Chapter 47
— Scout —
“Hey bro,” Leif answered, his voice coming through my phone before the video connected. “What’s up?”
“She knows,” I confessed around a puff of cigar smoke.
The blue-gray plume lingered around my head as my brother’s face appeared on my phone screen, along with his frown.
“Who knows about what? And are you smoking?” he asked, walking across his law firm office to close the door.
“Yup.” I bit the cigar between my teeth while propping my phone against an unopened beer can—the chaser for the open one already nestled between my thighs. I usually only saved the beer and cigar tradition for something major like winning the World Series, but here we were…
“Remmy. About the FootFet contract,” I added.
If I hadn’t been wallowing and out of my mind with worry, I would have laughed at my brother’s expression.
His eyes widened. “You told her?”
I plucked the cigar from my bite, held it between two fingers, then lifted my beer. Having two working arms would be super fucking swell at a time like this.
“Nah man. She found out by accident.”
Leif flung himself into his leather office chair and reclined slightly, holding his phone up enough for me to see his collared shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. “How?”
Fuck, this was awkward. “I didn’t hear her come home.”
His eyebrows pulled low in confusion for a split second before they shot high.
He barked a loud laugh. “You got caught having a tug, didn’t you? You sly dog—I knew you would!”
“Fuck you.” I puffed on the cigar, letting the smoke circle around my tongue a couple of times before leisurely exhaling. “I didn’t intend to, but, when in Rome and all that shit.”
Leif kicked back further with a smirk. “So, how did it go down?”
I swapped out the cigar for the beer again. “Well, she caught me with my dick in hand, I screamed like a pussy, hurt my elbow, and slammed the laptop closed—in that order—and my first words to her were, I can explain , which obviously sounded as bad as it looked. Needless to say, she didn’t take it well initially. Thought I’d hacked her account and stolen the content.”
My brother chuckled and ran a hand through his sandy brown hair, styled as always. “And they say romance is dead.”
“I didn’t call you for you to mock me, bro. I wanted to give you a heads up just in case there’s fallout over it. I did use a fake name, after all.”
Leif waved me off. “We got that covered by the other document, declaring you as contractually under the pseudonym S.J. Deaton for that agreement. I wouldn’t stress about it. How did Remmy take it?” he asked.
“Terribly. I confessed everything. She turned all shades of disbelief and fury, then left.”
My brother stilled, and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “She left?”
“Yep. She went out with her girlfriends.”
“Without talking it through? Properly?”
He didn’t pressure me for a hurried answer as I look a long, slow drag on the cigar and released it as another lazy plume. “Nope. I told her to go, and she did.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” I had to admit, it sounded bad. “So, you might get a call from her in the next day or two canceling the contract. Even though it’s locked for a year, I’d let her break it early if she really wanted to.”
“Hence the early afternoon drinking,” he drawled.
I raised my beer and toasted it at the screen, then took a long drink.
“You know,” my brother added, “drinking while recovering from recent surgery isn’t exactly recommended.”
A low laugh escaped as I traded the beer for the cigar once more. “And neither is jerking off to a video of my girlfriend foot-fucking a twelve-inch black dildo, but here we are.”
He dipped his head and chuckled. “Touché.”
I smirked non-humorously, then circled my lips around the cigar. I took a long draw into my mouth as Leif swiveled from side to side in his office chair, thinking about who-the-fuck-knows-what.
“You know,” he drawled, “I did warn you that this could potentially happen.”
“You can keep your I-told-you-so’s to yourself, I’m not exactly in the mood.” I wanted the moral support sans the opinions and his smug-ass grin.
“Funny, I thought that was why you called me.” His smile transformed into his brotherly one, not the businesslike one he’d worn at the start of our call.
A frustrated growl knotted in my throat. He was winding me up, and we both knew it. Still holding my beer plus the cigar in two fingers, I brought the Cuban fifty-gauge to my lips and squinted against the tendrils of blue-gray smoke as it wove upward.
“You know what’s fucked up, Leif? Despite everything, I still love her.”
“When you know, you know,” he agreed, though shadows passed behind his eyes.
He’d been married, and despite loving his wife with his entire heart, it had failed, leaving him broken. It took him the longest time to get back on his feet, and while he was okay now, the lingering ghosts of heartache showed through at times.
“Apparently,” I said before tipping the beer and finishing the last of it. While holding the cigar between my teeth again, I swapped out the empty beer can for the full one propping up my phone. “You know, bro—”
I cut off and cocked my head when I heard the front door click. The sweetest voice in the entire world then called my name.
My eyes cut to Leif, now leaning forward in rapture. “She’s home,” I hissed.
Leif flapped one hand at me. “Go talk to her, you fool.”
“Oh yeah, right. See ya.” I didn’t bother stabbing the red disconnect circle—Leif did that for me while I balanced the cigar on the top of the beer. With my feet set on either side of the poolside lounger, I rose, calling out to Remmy in the process.
The relief that swept through me when I saw her breezing through the dining space almost brought me to my knees. She stole my breath, and I reached for the doorframe for support. Goddamn she was a vision.
“Hey,” she whispered, stopping just out of reach.
That one word put me out of my depth all over again. My reply came out meek and breathy. “Hey.”
Remmy’s smile wavered with palpable uncertainty. “I uh… I changed my mind. The Uber guy isn’t happy—pretty sure he’s going to one-star me.” She added a toothy grimace that had me smothering a laugh.
“I’ll have to hunt him down then,” I said carefully, still trying to figure out which direction this was headed.
While my heart beat faster with hope, she could have circled back just to dump my ass good ’n proper.
“I—” we both said at the same time, then laughed awkwardly.
Fuck, the unease killed me. I shook it off and let go of the doorframe. Opening my arm, I motioned her forward. “C’mere, honey.”
With a sigh of relief I felt deep in my bones, Remmy stepped into my embrace and wrapped both arms around my torso. Home. She felt like home. The best kind. The keeping kind.
“I hope this means good things,” I murmured against the top of her head where my lips nested among her hair.
I felt rather than saw her nod. “I’m sorry I bolted. And overreacted upstairs. It’s just… you were the last person I expected to find with my content. Not when you could get it anytime you wanted; all you had to do was ask.”
“Not the point, honey.” A bolt of possession speared through my veins. I tightened my arm around her as if she would get whisked away without warning. “I wanted the exclusive contract with you so no other motherfucker was jerking off with you on his mind. I mean, it’s probably still happening, but… I don’t want to share you anymore.”
There it was—the confession. The true reason behind my actions. Initially, I was okay with the way she made her fortune. But now that she was so far ingrained into my life that I could smell her even when she wasn’t with me? Absolutely not.
I’d had a change of heart, and this selfish motherfucker didn’t want to share her for a second longer.
“Why didn’t you just tell me, though?” she implored, earnest gaze searching mine.
I ran my thumb across the two lines etched between her brows, smoothing them out every time they reappeared. “Because I didn’t want to force that choice from you. I didn’t want to give you what would feel like an ultimatum. I wanted you to make a decision based on what you wanted and what was best for you, without knowing I was the one behind it. No matter what you chose, with me being a known factor, it would have swayed your decision.”
She pursed her glossy lips and shook her head. I couldn’t place the emotion. Whether it was sadness or disappointment, it had me biting my tongue and painfully waiting for her response.
Another deep exhale left her mouth and, mercifully, Remmy closed her eyes and leaned into my touch. “I love that you gave me a choice,” she murmured. “But I hate that I found out the way I did. If I hadn’t caught you, would you have ever told me?”
Her eyes bore into me with the weight of expectation.
I swallowed and nodded. “I would have. Eventually. Not anytime soon, though.” It was the god-honest truth; I would have kept it from her for as long as I could.
Remmy stared for the longest time, until finally, she nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay? As in…?”
“As in, thank you for being honest. And I would have done the same thing. Actually, I did do the same thing to you. But what do we do now? Do we keep the contract in place? Is it now void? It seems silly you paying for content when I’m literally making it in your spare room.”
I ran my hand down her back, tracing each bump of her spine with my fingertips as I went. “We keep it the same until you choose not to. With you making content and me paying as a client, as agreed.”
“I need the income, Scout. It’s not as simple as choosing to break the contract—not for me, anyway.” She then sniffed and cocked her head. “Have you been smoking?”
“Uh…” I coughed and rubbed at the back of my neck. “Yeah. I had a couple of beers and a cigar while chatting with my brother.”
“It stinks,” she replied softly, with an accompanying smile.
I felt like a child getting sprung then having to explain myself. “Sorry. I don’t do it often.”
Her soothing palms smoothed up and down my chest. “It’s okay. Just unexpected, that’s all.”
“I won’t smoke again if it bothers you.”
“Smoking doesn’t bother me, Scout. I promise.”
That made my heart flip in relief. Carefully rotating my slung arm up and outward, I set that hand on her waist while my free one cupped her cheek. “Tell me, honey, if you could be anything in the whole entire world, what would it be?”
That little pucker appeared between her eyebrows again, making me want to kiss it away.
“I don’t know,” she said, almost surprised. “I’ve never really had a plan aside from staying clean and making bank. I’ve been too focused on both of those things to truly contemplate where I wanted to be in five, ten, twenty years from now.”
With my heart racing a mile a minute, I grazed my hand up and down her back.
My voice came gritty, forced, and anything but casual. “Do I feature in any of those timestamps?”
She cocked her head thoughtfully, then smiled. “You’re the only constant in all of them. I didn’t think we’d make it past two nail cycles, then six, but look at us defeating the odds.”
“And doin’ a real good job of it too, eh?” I drawled through a chuckle.
Remmy snickered. “It’s been messy. And I’m not gonna lie: It’s never going to be a walk in the park with me, Ace.”
My chest puffed. “I’m confident I know what I’m getting myself into and that I can handle it.”
“All of me?” she asked with a quirk of one eyebrow.
“The entire package,” I murmured against her mouth a millisecond before claiming it and sucking her lower lip.
Remmy’s hands smoothed from my pecs to around my neck. She squeezed me close and tilted her head, urging our kiss deeper. I couldn’t help but groan when her tongue swept across mine in a teasing demand for more. Her chest thrust higher, arching her spine where my splayed hand anchored her in place against me. Of all the crazy highs and lows in my life, of all the rides I never wanted to get off, Remmy was my favorite one.