Page 163 of Challenge Me

I looked out the back door at where Mal was lining up her cars in the yard. There was so much innocence in her. Just yesterday, she’d been panicking in my arms, chanting our code-word, begging me for help in a moment when she couldn’t think straight.

Amir had it right. He wanted to keep her out of the headlines and maintain as much privacy as humanly possible. Everything he did was to protect his family. To protect Mal. And now, he was trying to protect me. He’d been willing to risk his entire career and more to stop Clara from airing this interview. And that was wrong.

I knew what needed to be done. I knew it so wholly that it felt as though it was burning me from the inside.

“I need to get to Remi’s,” I said.

“Hey.” Amir grabbed my arm to stop me. “Dean’s covering for you.”

“Only as long as I need him to.”

“Just stay in tonight. He’s the one who offered to help out.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t do this, Remi.”

I didn’t bother to hold back the tears, because I knew it wouldn’t work. “I can’t be here right now, shut in this house, trapped.” Wrapping my arms around myself, I took a shuddering breath. “I don’t want to be lost in the past, so I need to work.”

“You don’t have to be lost. Whatever you need, I’m here.”

“This is what I need. To keep myself busy, just like I’ve always done.”

He scanned my face, one side to the other, top to bottom. “You’re not running, right?”

Tentatively, I leaned forward to rest my forehead against his. “I promised, remember? Don’t you trust me?”

His fingers gripped the nape of my neck and pulled me back an inch. With his eyes on mine, he nodded once. “I trust you.”

He leaned in to kiss me, but I stepped back. “If it’s okay, I don’t want to be touched like that right now.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

I felt his eyes on me until I shut the door. My grip on the key left an indent in my palm when I pulled it away. Still staring at the spot, I saw flashes of red in my vision.

“Remi? Is that you? Look at you, all grown up. Well, almost grown up. Hey, what do you say we get something to eat? My treat.”

Shaking my head, I started the car. I had a feeling this was going to be an insufferably long night.

*****

The metal door rattled angrily as it rolled upward, revealing two neat rows of boxes in the room. There was a narrow gap between them that allowed me to squeeze inside. Despite how orderly it was, I had no clue which one held what I needed.

Most of these hadn’t been opened in years—maybe close to a decade. I moved from San Francisco to Seattle with a duffel and a backpack. Those bags turned into a couple of boxes, and by the time I rented my house in Washington, I’d collected enough stuff to use the attic. Now, I lived in a bar, so I had to resort to a storage unit for ninety percent of my shit.

I hadn’t even opened this place up since I first got to the East Coast a year ago. It was in New York where Oli and Dean lived, but the two-hour drive had been a nice way to clear my head. As much as it could be cleared. I was teetering on apathy again, but I didn’t want to succumb to that. Tommy was right about it. It couldn’t last forever, and it didn’t actually help a damn thing.

Flipping open the knife Amir had gotten for me, I cut through the tape on one of the boxes. I dug through it for a second before I decided it didn’t have what I needed. With a frown, I turned in a circle and looked at the stacks around me. There were dozens of them, and I’d made the mistake of letting an unorganized madman help me pack.

I ran my fingers over the top of a box with a sigh. “God damnit, Oli.”

Dropping onto the couch against the back wall, I pulled out my phone. A text from Amir made me smile.

Amir: You up yet?

Me: Why? Miss me?