To insecure men, not needing them to be your everything was a huge turn-off.
Not only was Remy cool with Myles, but he also liked the same things we did. Animals and food and garbage TV. He wasn’t threatened by my friendship because he was a part of it too.
So instead of trying to drive a wedge between Myles and me, he just joined in.
It was all just so… effortless.
Well, I mean, aside from the whole guys trying to kill us thing, that is.
Being at the safe house made it easy, at times, to forget about that. We were insulated from normal life, from all the stresses and problems that came with it.
Which was why my mind just kept repeating something Myles had said to me as I was trying to fall asleep.
“We need to get out of here, so you can see what this relationship looks like in the real world.”
When he’d said it, I swear I almost felt like the words slapped me. I’d taken offense for a moment before I had to admit that he was right.
We were living an idealized version of life.
One where we were free to see each other every moment of the day. Where we didn’t know how we would each react to having to have a lot of time spent apart. Would it make us miss each other? Would it make us kind of forget about each other?
After all, whatever I decided to do about work—go back to the shop, or take my parents up on a more corporate type situation—I would be spending a healthy chunk of my day doing that.
And Remy, well, how was his… unconventional job going to work in a real-life situation? Would it bother me? Would it freak me out when he was out of touch for a long period of time because he was, you know, doing that illegal stuff?
What about his lifestyle?
I’d never wanted to consider myself jealous or suspicious, but I’d also never dated someone who lived in a house with a bunch of single guys who held crazy parties full of half-naked women who liked casual sex with outlaw bikers.
Myles was right.
Our relationship needed exposure to real life situations. It was easy and fun now because nothing was testing it, testing us.
We needed to see how we managed the weather that came with the violent storm clouds of our lives knocked into each other.
Would they push us closer together or tear us apart?
Only time would tell.
Once I got out of the beautiful safe house that made it so easy to glamorize everything.
Which, I reminded myself, was part of the reason Remy went back to his clubhouse. To see his animals, sure, but also to look over the files from his friend Arty, to talk to his brothers about a plan to put an end to things once and for all.
Maybe I should have had more of a reaction to the concept of “ending things once and for all” since I knew that meant, well, killing people.
But these people had been willing to take an innocent Myles and kill him just to get to me. They didn’t seem like they were going to stop until they got me. And since turning to the cops wasn’t an option, this was the only solution in front of us.
My mind was still racing with all that kind of stuff as I finally drifted off to sleep sometime well after midnight.
It was my phone shrieking on the nightstand that dragged me out of a dead sleep.
Phone calls after bedtime were always alarming. Because nothing good happened after midnight. My heart flew up into my throat as my stomach dropped as I reached for it in the dark, a part of me terrified it was bad news from one of my parents about the other one.
But it wasn’t either of their names on the caller ID.
No.
It wasn’t a known number at all, in fact.