Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

I said nothing and concentrated on breathing.

Remy didn’t return that favor.

“You’re in love with me, Wyn, and you never stopped being in love with me. And I’m so in love with you, I can’t even fucking manage my own goddamned life without you in it.”

I dropped my head.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

I lifted my head. “You need to leave.”

“We’re working this out.”

“She slept by your side for a year!” I shrieked.

The room fell dead silent.

I obliterated it.

“Is that how in love with me you are, Remy?” I hissed.

“I needed to hand you the world, but you took it for yourself,” he replied.

What?

“What the fuck does that mean?” I spat.

“I miss you. God. Fuck. Christ.”

He looked to the ceiling and the emotion rolling off him threatened to drown me. God, take my breath, drag me under, carry me away.

His gaze came back to mine.

“I fucked us up, baby. And I know, because, shit…” He stopped, visibly struggled and kept on, “If you found a man, if you did what I did to you, I’d not survive it.”

“Be quiet, Remy.”

“It’d destroy me.”

“Be quiet, Remy.”

“I have no excuses because my mind switched off the minute I walked away from you, and it didn’t switch on until you told me Bea hurt you and it brought it all back.”

Bea?

Bea brought it all back?

What did it bring back?

Oh God.

“And now that I’m with it again, I know, no matter what’s happened between then and now, we have never been done, and we never will be,” he declared.

I didn’t respond, not only because I didn’t know what to say, but because I was physically incapable of speaking.

“I tested you, and I shouldn’t have.”

He did?

“You didn’t test me, but I still failed,” he continued.

I didn’t?

“And now I see you need to do the mental work I’ve done, but I’m not waiting for that, honey. You’re either going to have to snap to it or I’m gonna give it to you. One way or another, we’re gonna get to the place where we work it out, and then we’re going to get back to where we should be,” he finished.

I remained silent.

Then Remy shared he wasn’t quite finished.

“I also see now isn’t that time. You need some space. You need time to think. But I’m cleaning the kitchen. So you can either stay here and help me, or find somewhere else to be. But be sure to lock the door when I leave.”

I didn’t need time to think about that.

I nodded and walked right out of the room.

I hid in my closet, and yes, it was not lost on me as I sat curled in my velvet chair, with two doors closed between me and Remy, in a space as far from him in the house as I could be, that I was hiding.

I also did not think about us and all he’d said.

No.

For better, or worse, I thought about one thing.

The fact that Remy was totally going to mess up packing the food away.

And tomorrow, I’d open the fridge, see that…

And it would mean everything to me.





CHAPTER 10





Top of the List





Wyn





Tuesday evening, I was, of course, running late as I walked through the back kitchen, the dining area, past the hostess station and into the bar at Durant’s, to see Fiona Remington sitting in a half-circle booth at the back.

People were glancing her way, but they weren’t being overt or doing anything as crass as taking pictures, because it was Durant’s and no one there would be so gauche.

She was wearing a heavenly combination of Gucci and Givenchy.

I approved.

With a glance and a smile at her bodyguard, Davey (who was in the next booth), I hit the table and slid into the seat.

“You’re ridiculous,” she stated, reaching to what I knew was a mojito, since she’d mixed some for us at her house in Malibu and shared they were her signature.

I also knew she was referring to the fact that only I would be fifteen minutes late to sit down with possibly the most powerful creative force in Hollywood.

I grinned at her and replied, “Life has been crazy.”

She lifted a brow on an expressive face with big eyes and perfect black skin, all of this surrounded by a halo of soft curls, before she took a sip of her drink.

“My son came out as gay,” I declared. “He’s dating an Adidas model rugby player, who in another life was a gladiator who had no troubles ripping apart a lion but has the manners of a young man who got perfect scores in etiquette school.”

Fiona put her drink down.

I kept blabbing.

“Me and the rest of my friend posse are currently procrastinating in calling an intervention with a member of our crew who we’ve just realized has been verbally abusing our husbands for more than a decade. And in doing so, bringing a toxicity she’s been slowly poisoning a lot of things with that whole time.”

Fiona tipped her head to the side.

I continued yammering.

“And although he’s been eerily quiet for two days, my ex-husband threw down with me on Sunday about the fact that we’re still in love, and we need to work it out, even though he walked out on me, and we’ve been divorced for three years.”