Wilder Love

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Wilder Love Page 14

by Rose, Emery


  Shane

  Earlier that day…

  The sun was just rising and the last person I expected to see at this hour was leaning against my Jeep. I couldn’t tell if he was just getting home from a night out or if he’d dragged himself out of bed and resented it. Either way, his usual scowl was firmly in place. He pushed off from my Jeep and crossed his arms over his chest, widening his stance like we were about to go a few rounds.

  “Remy’s leaving. She’s moving to LA tomorrow. But you know what I think? LA is just temporary. She’s looking to get as far away as possible. And I don’t think she’s coming back.”

  I slung my board into the back and slammed the door shut. He was blocking the driver’s side with his body. “What do you want from me?”

  “Do you love her?”

  I laughed harshly. “That was never a question. She knew I loved her. She broke up with me.” And fuck, it hurt. My chest tightened, and I rubbed it as if that would ease the ache.

  “I didn’t see you working to get her back. I didn’t see you doing jack shit. Where the fuck have you been?”

  Unbelievable. He was giving me shit. The guy had been mute for two years, barely acknowledging me and now he was laying into me like I’d done something to hurt Remy. When in fact she’d ripped out my heart, stomped all over it, and walked out the fucking door.

  “Your sister has moved on. Why don’t you talk to her about this?”

  Dylan was still blocking my door. I folded my arms and glared at him.

  “I’ve never seen Remy fall apart before. We’ve been through a lot of shit. Her more than me. But she’s never broken down like that before. She wasn’t eating. Wasn’t leaving her bed. She’s still a wreck. Because of you. She loves you. You deserted her like every other asshole in her life.”

  “She cheated on me,” I said, my voice an angry growl. I hadn’t meant to say that and instantly regretted it. Not cool.

  He stared at me like I’d grown three heads. “She wouldn’t do that. No. Fucking. Way. She would never have cheated on you. Don’t you know Remy at all?” He shook his head like he was disappointed in me. “Maybe I gave you too much credit.”

  “Why would she tell me that if it wasn’t true?”

  “If she pushed you away, there was a reason. She doesn’t believe that she deserves good things in her life. She thinks she’s just like our mom. And she’s not. If you really loved her, you wouldn’t have let her go without a fight.”

  “You never wanted us to be together. Why the change of heart?”

  “I’m losing her, and I don’t know how to bring her back. But maybe you do. If you care about her at all, talk to her.”

  He was asking for my help. I knew that it had taken a lot for him to swallow his pride and come to me. Remy and Dylan didn’t ask ‘outsiders’ for help.

  Having said all he needed to, Dylan walked away. The St. Clairs were so damn good at turning your life upside down and then just walking away.

  I scrubbed my hands over my face.

  If it wasn’t true, if she hadn’t slept with someone else, why would she have told me she did? If she still loved me, why would she push me away?

  Why did I have to fall in love with you, Remy? Why?

  * * *

  I had every intention of opening that metal door, crossing the roof, sitting down next to her and talking. Just talking. Like an adult. Like a sane man who was in control of his emotions. A sane man who had a handle on his feelings and could have a normal conversation. But that’s where it all went wrong. When it came to Remy, I had no control over my emotions.

  I did not, however, expect to be eavesdropping on the other side of the door, straining my ears to hear the conversation through the small crack.

  It all started when I heard the words, “Shane can never find out. He can never know what I did.”

  So, I didn’t open the door. I stood behind it, and I listened. I heard it all. Every fucking thing she didn’t want me to know.

  It wasn’t until she was done telling her whole sordid tale that I pushed open that door and walked onto the roof.

  “Shane.”

  Sienna took one look at me, squeezed Remy’s hand and told her to call if she needed her.

  I raked my hands through my hair and held the back of my head. “Why, Remy? Why would you do that? Do you honestly believe I would ever want you to do something like that?”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Don’t lie to me,” I gritted out. “I heard everything.”

  “You were listening to my conversation?”

  “Why, Remy? Why would you go along with that?”

  “He threatened to call the police. He told me he was going to report you. And I was scared it would ruin your career.”

  I’d heard that part. I just couldn’t believe she would have gone along with it. “And you thought that was more important… that I would choose my career over you? That I would choose a lie over the truth? Don’t you know me at all, Remy? I never would have let you take the fall for me. That was all on me. I was the one who needed to take responsibility for my actions. All you had to do was talk to me and I would have—”

  “You would have what, Shane? What would you have done?” Her eyes flashed with anger.

  “I would have told the truth,” I yelled. “I would have done whatever it took to make it right.”

  “Don’t you see? That’s what I didn’t want. I’m the one who begged you to have sex with me. I’m the one who forced—”

  I held up my hand. “Stop right there.” I moved closer to her. “You didn’t force me to do anything. I wanted you. Right from the start. I could have said no. I could have walked away. But I didn’t. You never should have paid the price for my decision, Remy. If I’d known, I never would have let you. I should have been the one to deal with that douchebag. Not you.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “I was trying to protect you. I didn’t want anything to happen to you because of me.”

  I closed my eyes and let out a breath, my stomach churning at the thought of everything she had done, thinking she was doing it for me. If I had kept it in my pants like I should have, she never would have been put in that position to begin with. This whole thing was my fault.

  “I love you, Shane. It was always you. I never stopped loving you.”

  I pulled her into my arms and held her. She was crying, her body wracked with sobs. She was breaking in my arms. And I fucking hated myself. She’d been manipulated and played, treated like shit. Again.

  She lifted her face to mine. “Do you hate me?”

  I looked into her eyes. Her beautiful ocean eyes swimming with tears.

  I hated that douchebag Russell. I hated that asshole who had bent her over the hood of a car. And I hated Tristan Hart. “I could never hate you. But you should have told me the truth. You should have let me deal with Tristan.” There was no point in talking about what should have happened. It was over and there was no taking back what he’d done.

  “You have a contract—”

  “Fuck the contract. No money is worth that. He’s not going to get away with this.”

  “Just let it go, Shane. Let’s forget—”

  I stared at her. Was she out of her fucking mind? “Forget? No. We’re not going to forget what he did.”

  I strode to the door and jogged down the stairs. She trailed behind me.

  “Shane. Wait. Where are you going?”

  I didn’t answer. She knew where I was going. I climbed onto my bike and took off before she could stop me.

  * * *

  I tightened my grip on the handlebars. I tried to breathe so I didn’t lose my shit. I tried counting. I tried to find my fucking Zen. But all I could think of was Remy being used by another asshole. Because of me. If I had kept it in my pants, none of this would have happened. My jaw was clenched so tight it felt like it might snap.

  “Fuck!” The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

  I wasn’t thinking
straight. Not when I rode my bike right across the Harts’ manicured garden, leaving tire tracks, or when I spun out by the pool behind their McMansion. Tristan was making out with some blonde chick in the pool and hauled his sorry ass out to greet me.

  “The fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked, getting right in my face. I could smell the liquor on his breath. Tequila.

  “What did you do to Remy?”

  He laughed. The fucker laughed in my face. “If you ask me, I did you a favor, dude. She showed her true colors. She was ready and willing to spread her legs. The little slut. Aw, how far she went to protect—”

  I slammed my fist into his fucking face before he finished his sentence. I wanted the smug bastard to pay for what he’d done to Remy.

  Blind fury surged through me and fueled my punches.

  I didn’t even feel his fist slam into my face. From a distance, I heard someone shouting to stop, but I didn’t. Couldn’t.

  “That skank’s not worth fighting for. She wasn’t all that either.” He snickered, blood trickling from his cut lip. I lunged at him, and we both went down, my body landing on top of his.

  I heard the thunk. A sickening sound as his head hit the rock fountain. And for a few seconds, everything was quiet. So still and so quiet. I released my hold on him and the world came rushing back.

  “What have you done?” a woman cried. “Tristan. Oh my God. Tristan…” She was wailing, her body flung across her son’s lifeless one. The girl he’d been making out with was crying, her hands shaking as she fumbled with her cell phone. I heard her asking for an ambulance and for the police.

  I looked down at my bloody hands and flexed them.

  What have I done?

  What have I done?

  Life could change in the blink of an eye. It only took me five minutes to ruin mine.

  22

  Remy

  I flung open the apartment door and grabbed Dylan’s keys from the coffee table. “What the fuck?” he yelled.

  I sprinted back down the stairs. There was no time to explain.

  The engine turned over but then it spluttered and died. I gave it some gas, turned the key in the ignition and tried again. “Come on, come on, come on.”

  Dylan yanked open the door. “Move over.”

  “It won’t start.”

  “Move over,” he said again. “You’ll flood the engine.”

  Accepting defeat, I slid along the bench seat. Whatever Dylan did, the engine started. “Where are we going?”

  “Tristan Hart’s house. It’s—”

  “I know where it is.”

  I didn’t ask how he knew. Maybe he cleaned their pool.

  “You planning to tell me what happened? Since I’m the only one in the dark here.”

  “Can’t you drive any faster?” It should be a ten-minute drive but at this rate, it would take half an hour.

  If anything, he slowed down. “What exactly are we going to do when we get to Tristan Hart’s house?”

  “You are not going to do anything. I need to stop Shane. He can’t lose his sponsorship. Oh God, what if Shane beats him up?”

  Not that Shane was violent. Maybe he’d just talk. Not that that was much better. What if John Hart was there and overheard? Or what if Shane confessed everything?

  “Did he do something to deserve it?”

  “He can’t beat up Tristan. Shane is the poster boy for HartCore. He signed a contract.”

  “Fuck the contract.” That was the second time I’d heard that tonight. “What did Tristan do?”

  I sighed loudly. Everything I’d wanted to avoid had happened anyway. Everything I’d done, thinking I was somehow helping Shane, really had been for nothing.

  Dylan pulled over and cut the engine. We were parked in a neighborhood that was miles from where we needed to be. “What are you doing? We need to get over there. Now.”

  “Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  “Seriously? You never told me about Sienna. You never told me a damn thing. You disappeared every night for the past few months. I never saw you.”

  “I’m here now.” He leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest as if he was happy to sit here all night long, in no rush to get anywhere. “Start talking.”

  “Not until you start driving.”

  “I drive, you talk.”

  I looked around and cursed my shitty sense of direction. I wasn’t even sure where we were. Dylan was too stubborn to give an inch and I knew he wouldn’t go anywhere until I agreed. “Fine. Just go.”

  Now he was driving so slowly I was surprised we didn’t get pulled over for going below the speed limit. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

  “So are you. What did I miss?”

  I checked the speedometer. He was going fifteen miles per hour. I could run faster than this.

  He hit the brakes. “You’re not talking.”

  I screamed in frustration and pushed the door open. Hopping out of his truck, I slammed the door and started walking. I should have just ridden my bike. My crazy brother raced past me and turned a hard right, blocking the street with his truck.

  “Dylan,” I screamed in frustration.

  He rounded the truck and stood in front of me. “Remy. If you tell me, I promise I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  We stared at each other for a few seconds. Finally, I nodded and climbed back in the truck. I gave him the Cliff Notes version.

  “Motherfucker.” He smacked the dash so hard I jumped in my seat.

  Now he was driving like a freaking maniac, racing through town, his tires squealing as he cornered the turns. There was no middle ground with Dylan. There never had been.

  “You shouldn’t have kept this from me.”

  I laughed harshly. “That’s rich coming from you. For all I know, you’re banging every housewife in Costa del Rey.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Everyone knows about it.”

  “And you believed the rumors?”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore, Dylan. You never tell me where you’re going or how you make all this money.”

  “I was dealing drugs. Mostly pills. And then I got into the underground fighting scene. I wasn’t banging housewives. I was supplying them with drugs.”

  Was that any better? Peddling pills and fighting? “Why didn’t you tell me any of that?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on with you?”

  “I didn’t want you to get involved.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And Sienna… did you love her?”

  I never got the answer to that question.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  I shoved the door open, and jumped out, racing over to Shane. His head was bowed, the blue lights flashing across his face.

  “Shane.”

  His eyes met mine for a moment. And everything stopped. For a second, we were Shane and Remy. We were good. We were happy. Our dreams were going to come true. He wasn’t handcuffed. He wasn’t being taken away by police officers.

  He closed his eyes briefly and my world came crashing down around me.

  “No matter what happens to me, you go on with your life. Promise me you’ll do all the things you dreamed about, Remy.”

  “No. No.” I grabbed his arm, hanging onto him as if I could stop the cops from taking him away. “I love you. I love you so much.”

  “You need to let him go, miss,” an officer said, pulling me away from Shane. The other officer jerked Shane’s arm and held his head down, shoving him into the back of a cruiser.

  “Shane!” My eyes blurred with tears. Don’t take him away from me. Not again.

  There goes my world, I thought, as the police cruiser pulled away with Shane in the back seat. He wouldn’t even turn his head. Wouldn’t even look at me.

  You are my ocean, Shane.

  Part II

  AFTER

  23

  Shane

  S
ix Years Later/July

  My muscles threatened to burst the seams of a white polo shirt and the hems of the ill-fitting khakis brushed the tops of my slip-on canvas shoes as I walked through the final door and into the sunshine. Stomach churning, I blinked at the onslaught of light and I tried to breathe. I was standing on the threshold of my new life, scared to venture forth.

  Me. Afraid of the outside world.

  “Good luck, surfer boy. Don’t wanna see your ugly mug back here again.”

  I lifted my hand to acknowledge I’d heard the corrections officer’s words and took a few more tentative steps as the door clanged shut behind me.

  My dad was waiting for me outside the gate and pulled me into a bone-crushing hug. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying to God he wouldn’t cry. I didn’t even want him to speak, knowing the words would make me lose my shit. Lose the shaky grasp I had on my emotions. He released me and sniffed, holding it together. Just barely. In silence, we walked to his van and climbed in. He tossed me one of my old T-shirts, soft and faded from wear, and a pair of shorts. I changed into them while he drove and then tossed the prison-issued clothes and shoes into the back of the van with the bag of personal belongings I’d walked out with.

  My first taste of freedom in six years. My first foray into a world that had changed in the years I’d been gone. It should taste sweet, this freedom, but it didn’t. Everything was so strange. Foreign. I felt like a baby bird taking its first shaky steps, trying to figure out if it was ready to fly.

  Who was I now? And what the fuck was I going to do with the rest of my life?

  I caught sight of myself in the side mirror and barely recognized myself. Scrubbing my hand over my buzzed hair, I stared out the windshield. The summer sun was blinding, the sky too blue, and everything around me looked fake. Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” played on a loop in my head. God knows why. I’d never been a Radiohead fan. Someone I used to know loved Radiohead, especially that song. Of course, she had.

 

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