Forever Never

Remi watched transfixed as the thick, red liquid dripped onto the plastic on the floor, splattering in a macabre pattern over her bare foot.

Radiohead’s “No Surprises” blared from a wireless speaker on the table. Pulsing waves of oranges, blues, and rich purples shifted around the interior of the cottage. But instead of feeling comforted as she usually did, she was sick, almost dizzy as the red rolled like blood over her skin. The canvas in front of her taunted with its blinding white perfection.

Red. White. Blood. Snow. The shimmer of broken glass glimmering in headlights. Dark. Dark. Dark.

Despite the sunshine reflecting off the endless surface of the lake beyond the windows, she felt like she was back in the suffocating midnight black of that cold, horrible night.

The brush—a tool once so familiar—felt foreign and wrong in her left hand.

She shook herself forcefully.

“Don’t be a fucking baby,” she insisted, raising the brush like a wand. A spell to vanquish the darkness. To bleed color onto the canvas and, in the process, exorcise the terror, the helplessness.

Sweat dotted her brow and the back of her neck where her hair hung in a limp curtain. Her breath was weak within the confines of her lungs. A warning that she needed to pause, to breathe.

The bristles inched closer to the surface. One sweep, and the white wouldn’t be perfect in its emptiness anymore. She’d learned the lesson early. Void wasn’t perfection. Putting her colorful, lawless mark on an otherwise blank canvas was what she did best. At least, it had been.

“This is stupid,” she hissed through her teeth as the song started over again for the ninth time. “Just put the damn brush on the damn canvas.”

It had been nearly two weeks since the last time her brush had swept through richly colored oils and created worlds where before there’d been nothing. It felt like a lifetime.

But the nothingness, the void, was safe. Pristine.

The tightness in her chest started to burn, and the brush rolled from her stiff fingers.

“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered, sucking in a breath.

She sank to the ancient, dusty drop cloth she’d reclaimed from her parents’ basement and used a corner of it to swipe the paint from her foot.

This whole “breakdown” thing was really starting to piss her off.

Her breath sounded thin and wispy.

“How are you going to live a full life if you can’t take a full breath?”

An old question posed by a new friend. And for once, Remi had paid attention.

“I’m not a yoga type person,” she’d insisted, eyeing the colorful parade of tights and tank tops and mats as students of all shapes, sizes, and colors marched into the studio. “I’m more of a ‘boot camp that makes you barf at the end’ person.”

“Mmm. And how is that working for you?” her friend had asked serenely.

“Fine, but next week you come to a boxing class if I hate this.”

She hadn’t hated it. She’d found something different, something special in the yoga classes that taught her to harness her energy and her breath. To move her body in ways that felt like honor rather than torture.

The breath was an anchor, and she’d clearly lost hers. Now she was adrift. And alone.

The song cut off, and her phone’s ringtone filled the living space. Pain in My Ass. Ugh. She hit ignore, sending the call to voicemail again.

On a wheezy groan, she switched playlists, cueing up some Lizzo girl power. Pinks and purples instantly billowed around her in pretty, vibrant clouds as she forced herself to sit and breathe in one of the swivel chairs in front of the window.

She glared out at nature’s perfection.

It had been premature and stupid to borrow studio space from Brick if she wasn’t even going to be able to use it. Thankfully she hadn’t tried this little failure of an experiment at his place. The idea that he could catch her in a moment so pathetically vulnerable made her want to barf like a finisher of a boot camp class.

If he caught her in the midst of a life crisis, he wouldn’t stop until he’d pried the story out of her. Then, he’d do what he’d always done, ride to her rescue.

And this time, it could get him killed.

There was no rescue. No hero to swoop in and clean up her mess. She’d gone too far. And the consequences due were hers alone.

“I’ll end her. And you’ll know it was because of you.”

The threat echoed in her head, and she did her best to breathe through it.

She just needed to push through. What she wouldn’t give for a sweaty sun salutation or a marathon painting session to get her head right again. She needed to find a way through the fear, back to the Remi who wouldn’t just roll over and let a monster win.

The tightness in her chest demanded her attention.

She drew in a breath, holding it when she’d hit capacity, then exhaled with control. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The familiar scents of her oil paints, the brush cleaner, the bread she’d baked that morning grounded her, blocked out the memories of the metallic smell of blood and smoke.

She wasn’t going to sit here, wallowing in the what-ifs, and give herself a goddamn asthma attack.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

She sat still, breathing deeply until the tightness in her chest loosened, until her yoga instructor back in Chicago would be proud.

Crisis averted, for now. She decided to unearth her inhaler and keep it handy just in case. But just as she started to work up the energy to get her ass off the chair and start digging through her hastily packed luggage, a familiar jingle on the street caught her attention.

Remi threw on her coat and slippers and jogged out to the gate just in time to see Mickey Mulvaney and his trusty steeds Murphy and Rupert clip-clop into view, the dray wagon stacked with boxes and bins.

“Mickey Mulvaney, haven’t you retired yet?” she teased. The man had been running package and freight deliveries over the island for practically her entire life.

The man beamed down at her from his perch behind the Clydesdales. Brown eyes peered out at her between a wool cap and thick scarf. “Well, if it isn’t little Remi Ford!” he crowed. “I’ll retire when I’m dead. How’s big city living?”

“Not as good as island life. Packages show up there in these things called trucks.”

“Those mainlanders don’t know what they’re missing.” He cackled as he hopped into the flatbed to paw through envelopes and packages. Mickey and Murphy were fixtures on the island, running mail and deliveries all year long.

“Got something here for you,” he said, triumphantly snatching a thick envelope from one of his satchels.

“For me?” That was a surprise. The only people who knew she was here were the ones on Mackinac. And for them, it would be easier to just knock on the door rather than send a package.

He handed it over. Her name was written across the white envelope in a harsh, black scrawl. Her mind adding a pink shimmer to the E’s. There was no return address.

“You planning to fix a little hockey action while you’re back? I heard Red Wings are down a couple so far this season.”

Mackinac’s main form of entertainment in the winter was the two-team street hockey league. Every Wednesday for nine weeks in the coldest stretch of winter, the Mackinac Island Red Wings and St. Ignace Storm faced off downtown on Lake Shore Drive. No skates, no pads, no helmets. Just stir-crazy residents wanting to beat the crap out of an orange ball—or each other—with a hockey stick.

High school sophomore Remi had orchestrated a ruse that made it look like their star forward had a leg injury and couldn’t compete in the Bynoe Championship Cup. She’d made $300 on the bet with his “miraculous recovery.” Until her mother made her give it all back.

“Not this time around. But I hope to catch a game while I’m here.”

“Too bad about that. Well, the boys and me got some deliveries to make,” he said, releasing the brake on the wagon. “Glad to have you back.”

“Glad to be back,” she said, not sure if it was the truth or not. “Bye, Mickey.”

With a salute, he clucked the horses into motion, and the wagon rolled off down the road.

Remi tiptoed through the snow and let herself back into the warmth of the cottage. The envelope was weighty in her hand. Maybe it was some kind of invitation?

Inside Lizzo still sang. The sunlight still reflected off the lake water. Red paint still dried on the floor covering. But something felt different. Off.

Glancing down at the envelope, something stirred inside her. A tiny tendril of anxiety.

So she hadn’t shredded it open the second Mickey had handed it to her. Didn’t that count for something?

She blew out a breath. Ignoring her impulses wasn’t relieving any stress at this point. With a rush of impatience, she ripped it open and dumped out its contents.

Inside, she found a thin stack of papers. They appeared to be printouts of blog posts and news articles. The top piece’s headline jumped off the page at her, and she cringed. A quick perusal of the others confirmed they weren’t much more flattering.

Artist Alessandra Ballard MIA since car wreck.

Rumors of rehab circulate for Chicago artist.

Artist’s friend still hospitalized, condition unknown.

City’s art community rocked by Ballard scandal.

The last page was a printout of an email.

Her hands started to shake as she skimmed the text. It was the message she’d sent just days earlier.

C,

I hope you’re okay. Please be okay. They won’t tell me anything. Please tell me you’re okay.

R

“No. No. No,” she whispered to herself.

Beneath it, there was a handwritten note in the same horrible scrawl as the address on the envelope.

Distance only makes the heart grow fonder. I won’t forget about you no matter how far you go. But it seems like you’ve forgotten our arrangement.

She dropped the papers as if they were on fire.

Innocuous words, but the threat was there, a living, breathing thing in the ink on the page. Like a toxin.

He knew where she was. There was no hiding. So much rode on one man deciding if she was worth squashing or not.

“Fuck,” she breathed, flipping through the articles and skimming their contents.

The innuendo and rumors were there, but there had been no official statement from either party. Everything she’d built hung by one tenuous thread, and he held a pair of scissors.

But he’d miscalculated. The asshole assumed she was more concerned with her career, her reputation. And while she had clawed her way to the top, while she’d fought for every success and built something she was proud of, the truth was, she’d burn it all to the ground if it meant saving Camille.

But there was an upside. If he was sending her shitty reminders of their “arrangement,” that meant Camille could still be saved.

She blew out a breath and felt just a little steadier.

Maybe it was time to start doing a little threatening of her own.

She dusted off her laptop, spread the articles out in front of her and went to work.

Hours later, she leaned back in her chair to roll her tight shoulders when she realized it was dark outside already. She’d spent an entire day parsing through news reports, gossip blogs, press releases, and her own overflowing inboxes, hoping for something, anything that would light the way out of this situation.

She’d come up empty. This was a fight she wasn’t equipped for. And the cost of failure was too high. She wouldn’t survive paying.

A shiver crawled up her spine as the gloom of the dark house sank into her bones. She needed light. And alcohol. And people. She needed to forget.

She jumped up from the table and dialed her phone as she turned on lights.

“Hey. It’s me. Want to get out of the house and—”

“Yes,” her sister cut her off.

“We could talk about that neighbor welfare check thing.”

“Don’t care,” Kimber snapped. “Get me out of here.”

“Do you want to go someplace we can take the kids?”

“I want to go somewhere no one will call me ‘Mom’ or ‘babe.’ Meet me at Tiki Tavern at seven and try not to be Remi late.”

Not the Tiki Tavern. Anything but the Tiki Tavern.

“Isn’t there another bar open?”

“Not in February on a Wednesday. Besides, your nemesis doesn’t work Wednesday nights.”

Hell. Why couldn’t there be more than one bar open on the island in the winter?

“Fine. I’ll see you there,” Remi agreed.