Chapter 37 – Thiago #2
As if she senses it, she reaches out and squeezes my arm.
“They were my father’s,” I say. “My aunt gave them to me the first time I moved out.”
Remi’s gaze returns to the collection. “That’s a lot of records.”
I chuckle. “Yeah. He had a problem.”
“Looks hereditary.”
Her teasing draws another laugh from me, and some of the heaviness from our conversation in the living room lifts.
“Do you listen to them?” she asks.
I pull an old jazz record from the shelf, one that always takes me back to weekends at my grandmother’s in Rio. My thumb traces the worn edge of the sleeve.
“I never knew why I liked track six so much growing up,” I say.
“Years later, she told me my dad used to play it at every special occasion. Birthdays, barbecues, basically any excuse to celebrate.” I look down at the faded cover.
“I don’t remember any of those moments with him, but somehow the song still feels familiar. ”
Remi studies the record in my hands. “I guess some things stick with us even when we don’t realize it.”
“Yeah.” I lean against the shelf next to her.
“I never really listened to these before, but I do now. Some nights after a rough shift, I’ll put one on and sit here for a while.
It helps me relax, but I think part of me also enjoys imagining the things I don’t remember and wondering about all the things that could’ve been different. ”
Remi gently takes the album from my hands.
“I think we all do that sometimes,” she says. “Wonder how different things might have been if we’d made a different choice or if something had happened differently.” She rests her shoulder against mine. “I can’t imagine not wondering what your life would’ve been like if your father had lived.”
I look down at her and find only understanding in her eyes. Without thinking, I reach up and cup her cheek, my eyes drifting to her lips before returning to her eyes.
“What are your regrets, Remi? Your what-ifs?”
She holds my gaze for a long moment before looking away. “It’s...complicated. I wouldn’t change my family.” Her voice softens. “They’re everything.”
I wait because I can tell there’s more.
“But...” she trails off as her hands come up to cover mine against her face. Her thumbs brush across my skin before she gently lowers my hands and takes a step back. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
I don’t push her. Whatever she almost told me is tangled up in the people she loves most, and I know better than to force it out of her before she’s ready to give it.
She turns the record over in her hands, tracing the edges of a life that existed long before either of us knew the other. As I watch her, another what-if takes shape in my mind.
Remi and me without Helios. Without an assignment or a lie sitting at the center of everything between us.
If I’d met her under different circumstances, she still would have caught my attention, as she did that night in Texas.
I allow myself to picture what that might have looked like.
We could have started without deception hanging over us or the knowledge that eventually, every lie I’ve told her will come crashing down.
She could look at me the way she does now and have every reason to trust me, and maybe I could actually deserve it.
“Is this one new?” Remi pulls a vinyl from the shelf, still sealed in plastic. The moment she turns it over and sees the cover, curiosity gives way to amusement. “You listen to Selena?”
I laugh, take the record from her, and make my way over to the turntable.
“I bought it a little while ago, but I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. My aunt’s from Texas, so I practically grew up on Selena. Every Saturday morning at seven o’clock, she’d have one of her albums blasting through the house.”
Remi laughs. “I fear we had the same childhood.”
“Good to know.”
I tear off the plastic, set the record on the turntable, and lower the needle. I can feel her watching me as the first notes fill the room.
“Why Selena?” she asks.
“She reminds me of someone.”
Remi arches an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
I glance at her over my shoulder. “Great smile. Red lips. Big heart.”
Her eyes narrow. “You think you’re smooth, don’t you, Braga?”
A grin spreads across my face. “No.” A cumbia spills through the room. “I know I am.”
She bites the corner of her lip and shakes her head.
“Dance with me, fera?” I ask, extending my hand.
“You dance?”
“Let me guess. I don’t look like the type?”
Remi slips her hand into mine, and I tug her forward.
“I never said that.”
“Sure,” I murmur against her hair as I slide a hand around her waist and guide her into the rhythm. “Besides, I didn’t have a choice. My aunt practically forced me to learn.”
Her laughter vibrates against my chest. “Poor Thiago.”
I tilt her chin and brush my lips against hers. “Yeah. Poor, poor me.”
The kiss is brief, but neither of us pulls away. I want to deepen it, yet I know exactly where that will lead. Tonight, I don’t want this to become about sex.
I want this instead.
I want her body warm against mine as we move together, her cheek resting against my chest and her hand tucked into mine. I want the way she relaxes in my arms as the music fills the room, making everything waiting for me outside these walls easier to ignore.
For the first time all day, I feel something dangerously close to peace.
“Remi...”
She tips her head back to look at me, curiosity flickering in her eyes.
“What is it?”
“In a couple of weeks, the precinct is holding a costume charity ball.”
“Costume? In July?”
I laugh. “Well, I figure if we can have Christmas in July, why not Halloween?”
“Why not?” she says with a grin. “You’re dressing up?”
“Sort of. Does a Batman mask count as a costume?”
Her smile widens. “How fitting of you. And I guess so. Just wear a tux and you’ll be good to go.”
I lean closer and whisper, “Come with me.”
Her steps falter. “Go with you?” she asks. “As in your date?”
“Exactly. We’re allowed to bring a guest, and I thought—”
“You’re joking, right?”
I stop moving, but the music continues around us. The amusement drains from her face, taking mine with it.
“No.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Thiago, you’re really asking me to be your guest at a charity event for cops? As in, spend an entire evening in a ballroom full of them?”
I stare at her, caught off guard by how ridiculous the idea sounds to her.
I wasn’t just asking her to attend some fucking fundraiser. I was asking her to come with me, to meet the people I work beside every day, and to spend one night as part of my life outside these walls. After everything we’ve shared tonight, I didn’t think that would be such a problem.
Turning toward the record player, I turn off the music. “What’s so wrong about that?”
“You know how I feel about cops.”
“But you and I—”
“Are exactly what we’ve always been.”
I take a step back from her. “Remi—”
“No, Thiago. You know what this is.” She throws her hands up. “We spend time together. We hook up. We have fun. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
She looks away. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make this into something it isn’t.”
I fall back, trying to reconcile what she’s saying with the woman who showed up at my door tonight because she needed me. The same woman who sat in my lap, listened to me talk about my father, and without hesitation told me she trusted me.
“Right. I’m just a cop.”
Her eyes snap back to mine. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
She exhales sharply and drags a hand through her hair. “Thiago, I can’t be the person you’re asking me to be.”
Maybe I’m a hypocritical bastard. I have no right to feel hurt when I’m lying to her every day, but knowing that doesn’t make hearing her reduce everything between us to sex and fun hurt any less.
After everything that happened tonight with Elena and the assignment, somehow this is what finally gets to me.
“I have an early shift tomorrow.”
The words spill from my mouth before I can stop them.
Remi lets out a cold laugh. “Of course you do.” Her shoulder bumps into mine as she storms past me. “Lose my number, Braga.”
I know I should stop her, tell her I didn’t mean it, and find a way to explain why hearing her say we’re nothing got under my skin without admitting how much I’ve started to want us to be something.
But I stand there and let her leave.
By the time I make it back to the living room, the front door slams behind her, the sound echoing through my apartment.
I drop onto the couch and drag a hand over my face as a headache builds behind my eyes.
I really fucked that up.