Forever Never

The nerve of the man she hadn’t called to come bail her out of a mess. Remi tried to ignore him. And his big, warm hand. And the feel of his hard thighs beneath her. No easy feat as the sway of the horse reminded her with every step.

She was hot and cold. Overwhelmed. Confused. Irritated. Irrationally turned on. And recovering from an attack. It was a festering stew of a mess.

He steered his hulking horse onto Lake View Drive, and Remi refused to dwell on how romantic this would be if they were anyone else but the two of them.

She’d given him his chance. Millions of them. And he’d turned his back on every single one of them. Just because it felt damn good to have that big, rough palm under her shirt was not a reason to thaw. He’d made his choice, and getting himself worked up worrying about her wasn’t going to sway her.

Ugh. It still felt really good. Really, really good.

She shifted against him, unable to help it. And when she did, the hard-on pressed against her ass responded with a jerk.

The school appeared on their left. A small, cozy brick building where she’d spent her formative years. Learning that people were different. That not everyone thought the letter L was orange.

All these years later, she didn’t feel that much different from the energetic little girl who dreamed of bigger things.

Red Gate came into view as they rounded the bend, and Remi sighed with relief. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand being held by Brick without either slapping him in the face or ripping her own pants off and shouting, “Take me, you fool.” Cleetus was a sturdy mount, but she doubted he’d be okay with them fucking on him.

When they got to the gate, Brick slid his hand out from under her shirt, his fingers blazing trails along her stomach. Like little tracks of fire.

Wordlessly, he dismounted and, before she could do the same, he plucked her off the horse and set her down.

Tired and mad, Remi opened the gate and let it slam behind her, hoping he’d just go away rather than see the whole doctor appointment thing through.

She unlocked the front door and let herself inside. The snow was falling onto the frozen crust of the lake beyond her wall of windows. Inside it was cozy and warm. She just wanted to curl up on the couch and sleep for a week.

Attacks always left her exhausted. But she couldn’t let Brick see that.

She found her purse, a patchwork leather in shades of greens, next to the dining table. Rifling through turned up nothing resembling her inhaler.

“Where the hell is it?” she muttered to herself.

She moved on to her toiletry bag in the bathroom and was pawing through it when she heard the front door open and close, the boots on the hardwood.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

No inhaler there.

Ignoring the looming, frowning cop in her living room who was staring at her with his arms crossed, she went into the bedroom and dragged her suitcases out of the closet and began going through the zippered pockets.

“Find it?”

Brick’s voice came from the doorway behind her.

Remi ignored him and opened the nightstand drawer. Shit. Where the hell was it?

She put her hands on her head and paced in front of the tiny closet, trying to pinpoint the last time she remembered having it. She always carried it to yoga class after her instructor had told her she was a “boner head” for not keeping it with her. She’d gotten in the habit of stashing it in whatever purse she was carrying.

She paused, mid-step.

The headlights in the mirrors. The hard jerk forward and the snap back.

“Fuck,” she whispered.

“What is it?” Brick asked grimly.

“I…I think I lost my inhaler in the accident.”

“You haven’t had one since you broke your arm?”

It was such a blur. The ride home. The pressure in her chest. The hospital afterward.

Remi swiped a hand over her face, trying to push the images away. Trying to focus on the present.

“I guess so,” she admitted.

It was irresponsible. Especially given the fact that she’d ended up in the emergency department with an asthma attack while her friend fought for her life in the ICU. That’s when the attending doctor had realized her arm was broken.

Her only thought after that was to get out of town. To go where no one could find her.

“That’s unacceptable, Remington,” Brick said. He’d stepped into the room, crowding her against the bed. She could feel the heat pumping off him at her back. His aura was probably a roiling mess of frustration and anger.

She couldn’t exactly blame him.

“Do you at least have your daily meds?” he asked.

“I ran out two days ago,” she said in a small voice. She crossed her arms over her chest and hunched her shoulders against the judgment she was sure he was going to deliver.

Instead, she heard him sigh. Felt the heat of his breath on her neck.

“Come on then. Change out of your wet clothes, and let’s get it taken care of,” he said.

She turned to look at him. “What? No lecture?”

“I think you’ve been through enough for one day. I’ll lecture you tomorrow or the next day when I’m not so pissed off.”

She wasn’t going to say “thank you.” Because she didn’t want him to think he was forgiven for any of his other transgressions. Instead, she gave him a tight nod and skirted around him. “Fine,” she said.

Dr. Sara Ferrin was a tall, competent Black woman with a no-nonsense bedside manner. But Remi wasn’t fooled by her cool, professional demeanor. The woman was wearing Ferragamo pumps in the health center at the end of February. There was a human being with great taste beneath that white coat.

Unfortunately, right now, that human being was judging her. Racing into a rescue situation with no training. Going without a rescue inhaler for weeks. There would be no lollipops for Remi from the inimitable Dr. Ferrin.

“It was the cold and probably a bit of the adrenaline,” Remi said, wincing at the cold stethoscope on her back.

“Mmm,” Dr. Ferrin said.

“Oh. And then there was the yelling,” she added. “I did a lot of yelling. So that probably didn’t help.”

“You know what would help?” the doctor said mildly. “If you’d be quiet while I tried to listen to your lungs.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry,” Remi said. She felt compelled to further apologize but then decided the doctor would probably rather she shut her mouth.

So she sat still and breathed as she was told while Dr. Ferrin moved the stethoscope around her back.

“Okay,” the doctor said, sitting down on the rolling stool. “I think you got the albuterol in time to beat a more serious attack. But since I have you here, I’m going to want to run a test or two. Now, let’s talk.”

Talk. This was when Remi would have batted her eyelashes at the former island doctor and told him a funny story, and he’d let her off without a lecture.

Assessing brown eyes unwilling to be charmed studied her. “How is your condition management?”

“I manage it fine…usually,” Remi added.

“You were in here just days ago with your friend who was injured while messing around on the ice bridge. You’ve got a broken arm, and this is your second serious asthma attack in what? A month?”

“Yes, but—”

“That doesn’t sound like management,” Dr. Ferrin observed.

“There were extenuating circumstances.”

“Seems like a lot of extenuating circumstances to me. I’m not saying that you’re purposely making terrible decisions. I’m saying trouble is attracted to certain people, and you are most definitely one of them. However, you did rescue Mr. Kleckner, and I am awfully fond of him and his wife. So that weighs heavily in your favor.”

“Did you see him? Is he okay?” Remi asked.

“Mr. Kleckner will be fine. Thanks to you and our fine emergency services. Let’s talk about what you do when you’re not in the midst of extenuating circumstances. Tell me about your prescriptions, your exercise, your diet.”

“Don’t you have other patients to see?” Remi asked weakly.

Dr. Ferrin’s smile was sharp. “It’s your lucky day. There isn’t a ton of doctoring going on in February on an island of five hundred. Now, prescriptions, exercise, diet. Talk. And if there’s enough time left over, maybe we can figure out when your cast can come off.”

Forty minutes later, Remi stepped into the waiting room with three fresh prescriptions and a host of medical advice about how she was living her life all wrong.

Worse yet, Brick was still there. Standing hip-shot, arms crossed, staring at her as if he’d been willing her to appear.

“Well?” he asked.

“Everything is fine,” she said.

“Good. Come on.”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Brick.”

“I’m not babysitting you. I’m feeding you lunch because you earned it and then taking you home.”

“I earned it?”

He sighed and held the door open for her. “If you hadn’t gone to visit the Kleckners, it might have taken Lois a lot longer to check on Ben. He could have been out there for an hour or two before anyone realized he was missing. His tracks would have been gone.”

“So I wasn’t incredibly irresponsible?” she asked, fishing for a compliment.

“Maybe not in this case. Though not wrecking their snowmobile would have been a better solution.”

“That wasn’t my fault.”

He held up a big hand. “I know. That thing has needed an overhaul for fifteen years.”

“Where are you taking me for lunch?” she asked, suddenly starving.

The Cherry Blossom Cafe was a little lakefront place with water views and really good pies. Remi settled into the cherry red booth and rested her head against the cushion for a moment before opening her eyes to study the man in uniform across from her.

He looked as exhausted as she felt.

They placed their orders without making any eye contact and when the server skedaddled, Brick stared down at the stainless steel tabletop.

“You didn’t call me,” he said finally.

“No. I didn’t. I called my mother.”

“I didn’t like it.”

“I’m not apologizing for that,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Then why are you telling me.”

His sigh moved those massive shoulders up, then down. “I don’t really know.”

The buzz of the heater above them filled the silence. The snow outside turned finer, like dust.

“You scared the hell out of me today,” he said.

“Why?” she scoffed. She’d been born and raised on this island. She knew the trails, the woods. She understood the dangers of winter.

“You scare the hell out of me every day, Remi.”

She shook her head. “Let’s not. I don’t want to do this.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t want you to let me in just a little. Give me just a glimpse of what goes on in your head. Because you’re just going to shut me out again. You’re just going to reject me and tell me I’m not good enough or not what you want or get pissed off about something I do. So let’s not.”

“Remi.”

“Brick.”

“I don’t know how to be what you want.”

She looked up at the ceiling and took a breath. “You can’t be what I want, and I’m accepting that. This is what you wanted. Distance.”

“It feels…wrong,” he admitted.

“Just because something feels wrong doesn’t mean it’s not right,” she said.

He combed a hand over his beard. “That’s the least Remi-like thing I’ve heard you say.”

“Maybe I’m trying to be less like myself. Maybe it would all be easier for everyone if I were someone else.”

“The world needs a Remington Honeysuckle Ford.”

“The world does, but not a lot of people do,” she pointed out.

“That sounds like bullshit to me,” Brick observed.

Fortunately, the conversation was cut short by the arrival of their food.

She dug in to her turkey breast with mashed potatoes and gravy and a side of lima beans. See Dr. Ferrin? She could be healthier. She could make the effort. She wasn’t incapable of trying. Sure, she was definitely having a bowl of Marshmallow Munchies when she got back to the cottage, but the lima beans still counted.

His phone buzzed on the table. Idly, he flipped it over, and Remi saw his expression sharpen.

“What is it?” she asked.

He looked up at her. Those blue eyes focusing in on her face. “It’s a news alert. Camille Vorhees was just released from the hospital.”

She launched forward, snatching the phone out of his hand.

“Oh my God,” she breathed as she stared at the photo on the screen. There was Camille, looking elegant and exhausted on crutches. She wore an ivory cashmere coat and black trousers. Her blond hair was pulled back in a sleek twist.

Relief coursed through Remi as she zoomed in. Camille’s delicate face looked very pale and very thin. She looked fragile and glamorous and lovely and very much alive.

The screen blurred, and Remi swiped at a stray tear that escaped.

“Why do you have a news alert set for Camille?” she asked.

He looked at her long and hard. “Because she matters to you.”

A keyed-up Remi locked the door of the cottage and leaned against it. Camille was out of the hospital. In any other situation, it would have been incredible news worth celebrating. But in this one, it meant she was in a whole other kind of danger.

She pulled off her coat and boots and paced the floor in mismatched socks, her head spinning.

On a whim, she picked up her phone and scrolled through her contacts.

“Need someone to post bail?” Her brother-in-law sounded haggard but amused.

“Hey, Kyle. I don’t need bail, but I do need some hypothetical lawyerly advice,” she said, wandering around the dining table.

“I’ve got five minutes before court reconvenes. Hit me.”

“Say a bad guy did something bad, but no one knows he did it, and no one knows he’s bad.”

“Okay. Squeaky clean bad guy. Got it,” he said over the din of voices.

“Say a good guy knows the bad guy committed the crime, but no one is listening to her. I mean him.”

“Unreliable witness,” Kyle filled in.

“Yeah. That. How does an unreliable witness protect herself and the victim of the original crime if no one believes her? Or him,” she added.

“What kind of crime are we talking here?”

She tapped her fingernails to her teeth. “Let’s say something along the lines of attempted murder.”

There was a pause on her brother-in-law’s end of the call. “Remi, what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she insisted, forcing a laugh. “I’m just helping a writer friend work on her thriller.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t use your scary trial lawyer voice on me, Kyle Olson. I held your leg while you did keg stands at your law school graduation party.”

The background noise on his end was getting louder. “You swear this is fictional?” he pressed.

“Cross my heart,” she lied.

“Then the good guy would need to either find evidence that the bad guy committed the crime, or he’d need to find evidence of another crime the bad guy committed.”

Remi stopped pacing. “You’re saying a bad guy doesn’t usually just commit one crime.”

“There’s almost always a pattern,” he said. “Shit. Listen, I gotta go. Call me later.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Sure,” she said and hung up.