Chapter 32
Remi
Once I was laughter, once I was flame;
Now I am ruin, whispering my name.
I leaned forward in my seat. “That’s going to be a home run.”
“No,” Mal replied without even looking up.
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“It’s going right.”
Sure enough, they called a foul ball. Tossing a piece of popcorn in my mouth, I sat back with a disgruntled sound. “Toronto is pissing me off.”
“Swear.”
“Three fucking games now—”
“Swear.”
“—and they’ve had us at a standstill. I mean, we won yesterday, but if these bastards on the plate don’t stop holding their junk, we’ll never take this game. You missed a swear.”
Her lips quirked. “In my head.”
“Ah. Little-miss-hates-math has a bank in her brain. Are your tallies accurate?”
“Always.”
With a snort, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Another foul. Shouldn’t he be out now?”
She huffed, as if my ignorance was personally offensive to her. “First two fouls can be strikes. Not the third.”
“Why?”
“Strike out or hit it onto the field. It’s the rules.”
“Oh!” I nearly dropped my popcorn when Jeffrey swung the bat. “Swing and a miss. God damnit. How many more do we have?”
“One. Bases loaded.”
“Who’s up?”
“Dad.”
“No fucking shit?”
“Double swear.”
I waved my hand without looking at her. When Amir walked out of the dugout, I stood and put my hands around my mouth to amplify my voice. “Send those maple fuckers back to their side of the border!”
With how close we were to the field, I wasn’t surprised that he’d heard me.
He dropped into a crouch at the plate and hung his head, his shoulders shaking.
When he stood, he turned to face me and held up his middle finger.
A boo went through the crowd, which made him throw his arms up in exasperation.
He blew a kiss toward us, then took a bow when the fans changed their tune to a hearty ‘Aw!’
“Does he owe you for the middle finger?” I asked.
Mal tipped her head to one side, then the other. “Sure, why not?”
“Good, cause he hurt my feelings.”
“Sad.”
“It’s hard for me to tell if you’re being sarcastic, you know.”
“Double sad.”
Amir swung but missed the ball. Mal got up to stand beside me, lifting and lowering on her toes. I did the same, and it sort of helped.
The second swing clipped it, but it went behind him. As he tapped his bat on the plate, I saw the way he blew air out of his lips and centered himself. I put a piece of popcorn in my mouth, then flicked one toward the field as a little offering.
“Take it to the skies, Sól.”
Mal sucked in a breath when he hit the ball. I put my hands on my head as it flew over centerfield, barely visible through the sunlight shining down.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Swear, swear, swear,” Mal muttered.
I shushed her and put a hand over my brow to see better. “It’s gone!”
A smile spread across Mal’s face. She stayed on her toes, watching as Amir continued to round the bases.
“Up,” I said, crouching. “He’ll see you better here.”
She hesitated for a second, then climbed onto my shoulders. I grunted as I stood and made a mental note to start doing squats again.
“You’ve gotta be loud, Little Valkyrie.”
“Go, Dad!” she shouted. I glanced up at her and saw her arms waving above her head.
As he came up on home plate, he put his hands over his mouth. He continued until he stood in front of the dugout below us. I could’ve sworn his eyes were watering, but it was hard to tell from here.
“You’d better get us a win,” I called.
He glanced behind him, then blew a kiss toward Mal before he headed back to his little bunker. I was still smiling as I checked the scoreboard. We were only in the third inning, but they were set up pretty well for the rest of the game.
Mal tapped my shoulder, then pointed at the screen. She ducked her head to hide from the camera, not that it did any good.
“You’re a star,” I told her.
She said something, but it was drowned out by the crowd.
My attention caught on something across the way.
From this distance, it wasn’t all that clear, but I was ninety percent certain about what I saw.
More accurately, who. He was standing, staring right at me, even as the people around him sat down again.
I didn’t know if he’d been aware of where I was the entire time or just learned after the camera focused on us. It didn’t really matter.
Cole was here, and that didn’t bode well for anybody.
*****
Amir was giddy at dinner. It was easy to stay under the radar when he had Avery and Mal to focus on. He paid attention to me but not for long enough to recognize anything was off.
Something about seeing Cole had turned me into a coward.
I wanted to run back to the bar, board up the doors, and sit in my office with my gun locked and loaded, preferably with a good bottle of whiskey.
I had a feeling that if I did that, he’d show up eventually.
It would be self-defense. Sure, the restraining order wasn’t active anymore because I hadn’t seen a point in renewing it, what with the time and the distance, but I could still make a case based on the past.
I wanted to think it was brave to trap him and eliminate the issue entirely. A lot of people would run, after all, and here I was, prepared to stand my ground.
But the mature, more healed part of me knew that violence was the cowardly way out if it could be avoided.
Cole was the true coward, the one who used his fists when I wasn’t the exact version of myself that he wanted.
The one whose tongue turned venomous to remind me that he was exactly what I deserved whenever I forgot it.
Nobody else would want to deal with a guy who covered the mirror and had a bad habit of reading too far into things like ambiguous dreams, or the guy who both shoved people away and clung on for dear life.
The guy who pushed buttons to see how far I could push them before they revealed the truth of who they were.
Because everybody was hiding something ugly beneath the surface, and I didn’t like monsters that lurked in the dark. Better to know what brand of vicious a man harbored and face it head-on.
Looking at Amir across the table, I found him already watching me. I smiled, and he returned it, so bright and lovely.
Maybe not everybody had darkness inside them. Amir, despite my attempts to piss him off and push him away, remained steadfast. If there was darkness there, he had control of it the way a good man should.
I didn’t deserve it, that was for sure. Even though I knew that, I kept trying to convince myself I was wrong.
Cole had been at the opposite side of the field and hadn’t spoken a word, yet he’d still managed to remind me that I wasn’t this guy.
I didn’t get the house and the family. The backyard, the tire swing, the original hardwood floors, the math homework, the home fucking runs.
No, I got the shame. I got harsh words followed by soft ones that I knew were fake, but I believed them anyway.
I got bruises, then buttery smooth apologies; promises that wilted by morning light yet left me hopeful, like a fucking idiot.
I got lessons no one should have to learn—how to survive it, to smile through it, to lie to everyone who might actually want to help.
I went back for more, over and over again.
And somehow, after all that, I still hadn’t figured out the secret that would make someone just . . . love me.
“I should get to the bar,” I said , interrupting Avery mid-sentence.
Amir got to his feet with a slight frown. “I’ll walk you out.”
I nodded, only because it would be suspicious to decline. I kissed Mal on the head, then said a quick goodbye to Avery.
Once we were on the porch, Amir grabbed my hand and turned me around. “You’ve been quiet.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No. Well, for you, maybe.” He laughed, albeit a little awkwardly.
“Mm. ‘He who is never silent speaks too many staves of senselessness.’”
A small smile appeared on his lips. “Do you memorize everything?”
“Only my favorite lines. They’re good ones, don’t you think?”
“Sure, but I’d rather hear your own words.”
“My words?” I cocked my head. “He who microwaves fish at work invites Ragnarok. Better?”
His smile deepened. “Much. I think that wisdom will survive the ages.”
“Glad I could contribute something in my mortal little life.”
“You contribute a lot to mine.”
Fucking hellfire.
He was watching me, looking for something. Putting my hands on his shoulders, I kissed him hard. The sound that came from him was enticing, but I started to put up bricks against it. Against him.
I pulled back and winked at him before I turned to take the steps off of the porch.
“My flight leaves at six tomorrow,” he said.
“I’ll be back by three.”
“Remi, I . . .”
I stopped at the car door and looked at him over my shoulder. He was standing on the path, staring at me with his hands in his pockets.
“You what?”
With a tight smile, he shook his head. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Sure thing.”
I drove off without looking back. It was a blur the entire way, and I didn’t really remember making it to the bar. I honed in on a figure in a black hoodie beside the door. I walked up to him, keeping my hands in my pockets. A drop of rain hit me in the forehead, and I glanced up briefly.
“You look like shit,” Tommy said as he brought a cigarette to his mouth. Without having to be asked, he passed one to me.
“I’m not interested in meeting your demons, so don’t start trying to fight mine.”
“I’m here to keep assholes out of this place. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“And that’s why I like you, Tommy.” I held my fingers out to Loki. “But ninety percent of it is because of him.”
Just like every day, he was wearing his Security Pawficer hoodie, so I was convinced that Tommy didn’t hate it as much as he wanted me to think.
While I scratched Loki’s ears, my mood drooped again. If things went sideways with Amir, these two wouldn’t come around anymore. I couldn’t pay Tommy enough to keep him.
Reality was a bitter thing, but I’d swallowed worse.