Chapter 63 – remi
Sixty-Three
remi
I’ve lost track of time.
Day has faded into night, leaving the bedroom lit by the lamps on either nightstand. I’m still draped across Thiago’s bare chest, my ear over his heart, listening to one of my favorite sounds as the ceiling fan stirs the blanket resting low across my hips.
I trace the ink covering his skin with my fingertips, following patterns I’ve already memorized but never grow tired of touching.
Everything feels easier with him. I can slow down, breathe, and lie here without my mind racing toward the next thing that demands my attention. And I wish we could stay like this as long as we wanted.
The thought makes me pause because wanting more of Thiago isn’t new, but admitting exactly how much I want him is.
He stopped feeling temporary a while ago.
He isn’t simply someone I love spending time with anymore.
He’s become part of my days, my routines, my family, and every version of the future I let myself imagine.
I want lazy mornings tangled in the sheets and kisses in the kitchen while one of us forgets dinner on the stove.
I want his clothes mixed with mine in the closet and his records taking up more space than I’ll ever admit they deserve.
I want to learn every version of him, including the ones he has a harder time showing me.
Most of all, I want to know that he’ll still be there when I wake up tomorrow.
I don’t want to lose him.
That fear has followed me all the way to Miami, but lying here with his heartbeat beneath my ear finally forces me to acknowledge what comes with wanting a future with him.
Thiago deserves to know who he’s building it with.
As his thumb traces slowly along my back, my eyes begin to sting. I close them, hoping the feeling will pass, but a tear slips free and lands on his chest.
His hand stills. “Remi…” he whispers.
“Thiago,” I say before he can ask what’s wrong.
He pushes himself up slightly. “Baby, what is it?”
I tighten my arms around him. “Just give me one more minute.”
He doesn’t push. Instead, his arms close around me, and I stay there until I trust myself enough to pull away. Then I sit beside him, and when I finally meet his eyes, concern fills his expression.
“When we met, I hadn’t been in a relationship for years, since Ryuji.”
“Okay...”
I look down at my hands. “But I never told you the whole truth, the reason dating has never been easy for me or something I could ever treat casually.” I rub my thumb across my palm, trying to figure out where to begin. “My life isn’t normal, Thiago. It never has been.”
He sits up. “Remi, whatever this is, you can tell me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know how I feel about you.”
“That’s exactly why I’m scared.”
Saying it makes everything I’m risking feel more real, but I’ve already decided I can’t leave this room without telling him.
“I can’t keep moving forward with you while hiding this part of myself. You deserve to know who you’re with and to decide for yourself whether it changes anything.”
His expression shifts so subtly that I almost miss it.
“But I trust you, Thiago. I trust you with everything I love most in this world.” Reaching for his hand, I place it over my heart. “And I trust you with this. I just need you to guard it with yours.”
For a few seconds, he says nothing. There’s something in the way he looks at me that I can’t decipher. It disappears before I can make sense of it, leaving me wondering whether my nerves put it there in the first place.
“I will.” The certainty in his voice gives me enough courage to keep going.
“My family does Sunday dinners, birthday parties, Christmas mornings, bedtime stories...everything you’d expect.”
A small smile tugs at my lips as I think about them, but it doesn’t last.
“They also taught me how to line up a shot from four hundred yards, how to defend myself, and more ways to kill a man than anyone should know.”
Thiago watches me closely, without interrupting.
“They didn’t teach me those things because they loved guns or fighting. They taught me because they knew a day might come when I’d need those skills to survive.” I lace my fingers through his. “The world you think you know is far darker than the one most people ever see.”
He draws in a slow breath, but I keep going before he can respond. If I give myself too much time to think about what I’m about to tell him, I might lose the courage to say it.
“I’ve done things, Thiago. Some of them, I’m not proud of, but there are others I would do again without hesitation because the people I love are alive because of them.”
His hand comes to my face, and he brushes a loose strand of hair back behind my ear. “What have you done, Remi?”
This is the part I’ve been dreading. I hold his gaze.
“I’ve killed people.”
For several heartbeats, neither of us says a word, and I watch his face for the moment everything changes. I expect shock first, then fear or disgust as he realizes the woman beside him has taken lives.
None of it comes.
“Not because I wanted to.” I continue. “I’ve never enjoyed taking a life, but there have been times when it was them or someone I loved, and I made my choice.”
Thiago still hasn’t pulled away.
I search his face again, convinced I must be missing something, but nothing has changed since before I told him.
He doesn’t see me as dangerous or as some kind of monster. He still sees Remi, and I don’t know why that makes me want to cry harder than if he’d recoiled.
“There’s an entire network of people out there who deal in death, where blood is currency. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He takes a moment before answering. “Is that what you do?”
“No.”
“Your family?”
“Not anymore.”
Slipping out from under the blanket, I get to my feet, too nervous to care that I’m still naked.
“I know what I’m asking of you by telling you this.
You wear a badge, and I’m admitting I’ve killed people and that my family was once part of a world most don’t even know exists.
” I turn back to him. “I’m trusting you with things that could destroy all of us if they fell into the wrong hands. ”
Now that it’s all out there, I finally understand how much I’ve trusted him. Even with everything at stake, I don’t regret it.
“I couldn’t keep falling for you while hiding this part of myself. You deserve the truth, and if learning it changes what you want with me, I’ll understand.”
“Remi.” He gets out of bed and comes toward me before I can say anything else. His arms wrap around me, drawing me against his chest. “I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere, chama.”
Trying to believe it can really be that simple, I hold on to him. “Thiago.” I pull back just enough to see his face. “Do you mean that?”
He cups my cheeks. “Eu sou seu, meu amor. Enquanto você ainda me quiser.”
I’m yours, my love. For as long as you still want me.
My eyes fill again as I rise onto my toes to kiss him, but he slips an arm beneath my thighs and lifts me before I can reach his mouth.
A laugh escapes me through my tears.
He carries me back to bed and kisses me as he lowers us onto the mattress. When he pulls the blanket over us, I return to the place against his chest I never wanted to leave.
“I took an oath years ago, and every day, I try to be a better man. I want to be someone my father would be proud of.” His fingers glide gently through my hair.
“I’m not perfect, Remi. I’ve made mistakes, and I’ll probably make more.
But I’ve never been more certain of anything than I am of how I feel about you.
” He presses a kiss to the top of my head.
“Whatever tomorrow brings, this is the truest thing I know.”
I’ve spent this entire conversation waiting for him to change his mind, but he hasn’t. He knows now. Maybe not every name or every ugly detail, but he knows enough to understand who I am and where I come from. He’s still holding me exactly as he was before.
I curl closer and listen to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat as his fingers move through my hair. “Sometimes, I think about it,” I whisper.
His fingertips brush my shoulder. “Think about what?”
I lift my head and rest my chin on his sternum so I can see him. “What my life could look like if I ever left all this behind.”
His touch slows.
“My mother grew up on a beautiful hacienda.”
“The one in the painting in your room?”
I nod. “That’s the one. I used to stare at it, wondering how she ever survived somewhere so peaceful. When I was younger, the thought of living that far from everything sounded like torture.”
“And now?”
I smile as my finger traces one of the ink lines across his chest.
“Now I understand it a little better. I could have acres of green around me, horses outside my window, and mornings when there’s nowhere I need to be.
” I glance up at him. “I could watch the sun rise without hearing sirens in the distance and go to bed without wondering who might come looking for us next.”
“Sounds like a dream.”
“It is.” My smile fades. “That’s the problem.”
“Why?”
“Because people like me don’t get to decide one day that we’re finished and walk away. My parents tried. My aunts and uncles tried. They built normal lives and raised us, but none of it erased what came before.” I trace another line. “Eventually, some part of it always finds its way back.”
Thiago takes my hand and interlaces our fingers. “That doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life paying for it.”
“I’ve done plenty of my own.”
“But you’re not only defined by the things you’ve done, Remi. You shouldn’t have to spend your entire life carrying the weight of choices other people made before you were even old enough to understand them.”
“That sounds like something people tell themselves to sleep better at night.”
“Maybe.” He kisses the back of my hand. “Or maybe it’s something you’ve never allowed yourself to believe in.”
I look at him for a moment. “The world is still what it is, whether I believe it or not. Wanting something doesn’t make it possible.”
“And what do you want, Remi?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Thiago waits.
“Tell me.”
I’ve imagined it before, usually in pieces I never let myself put together because wanting a life I might never have seemed pointless.
“I want a family of my own someday.”
His expression softens. “A family?”
“Yeah.” I look down at our joined hands until they blur through my tears.
“I want kids who don’t know any of this and never have to.
I don’t want them growing up knowing there are people who might come after them because of something their parents or grandparents did before they were born.
” I look at him again. “I want them to believe the world is good, Thiago. I want them to be good.”
“They would.”
“You say that like you’re sure.”
“I am.”
“But how can you possibly know?”
He tips my chin up toward him and wipes a tear from my cheek. “Because they’d have you.”
I’m completely unprepared for how much I needed to hear that.
All my life, I’ve thought about the things my family passed down to us. Their enemies, their mistakes, their instincts. Every skill they taught us because they knew their past might one day become our problem. So I’ve never spent much time thinking about what I could pass down that was good.
I lay my head on his chest again as his arms close around me.
Maybe he’s right.
Maybe wanting something different has to start with believing I’m capable of creating it.
We stay that way for a while before another thought I’ve been carrying finally surfaces.
“Baby?”
“Hmm?”
“When we get back, I want you to meet my family.”
His fingers stop moving through my hair.
“I mean, really meet them.” I continue. “Not just running into them or knowing them because of me. I want to bring you home.”
His heartbeat quickens against my ear.
“I want them to know you and understand what we have and what you mean to me.”
Thiago doesn’t answer right away, and uncertainty starts creeping in before I remember what I’ve just asked him to do.
Five minutes ago, I told the man my family once belonged to a world where people killed for a living. Now I’m asking him, a cop, to sit down with them for dinner. I probably should’ve expected a bit of hesitation.
He holds me tighter and says, “I’d love to.”
I smile against his chest, relieved there’s nothing left between us that I’m afraid he’ll know.