Chapter 14
Remy looked down at Indigo, who was trembling in his arms like a leaf in a storm.
She was crying, tears streaming down her face, her whole body shaking with the aftermath of almost dying.
"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice losing its edge for the first time since that night in the classroom.
His usual cold control cracked, revealing genuine concern underneath.
"Are you hurt? Did I hurt you when I..."
Indigo looked up at him, and something in her eyes was completely different from before.
The calculation was gone. The performance was gone. The hollow seduction and the practised vulnerability.
All of it was gone, burned away by the reality of near-death and the impossibility of what he'd just done.
He'd saved her.
Not because she was beautiful. Not because he wanted something from her. Not because he was trying to win some game or prove some point.
He had saved her because it was the right thing to do.
In that moment, the superficial obsession she had felt, the need to break him in order to add him to her collection, was replaced by something profound and genuine.
Something she'd never actually felt before in her twenty years of life.
Real gratitude. Real connection. A genuine feeling that wasn't a performance or manipulation.
Without a word, without thinking, operating purely on instinct and emotion, she reached up and kissed him.
Right there in front of the crowd of at least fifty students. Right there, with police lights flashing blue and red across their faces.
Right there in the grass with his back against a tree and her tears still wet on her cheeks.
It wasn't a seductive kiss, it wasn't the practised performance she'd given to the boys she'd broken.
It was desperate and grateful and real, her hands gripping his shirt like he might disappear, her lips trembling against his.
The crowd gasped. Someone's phone captured the moment. It would be viral within an hour.
When she finally pulled back, she was sobbing into his chest, her carefully constructed walls completely demolished.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed, her voice breaking. "I'm so sorry for everything. For the classroom, for trying to manipulate you, for being exactly what you said I was.
I was being shallow, and I'm broken, and I'm....."
"Shh," Remy said, and his arms tightened around her slightly.
"You're okay. You're alive. That's what matters right now."
"You saved me," Indigo whispered against his chest. "You could have let me die. After what I did, after how I....you could have just let it happen.
No one would have blamed you. But you saved me anyway."
Remy stayed silent for a long moment, his own mind processing what had just happened.
His Foresight had shown him the future, her death, and he'd changed it.
He'd actually changed it. The power wasn't just for making money or winning fights. It was for this. For saving people.
His eyes glowed faintly gold as another vision hit him, gentler this time, less urgent. He saw multiple futures branching out from this moment:
A future where Indigo became different, where she stopped performing and started being real, where she used her beauty and charisma for something meaningful instead of destructive.
She helped other broken people instead of breaking them further.
A future where all three women were different, Lyra, no longer hiding behind her walls.
Nyx, no longer crushed under the weight of expectations. Indigo, no longer hollow.
But he also saw darker possibilities. Jealousy between the three. Competition for his attention. Hearts breaking in new ways, just differently than before.
"What do you see?" Indigo asked, noticing the golden glow in his eyes even through her tears. "When your eyes do that... what do you see?"
"Possibilities," Remy said quietly. "Futures that could be. Some good. Some bad. Some..." he paused, looking down at her "...some that depend on the choices people make right now."
"What choice should I make?" Indigo asked, and her voice was small and uncertain in a way it had never been before.
"I don't know how to be anything other than what I was. I don't know how to be real.
But I want to try. For the first time in my life, I actually want to try."
Before Remy could answer, Nyx appeared at his side, her face pale with shock. "Are you insane?" she demanded, her usual stoic composure cracked wide open.
"You could have been killed! You ran directly at a car! What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking that someone needed help," Remy said simply.
"You're bleeding," Nyx said, pointing to his elbow where the pavement had torn through his jacket and scraped skin. "You need to go to the medical centre. Now."
The police were approaching, two officers who needed statements and needed to understand what had happened.
The crowd was growing, students drawn by the commotion, phones out, recording everything.
And across the quad, near the arts building, Lyra stood watching with her silver eyes wide, having seen the kiss, having seen Indigo in Remy's arms, her expression complicated and unreadable.
"We need to move," Remy said, helping Indigo to her feet. She was unsteady, her legs shaking, and he kept one arm around her waist to support her.
"The police need statements. You need to be checked by paramedics. And I....."
"Need to explain how you moved that fast," Nyx finished, her black eyes sharp and analytical even in crisis.
"Need to explain how you knew to be in exactly the right place. Need to explain your eyes."
"One crisis at a time," Remy said with a slight smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
The next two hours were a blur of police statements, paramedic examination, and campus security protocols.
Indigo was checked for injuries, miraculously, just some bruises from the tackle and the fall.
Remy had a scraped elbow, a bruised back, nothing serious.
The driver, Derek Thompson, was arrested and hauled away, already coming down from his high and facing enough charges to keep him locked up for years.
The video of Remy's impossible save, and the kiss afterwards, went viral almost immediately.
By evening, it had 50,000 views. By the next morning, 500,000. News outlets picked it up: "College Student's Heroic Save Caught on Camera" and "Mystery Man Defies Physics to Save Life.e"
But Remy didn't care about the attention. He cared about the three faces he saw when he finally made it back to his apartment that evening, each one representing a different kind of complication.
Lyra had texted: "We still on for Saturday? Or have things changed?"
Nyx had texted: "We need to talk about what you are. What those eyes mean. I've been researching, and I think..."
And Indigo had texted simply: "Thank you for my life. I don't know how to repay that. But I'll spend the rest of it trying to be worthy of being saved."
Silas appeared in the apartment, his ghostly form more solid than usual, his expression grave.
"You've changed the future today, boy. Changed it in ways that will ripple out beyond what you can see. That girl's life was meant to end today.
The Goddess who granted me this power, she'll have noticed. She'll have questions."
"Let her ask them," Remy said, too exhausted to care about divine consequences. "I did the right thing. If there are consequences for that, I'll face them."
"It's not the consequences I'm worried about," Silas said softly. "It's the weight.
You're carrying three broken hearts now, boy. Maybe four if you count your own.
That's a heavy burden. Make sure it doesn't crush you under its weight."
Remy looked at his phone, at the three text messages from three very different women, each one complicated in her own way.
He thought about Saturday's dinner with Lyra. He thought about Nyx's questions about his power. He thought about Indigo's lips on his, the desperation and gratitude in that kiss.
"I never asked for this," he said quietly. "I just wanted to stop being a victim."
"And now you're a hero," Silas replied. "But heroes carry a different kind of pain than victims do.
Make sure you know which one you'd rather bear."
Outside, the campus was buzzing with gossip and speculation.
Inside, Remy sat alone with a ghost from 1850 and three text messages that felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each.
The future was uncertain, even with eyes that could see tomorrow. For the first time since receiving the gift of Foresight, Remy wondered if knowing the future made carrying the present any easier.
Or if it just meant you could see the heartbreak coming but couldn't stop it anyway.