The rest of this is going to be up to you, babes.” His bright green eyes are full of confidence as he looks me over.
“You really have to sell it when you tell the police exactly how crazy Trevor went.”
“Sell it?”
“Cry. Hell, Remi… he’s been shit to you. You’ve called me crying about how he’s treated you before. I have those pictures I took from when he hit you—”
Behind me, I hear a low growl tear from Streeter’s throat. I remember those pictures—the cut on my lip, the hollow look in my eyes.
“I can show them those…”
“He’s texted you a thousand times acting like a jealous psychopath. You just have to show them that side of him. I know you can do this.”
My eyes shift past Quill to Streeter, who’s watching me with an intensity that makes my stomach burn, and when I nod in determination, he comes across the room and tugs me against him. I can hear his heartbeat thundering, and the strength of his arms anchors me when I finally blow out a breath.
“I can do this.” I’m talking to Quill, but it’s Streeter who answers me.
“Yeah, Hummingbird. You can. We’ll get through this together.”
Together.
Fuck… I really like that word.
I can do this—maybe not for myself, but I can do this to protect him.
It turns out getting away with murder is actually easier than it should be when you have a decent plan and everyone in town knows the man who saved you.
It’s easy for me to burst into tears when I start talking about what Trevor was going to do to me, and the panic crawling along my skin and trying to make me break down only half comes from the fact that I’m fabricating the last part of the story.
A lot of it is real, because up until the point where I tell them that Trevor went crazy when his friends started touching me, I’m recounting what nearly happened to me.
I’m telling the police what very easily could have happened if Streeter hadn’t come to save me.
It helps that I hand them Trevor’s phone, which I “took” when I ran out of the cabin. Quill was right—he was texting all of his friends about bringing me, about them sharing me, about teaching me a lesson…
It makes the tears streaming down my face when I start in on how I ran into the snow and found Streeter’s house a few hours later real.
It all tracks. I feed them the exact story Quill concocted. I was too out of it for the first day—half frozen and in shock—to tell Streeter what happened, and by the time I could we were snowed in without any signal. When it finally cleared up enough, we came straight to the police station.
And even though they don’t say anything about it, I know Trevor is never going to turn up again.
At first, I’m worried they’re going to see straight through me. I’m worried they’ll realize I’m lying, that Streeter will get into trouble… that they’ll take him away from me.
But they just call him to come pick me up, and I actually see the officer clap him on the back when he sees him, shaking his hand and telling him he did a good thing.
It’s just between me and him to know exactly what he actually did, because a few weeks later… the only thing that’s happened is the police have brought me in to ask a few more questions, to see if I’ve heard from Trevor… and to let me know that they still haven’t found him.
They’re… reassuring me. There’s something oddly empowering about getting away with murder, especially when I know that the dead people deserved it. There’s something even better about knowing that Trevor is never going to be able to hurt me or anyone else ever again.
Maybe being happy that he’s gone… maybe being happy when I see an article written in the paper a few weeks after the snow completely melts that accuses him of homicide… maybe it’s wrong.
But I still feel better seeing it. I feel better knowing that everything actually seems like it’s going to be okay.
And at Quill’s absolute insistence, I’ve been going about my life as usual—which means I’m going to school. To work. I’m at my apartment that I shared with Trevor, because it still has three more months before my lease is up.
Apparently, immediately moving in with a new guy after your boyfriend goes missing is suspicious.
That doesn’t stop Streeter from coming to see me most weekends.
I was a little shocked when he came in and threw away all the sheets and covers in my room…
until he proceeded to make my bed with a new set that smelled like him.
He was methodical when he packed up all of Trevor’s stuff.
It took him exactly one weekend to completely erase my shitty ex from my life the same way he erased him from existence.
“You never have to think about him again.” Streeter’s voice was warm when he promised it… and then he fucked me until I was boneless on every surface of the apartment he could spread me across, and I realized it’s true.
Every bad memory I have of this place, every wrong thing Trevor has ever done is easily replaced by memories of Streeter—him fucking me, cooking for me, watching movies with me on the couch, or dragging me back to his place with the soft threat of keeping me.
I’m not sure if he knows that I want that more than anything.
I want Streeter to keep me… because I’m pretty sure after three months of him showing up on the weekends, after class, sometimes when he shouldn’t know where I am at all…
Well, shit. I’m pretty sure I’m in love with a serial killer, and I have no idea how to tell him.