The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,255

She gives me a wan smile, and they walk out together.

I walk over to where Gigi is sitting, clutching Hayes’ hand and staring tearfully at the door. “You okay?”

She doesn’t say anything. She watches the door until, nearly ten minutes later, it opens and my father walks in.

Chapter 38

CERTAIN

KAL

* * *

My eyes open when the sheets of the bed are pulled back and Remi slips into bed beside me. I roll over and sit up.

“Wait, I want to see your face.” I reach over him to turn on the bedside lamp and he presses a kiss to my shoulder and then wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me over until I’m straddling him. He presses his cheek to my chest and hugs me to him.

My heart aches for him. It’s been a hellish twenty-four hours. After everyone left, Gigi and Lucas were left in the library talking.

Seeing her didn’t bring back his memories.

Well, except for one.

When he saw Gigi, his eyes filled with tears. He stared at her and said, “I know you.”

She nodded, tears running down her cheeks.

He said, “Can you tell me how? I’d really like to know.”

She’d looked at Hayes and then at Remi who nodded at her before she said, “I’d really like to tell you.”

We left them alone when it became clear, that for them, there was no one else in the room anyway.

Remi went back to his office with Hayes. I hadn’t heard from him since. I finally decided to go to bed at midnight. I didn’t expect that sunrise would bring an easier day with it, so I wanted to try and get some rest because I knew that there were still a lot of questions to be answered and I needed to tell him about the article.

“I’m so fucking glad I have you to come to home to tonight, Kal,” he whispers against my breast.

“I’m glad, too. Are you okay?” I hug him and stroke his head trying to soothe him. He’s radiating with energy, his skin on the edge of being hot and he’s tense.

“I don’t know. Everything that was certain is gone. Everything I thought I’d lost has found its way back to me. I’m so relieved, and so fucking drained.” And then as if to make his point, he sways a bit, and lets some of his weight rest on me.

“Oh, baby. I know. You should get some sleep.” I hold him and rock him.

“I love you, Kal. I’m scared to even imagine what you must think of me. I mean, my mother was so awful to you when we were kids. If I had a kid and someone treated her the way my mother treated you, I’d probably want to kill her.”

I can’t help but stiffen with surprise. I thought for sure he was going to talk about his parents. “Oh, yeah… your mother and I, we have a long way to go, I think. But, I’ve always been willing to try. Now that she might be, too, maybe it will be okay?” I actually want to cunt punch his mom, but I keep that to myself. Right now, I feel like I just need to make sure Remi knows that everything’s going to be okay.

“How are you feeling about your parents? Are you okay? I’ve been so worried about you.”

“I mean, honestly, I’ve been more worried about you,” he says surprising me again.

“Really? I’m not the one who had a bomb dropped on her life in the last two days.” That’s not exactly true, but this doesn’t seem like the time to bring up my custody woes.

“But…” He pulls back and looks at me. “I mean, he’s not your father. But he is mine. And we’re… us. So… it happened to you, too. I want to be here for you. You must have feelings about it too, right?”

“Right,” I say and my heart softens. Remi always finds a way to take something terrible and reshape it into something beautiful.

Like he did the night I met him.

And the summer I fell in love with him.

And over the lifetime I spent away from him.

“I’m okay. If you are. I just—love you so much. I always have. It was this dizzy love that made me want to change my entire life for you.”

His rumbling laugh is full of nostalgia. “But even a love like that has limits, right?”

I nod, sadly. I’m anxious about the conversation I know we’re going to have soon. But right now, I just want