Idon't know why I went to his houseboat.
Harper had mentioned the cemetery. Just two words in a text—"Remy's hurting."—and something in my chest had tightened in a way I didn't want to examine. The pretty one with the easy smile and the endless chatter, the one who never stopped performing long enough to let anyone see what was underneath. He'd lost a brother too.
Wednesday evening, I grabbed a six-pack and my fishing rod and drove to the marina before I could talk myself out of it. The houseboat was easy to find—older but well-maintained, strung with lights that probably looked charming at night, a guitar case visible through the window. It suited him.
Remy was on deck when I pulled up, barefoot in worn jeans and a t-shirt that had seen better days. He looked tired. The kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix.
"Figured you might want company." I stood on the dock, not sure if I'd be welcome, the cooler dangling from one hand and my fishing rod in the other. "Harper said you had a roughmorning yesterday." The words felt clumsy in my mouth—I wasn't good at this, reaching out, but I'd driven here anyway.
Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, or wariness. Then that smile slid into place, the one I was starting to recognize as armor.
"Come aboard." He stepped back, gesturing me onto the deck, his bare feet silent on the weathered wood. "Fair warning, I talk too much when I'm nervous, and you make me nervous." He ran a hand through his curls, a tell I was starting to recognize—he did it when he was off-balance.
"I know." The words came out before I could stop them, and his smile twitched into a more genuine shape. He ducked his head, curls falling across his forehead, and for a second he looked younger. Less guarded. He laughed, short and surprised, and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders.
I climbed aboard, settling into one of the deck chairs while he grabbed fishing rods from a storage locker. He handed me one without asking if I knew how to use it. I did. Fishing was one of the few things from my childhood I still remembered how to enjoy.
We cast our lines, and the quiet settled over us. The bayou was golden in the late afternoon light, cypress trees throwing long shadows across the still surface. A heron called somewhere in the distance. The houseboat rocked gently, and I let myself breathe for the first time in days.
He lasted about four minutes.
"So." Remy reeled in slightly, adjusting his line, the click of the reel loud in the quiet. "You and Harper, huh? Both military. Both the strong silent type. Both probably think I'm an idiot." He kept his eyes on the water, but I could see the tension in his jaw.
"Don't think you're an idiot." I kept my eyes on the water too, watching a ripple spread where a fish had surfaced anddisappeared. The silence stretched between us, comfortable in a way I hadn't expected.
"Could've fooled me." He cast again, the motion smooth and practiced, the line singing through the air before it hit the water with a soft plop. "You barely say ten words to me on a good day. Harper at least grunts in my direction." There was humor underneath the complaint, but something real too.
"I don't talk much." I shifted my weight, the chair creaking under me, and stretched my legs out in front of me. "Doesn't mean I'm not listening." I'd learned a long time ago that silence told you more than words ever could.
"Yeah, well." His voice went quieter, the performance slipping like a mask coming loose. "Listening to me is usually a mistake. I say a lot of nothing to avoid saying anything real." His fingers stilled on the reel, and he stared at the water like it held answers he was afraid to find.
I looked at him then—really looked. Past the pretty face and the easy charm, past the smile that never quite reached his eyes. I saw what I'd seen that first night at the bar, when he'd sung about someone named Luc and his whole mask had cracked open for just a moment.
"Why?" I asked, keeping my voice flat.
"Why what?" Remy's brow furrowed, his fingers stilling on the reel.
"Why avoid saying anything real?" I held his gaze, watching him squirm. "You're smart. Observant. You see things other people miss. But you hide it behind jokes and flirting."
He laughed, hollow and sharp, the sound carrying across the water. "You been psychoanalyzing me, Silas?" He tried to make it a joke, but it came out brittle.
"Don't have to." I turned back to the bayou, watching the light shift on the surface as the sun dropped lower, painting the water in shades of copper and rose. "Takes one to knowone." The words hung between us, heavy with meaning I hadn't entirely intended. A fish jumped somewhere to our left, breaking the surface with a silver flash before disappearing back into the dark.
That shut him up. Good. Maybe now we could have an actual conversation.
"My family—" He started, stopped, tried again, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. "You know the Thibodaux name?"
"Old money. Lots of land. Big house on the river." I'd heard the name around town, knew the weight it carried. Old families cast long shadows in Louisiana.
"That's the one." He reeled in his line, found it empty, cast again with a flick of his wrist that spoke of years of practice. "My father wanted me to be a lawyer. My mother wanted me to be a doctor. My eldest brother Jean-Pierre actually did both, because apparently one impossible standard wasn't enough." Bitterness crept into his voice, real and raw, and he gripped the rod tighter. "I was the disappointment. The one who'd rather play guitar than study. The one who'd rather make people laugh than make them proud." He said it like a fact he'd long since accepted, but the hurt underneath was fresh.
I didn't respond. Just listened. It was what I was good at.
"Then my little brother died." The words scraped out of him like broken glass, and his whole body went tight, the easy sprawl gone rigid. "And suddenly I wasn't just the disappointment. I was the reason they lost their youngest son." His voice cracked on the last word, and he cleared his throat roughly.
"Harper mentioned." I kept my voice soft, giving him space. "Said you visited his grave yesterday." I'd felt the echo of that grief in the text Harper had sent—three words that had made me get in my truck and drive here.
"Luc." He said the name like it cost him something, like speaking it out loud was an act of bravery. "He was twelve. I was seventeen and supposed to be watching him, and I—" He shook his head, jaw tight, a muscle jumping in his cheek. "I left. Ran away before I turned nineteen because I couldn't stand the way they looked at me. Spent years drifting, drinking, playing music in dive bars for tips. Anything to avoid going home." He laughed, but there was no humor in it.
