The expression drops fast, and her eyes even faster. A tension takes over the space, both of us waiting for the switch to flip between us. But instead I shock us both and bend down, catching the side of her face. I set my forehead on hers.

“I’ll make sure no one hangs around the bus, so you can escape.”

She nods against me. “Thank you.”

A memory trickles in, the emotions that go with it close behind. Too close.

My thumb strokes her jaw before I straighten. Then I walk through the curtain. Off the bus. Into the sun.

And she still feels like my Remi—my perfect girl who looked like heartache and dissolved into a dream. Not callous and cold or capable of not caring about the pain she leaves behind. She feels like I want to believe her about us being real. The possibility bears down on me. Maybe I’ve been wrong this entire time.

I head back inside, security barricades lining the short path and two security guards flanking the venue’s exit. Already set up for the concert. Colt’s in the hallway, posted against a wall. He pushes off with his foot when I walk in.

“Sorry if they woke you up. I didn’t know they were out there until they came back in.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” I tell him.

I hook my head, passing him, and he follows as the heavy door bangs shut behind us. It sounds like something cracks, but I ignore it. Probably just that armor I’m fucked without.

19

FOSTER

Before…

Walking through the flat’s door, I toss the single key on a dinky ring on the kitchen counter. I pause, noticing the other single key on a matching dinky ring, and try to determine if it’s moved since last night. When I left this morning, I barely paid attention. Now I’m overanalyzing, searching for something that isn’t there.

There’s a simple way to find the answer. I just need to ask the keeper of the key. Except Chase has barely spoken to me since Halloween. A grunt here and there. An irritated whatever.

Four fucking days.

We talked more when I lived halfway across the country than we are sharing the same thousand square feet.

At first, after I stopped being pissed at him, I over-cheered the shit out of everything to be a dick. He’d scowl. I’d grin. He ignored me asking if he wanted to grab food. I praised him on his commitment to finishing the entirety of the trash show he was watching in a single binge session.

Then he switched to avoiding me, and I decided fuck it and stopped trying to break him out of his tantrum.