Page 125 of Late Harvest

“I love you, too, Sebastian,” she murmured, touching her forehead to his, the fierce ache of love in her heart making her realize just how adrift she’d been in her life.

“Mine.”

“Mine.”

Remy inhaled a shaky breath, their vows a momentary balm for the wound she was about to rip open.

Chapter Sixty-Five

Stop holding onto that shit. Forgive yourself and move on.

—From Remy’s Badass Bitch Affirmations

Remy

“My birth name was Arabella Torres.” Remy filled her lungs with much-needed air and released it, that first salvo like ripping off a Band-Aid.

“Arabella, please, don’t do this right now. It can wait.” Sebastian pleaded, lifting the hand wearing his engagement ring and kissing her fingertips. “You’ve had a long day and a big scare.”

Remy steeled her spine. “I want to, Sebastian. I need to—to just get this out.”

Sebastian’s eyes darted between hers, worry creasing his forehead. Eventually he nodded, but kept a hold on her hand.

The rest of the room’s occupants remained silent. Even Grayton appeared to have ended his call.

“My mother and my father never married, but I carried his last name. My father was an abusive addict. My mother, an alcoholic. We moved around a lot and my mother and I had many short stays in shelters, where she recovered from his particularly brutal assaults. When I was in high school, I essentially moved in with my best friend, Etta Remington”—Remy stifled a sob—“and her mother, Tasha.”

“It’s ok, Remy. We’re here. Take your time.” Nell’s voice soothed, the mother of four clearly practiced in calming the agitated.

Remy nodded. “The summer before my senior year of high school, I emancipated myself, officially moving in with the Remingtons. Tasha worked as a paralegal at a law firm. They took my case pro bono. My father was dead by then. Overdose. And my mother decompensated. Badly. Late fall of my senior year, my mother killed herself.”

A tiny whimper, either from Honor or Lila. Remy kept going, needing to shed the weight of the past.

“I started college. A full-ride to study biology at Hopkins. Pre-med. I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon.” A wan smile ghosted across her face at the memory of that accomplishment. “Etta was at a university down the street in Baltimore studying art and psychology. She wanted to be an art therapist for abused kids.” Remy grabbed the abandoned, soggy tissue on the couch and blew her nose. “That winter, I was dropping off my late mother’s clothes at a shelter in downtown Baltimore. When I was there—oh fuck.” She put a hand over her mouth, struggling to face that pivotal memory.

If only I’d picked a different shelter. If only I’d seen him then for who he truly was.

“Angel,” Sebastian began. “Please don’t do this to yourself.” His tone was as raw and ragged as her heart.

Remy swallowed back more tears, straightening her shoulders. “I’m doing this, Sebastian.” Her voice was even, but her racing heart belied the surprising calmness in her firm delivery. “While I was there, I recognized one of the police officers who’d come to my high school the morning my mother died. His name was Doug Greene. He was a Baltimore City cop and was bringing in a woman who’d been badly beaten. He was so tender with her.”

Remy laughed without humor, a familiar wave of anger at Doug boiling up. It was so much easier to handle than all the sorrow, regret, and fear. “Such a phony. He was handsome. Charismatic. Accomplished. Well on his way to being named a detective. He seemed so…grown up. I was eighteen. He was twenty-seven. Long story short, we began dating. He pursued me pretty relentlessly, but rather than be wary—the signs were all there—I soaked up his attention and what I perceived to be devotion to me.

“Etta, sh—she saw him for who he was. Kept telling me he was a classic narcissist. Highlighted pages from her psychology textbooks.” Remy shook her head. How different things would have been had she heeded those signs.

“It wasn’t long before Doug began doing what abusers often do. He slowly isolated me from others, especially Etta and Tasha. Anytime he was off work, he was hanging around the campus or my dorm. Even when I had class, he’d be waiting for me. And if I made plans with Etta or anyone else, he’d complain we didn’t spend enough time together.

“And I was so damn starved for love, I ate it up like a feast. I began canceling plans and spending all my free time with him. He loved it, telling me how he wanted me all to himself. Acting hurt and even getting angry when I saw the Remingtons. He made it known he didn’t ‘approve’ of my relationship with them.

“I didn’t want to let him down, so I started making excuses not to see them. And when I did, I’d try to time those visits for when Doug was on shift. But he’d gotten me a cellphone, and he’d call me constantly, even while on duty. It became impossible to do anything without him becoming my sole focus.”

Remy swallowed convulsively, licking her dry lips. Always attuned to her, Sebastian handed her the fizzy cherry-lime seltzer water that was her favorite. Parched throat and lips quenched, she prepared herself to continue. Remy had studied depersonalization disorder in med school—short experiences of detachment from your body, where the world feels unreal or distorted. She knew she’d experienced it. Especially those early days, after…

But it had been a long time since the feeling hit her this hard.

Falling back on therapy skills, she took a moment to focus on the calm assurance of Sebastian’s fingers laced with hers. The comforting weight of Chicane. The hum of the refrigerator. The scent of red wine wafting into the room.

Remy breathed deeply and continued. “By the beginning of my sophomore year at Hopkins, Doug had convinced me to move in with him. Tasha and Etta begged me to end things. To see him for who he was. But I was blind to it all. He’d succeeded in moving me away from my only support system.