Real

My afternoon starts off perfectly fine.

Remington has a day off from training and is now completely carb loading and piling up his muscles with energy—and his plate too. He refused to eat Diane’s meals and brought us all down to the hotel restaurant buffet instead. The men are eating separately, discussing “fight” stuff, and I’m having a lovely time with Diane trying to determine the ingredients of what we’re eating. A taste of . . . orange? Hint of cardamom?

And then my phone bleeps. I’m thrilled to see it’s a message from Mel. She flew back to Seattle before we left Chicago, and we’ve texted only briefly since.

Melanie: I hate to give that ahole Riley any credit, but he was right. There’s a picture on the Internet of you kissing that embodiment of Gross that night!! And it’s going viral!

My world stops.

I’m flashed back to that night, where I’m up on tiptoe kissing the embodiment of Gross, and suddenly it makes perfect sense that someone—his goonies?—would capture it on camera. Of course.

If someone spent four minutes taping me at my Olympic trials, in the most humiliating moment of my life, of course there would also be someone ready to tape me at the second-most humiliating moment of my life. Of course they captured it on camera. Maybe not the first time I failed to hit the spot. But how about the second time I had to hold it for five seconds?

The floor drops from underneath me, and I feel like I’m drowning before the storm even comes, just at the mere sight of the incoming cloud.

With frozen lungs, I lower my phone back into my purse, somehow feeling as though everything I do is in slow motion. I glance at the table where the men are discussing their strategy for tomorrow night, and I notice Remy is easily listening to them. One second he’s normal, relaxed and lounging back, with his legs splayed open on a pink dining chair of the hotel restaurant, and the next I see him looking intently at his phone as it vibrates.

My heart sinks to my toes, but seconds pass, and nothing happens.

I can’t read his profile, but he has gone utterly still. Then it all happens in a blink of an eye. He turns the entire table over with a gigantic crash, and Coach ends up on the floor, with a thousand plates and food all over him.

In the same movement, Remington catapults to his feet and shoots his cell phone across the room, where it crashes into pieces against the wall. Then he starts for me.

Pete scrambles to his feet and reaches into his back pocket.

“No, Pete, no!” I burst out, loathing the idea of Remy being tranquilized.

I try to stay calm but my heart is pounding a thousand beats a minute. I’ve never dealt with Remington angry at me since we’ve been together, and suddenly I’m a little afraid of him, but I don’t want him to know that.

Trembling in my seat, I stay utterly still as he comes to stand before me, breathing like a bull, his nostrils flaring, his eyes burning black in his face, his fists trembling at his sides. But it’s the hard desperation in his gaze that sends awful chills down my arms.

It takes me about ten times the normal effort to speak. “Do you want to talk to me, Remington?” I ask, my voice raw.

I brace myself for his shout, but somehow, the cold sliver of a whisper he answers with is infinitely more threatening.

“I want to do more than talk to you.”

The hairs at the back of my neck rise in alarm. “All right, let’s talk. Excuse me, Diane,” I say with deceptive calm, pushing my chair back so I can stand up, my legs wobbling.

He looks bigger than ever, and the entire restaurant is looking at him.

Diane scrambles away to the toppled table to help Coach clean up.

Remington’s hands flex and fist at his sides as he glares down at me. His jaw works as he breathes, fast and choppy, and I notice Riley has just come up behind him, next to Pete.

There’s a fierce battle inside Rem’s eyes. He’s struggling like he knows he has to control himself but can’t. As if the anger is beyond him.

I try to calm my pulse while I burn with the need to calm him. I know that when I set my hands on any part of his body, he relaxes under my touch. I know he needs to receive my touch sometimes as fiercely as I need to give it to him. Except he’s never been like this, and I’m afraid that for the first time in my life, he won’t welcome my touch.

The thought of the only man I have ever loved feeling betrayed by me is almost crippling.

He still hasn’t let go and told me what kind of terrible person he thinks I am now, but I can feel his turmoil so completely surrounding me that whatever he has to tell me already hurts somewhere deep and profound inside my body. I hurt him. I hurt him, and I instantly hate myself for it. My windpipe swells in pain.

“I only went to see my sister,” I painfully breathe, a well of regret and anxiety roiling inside of me.

He reaches out with a fiercely trembling index finger and touches my mouth—the one I kissed Scorpion’s filthy cheek with—and then he leans forward to nip me with his teeth. I gasp in mingled shock and desire at the prick of his teeth on my skin. “You go negotiate with scum like him? Without me knowing?” he asks in a low, turbulent voice as his thumb scrapes unsteadily over my lips.

“I went to see my sister, Remy. I couldn’t care less about the scum.”

He touches my hair, and the touch is so very unexpectedly gentle, I want to die with the way it contrasts with the lighted frenzy in his eyes and the way his thumb starts desperately scraping over my lips. “Yet you kiss that fucking asshole with the same mouth you kiss me.”

“Please just count to ten.” Helpless, I touch his sleeve.

He narrows his eyes, then rushes on to say, “One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-TEN.”

He leans over and seizes part of my shirt collar in his fist, drawing me closer to him, the distressed look in his eyes cutting me like talons. “You kiss that motherfucker with the same mouth I would kill for?”

His eyes are wild as he touches my lips again, this time with the tips of two fiercely trembling fingers, and suddenly all I can see is torment. His eyes are black. Dark and haunted. And I can’t stand that I put that darkness there, and I feel his pain—with every bone in my body I feel it.

“My lips hardly touched the tattoo.” My voice is whisper-quiet as my windpipe begins closing down. “I did just what you do when you let them get a hit on you and give them false confidence, so I could see my sis.”

He slams his chest with a loud noise. “You’re my fucking girl! You don’t get to give anyone false confidence!”

“Sir, we need you to leave the premises now.”

Remy’s head swings around as the manager comes forward, and suddenly Pete and Riley stop the poor man from getting closer, Pete swiftly extracting a checkbook as the term “cost of damages” echoes in the room. Remy’s narrowed eyes slide back to me, and he’s so angry and gorgeous, and such a damn handful, I just don’t know what to do with him.

He comes closer and slides a finger down my jaw, and I respond to it, my scared body primed for sex with the barrage of hormones his temper has shot through me. “I’m going to go break that fucker’s face,” he whispers, the velvet promise laced with threat as he leans and slips his tongue into my mouth, “and then I’m going to break you into submission.”

“Remy, calm down,” Riley says.

“That’s all right, Riley, I don’t break that easy, and he’s sure welcome to try,” I snap, finally giving Remington the big black scowl he seems to be begging for.

He scowls back and ducks his dark head, breathing hard into my face as he grabs my hair in his fists and crushes my mouth with brutal possession, swiping my lips with punishing flicks of his tongue. “When I get you in bed, I’m going to scrub you raw with my fucking tongue until there’s nothing anywhere on you from him. Only me. Only me.”

His erection bites into my stomach, and I realize he’s gone completely territorial, claim-my-mate, prove-to-her-my-ownership crazy on me. My thighs go liquid, and I gasp and strain closer. “All right, take me there,” I plead, weak with the urge to ease the both of us.

He jerks back and narrows his eyes. “I don’t have fucking time to take care of you,” he snaps as when he starts for the door, I cry out in breathless panic, “Remy, come back. Don’t get in trouble!”

He spins around, and my stomach knots as I see the look of determined murder on his face, his fists shaking at his sides as he jabs a finger in the air and points at me. “Protecting you is my privilege. I will protect you and anything that you value as if it were mine.”

My breath catches at the way he stares at me.

“That sick asshole has just begged me to end his miserable life, and I’m happy to oblige,” he snarls, his eyes raking me angrily from the door. “He’s just taken something sacred to me and pissed on it!” He storms back, pushing his finger in between my breasts as he points. “Understand me. You. Are. Mine! ”

“Remington, she’s my sister.”

“And the Scorpion will never let go of her. He keeps his women drugged and dependent, their minds in pieces so tiny they can’t even think. He’ll never give her up unless he wants something even more than her. Is it you? Does he want you, Brooke? He could have drugged you. Stripped you. Fucked you—goddamn my life, he could have fucked you!”

“No, he could not have.”

“Did he touch you?”

“He didn’t! They’re doing this to provoke you! Don’t let them! Save it for the ring tomorrow. Please. I want to be with you tonight.”

“I was with her the whole time, buddy, nothing happened,” Riley intercedes, patting Remy’s arm and trying to back him off a bit.

But when he hears Riley speak, a look of betrayal settles into his eyes, and before I can stop him, he swings around to grab Riley’s shirt in his fist. “You let my girl get in that scumbag’s face, you little shit?”

Panic seizes me when he lifts Riley off the ground. “Remy, no!” I come to his side, tugging futilely at his arm.

He shakes him in the air, and Riley is getting purple. “You let her kiss that fucker’s ink?”

Pete looks at me. “I’m sorry,” he mouths, and then to Remy, “All right, buddy, let’s put Destroyer to bed now, huh?” and he rams a syringe into his neck, and Remington drops Riley to the floor and yanks the syringe out of his skin, tossing it aside, empty.

I hold my breath when he comes and grabs me. He stares at me, his eyes blazing, and opens his mouth, hesitates, then makes a low, pained noise as he crushes my mouth and delivers a kiss that both claims and punishes me; then he lets go of my arm and stomps to the door, leaving me licking my raw, swollen lips and staring after him.

Riley coughs as he pushes himself to his feet, rubbing his throat as we all realize Remington is gone.

“What the hell?” Pete blinks in complete disbelief at the open doorway through which Remy just exited.

“It’s supposed to put down an elephant, no?” Riley glumly asks Pete.

“ ‘Supposed’ being the operative word.”

Shaking his head, Riley dusts the glass from his jeans. “Must be all the adrenaline in him. Shit.”

“Pete, get your shit straight, both of you! You just shot him up with a sedative! He could drop down in an alley for all we know, be robbed and . . . oh god.” I cover my face as I think of all the things he can do wrong, or that can happen to him.

“Calm down, Brooke, we’ve got it. Riley, you get another two of these tranquilizers—I’ll meet you in the car,” Pete says. Then he turns to the manager and signals at the check he still holds. “So if you could send the bill to the presidential suite? I guarantee we’ll be moving out by morning.”

“I want to help!” I yell at them.

“Damn, you’ve helped enough, Brooke,” Riley answers, looking at me like I just unleashed the apocalypse. “Just go upstairs and wait for him. You’ve got your work cut out for you when he gets back.”

♥   ♥   ♥

I’M PACING LIKE crazy as I wait to hear something. Anything.

I see all of his things across our suite—his iPad, iPod, laptop, his toothbrush in the sink, his clothes still in his suitcase, some hanging in the closet—and a horrible anxiety works its way down my nerve endings.

Remington just went out there ready to throw everything away for me. My lips are sore from the torture of my teeth as I go back to the past and wonder what would have happened if I’d said I wouldn’t kiss that stupid tattoo. I might never have talked to Nora. She’d never have a chance to break free like I offered her.

At the moment, it seemed relatively harmless, considering, and also it had felt like I had no choice, but how I sorely wish Remington had never found out about it. Even angry, I could feel his hurt, and now I’m worried sick about him. If he has his fists on Scorpion’s jaw right now, an Underground championship will be shot to hell—and I can’t even wonder what that awful reptilian sick-dick might do to Nora as retribution if Remy hurts him tonight.

Oh god.

The thought of me ruining not only my own career but Remy’s as well positively shatters me.

My stomach is so unsettled I feel like I’m going to toss out my intestines. I want Nora to be safe, but I desperately need Rem back in the hotel, where I’m sure I can appease him with sex. If he wants to break me into submission, then by god I’ll let the man believe anything he wants, just to get him calm and easy again. I’m not afraid of him. I won’t be. He’s still my Remy, only in a bad fucking mood.

But at 5 a.m. he’s still not back. I’m checking the Internet like crazy and have the local news playing on TV, fearing the worst. I hear a door and raise my head, my heart pulsing in my throat when I see Riley. Instantly I jump from the couch to my feet. “Remy? Where is he? What did he do?”

Riley won’t look at my face, just walks directly into the master bedroom and searches the closet. “He’s at the ER.”

An awful tension stretches from one end of my spine to the other, and suddenly I feel whipped in the tail and charge determinedly after him. “What did he do? Let me go get my things. I need to see him.”

Riley grabs Remy’s toothbrush and razor and tosses everything into a small leather bag. “It’s better if you wait here. It’s just some stitches.” He then gets some boxing shoes and an outfit for the match. “They’re not disqualified. Neither one of them is telling. The fight goes on tonight, or shall we say, continues. Tonight.”

The acids in my stomach start to bubble uncomfortably. I really lack the testosterone for all this. It used to be sexy in movies when a guy fights for a girl but this is my guy, fighting because of me, and I feel about as awful as possible and more than a little desperate to go and nurture and protect him.

“What ER is he in?” Following him through the bedroom, I snatch up a pair of jeans and slide them under Remy’s black T-shirt—the one I sometimes sleep with.

Pivoting on his heel when he reaches the door, he stays me back with both hands. “Please don’t, for the love of god, show up, B. Neither Pete nor I want him to see you. Please, Brooke. Just listen to me.”

“But how is he . . .” I blink at him, my eyes blurring as my voice breaks. “Just tell me how he is.”

“He’s pissed off. They sedated him at the hospital. Honestly, I don’t know how we can expect him to fight tonight. But at least he’s angry.”

I scowl at the slamming door and am left staring after him. I feel angry too, but I also feel eaten inside. The urge to see him is acute, but I don’t know if I would help or hinder him, I just don’t know anything about this. Using his laptop, I Google “bipolarism” and come upon tons of articles describing manic episodes. People suffering them tend to be either in an extremely happy or an extremely irritable mood; engage in an excess of pleasurable activities like sex, gambling, alcohol, and sometimes experience hallucinations; feel rested after zero or no sleep; act recklessly or violently; and often, after such episodes, enter a depressive state in which they can barely get out of bed. I’m sure Remy is manic right now, and I’d already seen he was speedy all these nights of hard sex. I remember him telling me the night he told me about being bipolar how I’m going to leave if it gets steep, and I’m doubly resolved not to be chickenshit and stick it out with him.

But I wonder how he’s coping right now, after he tussled with that damned reptile freak.

God, please, please, don’t let me ruin his fight tonight.

That’s all I think of as I grab my sneakers and my knee brace and head into the hotel gym, grab a treadmill, and pound it for two hours. I focus on planning what to do when I see him. I want to say I’m sorry that I felt it necessary not to tell him about me visiting my sister, but I had to talk to her and didn’t want to worry him. I want to kiss him and forget all this ever went down, but unfortunately, the morning goes by, and I don’t see him at noon, or even at one, or at two, or at three.

I don’t see him until the fight.

And by then, I’m absolutely, positively a mass of quaking nerves. I haven’t seen Pete in all this time either, only Coach and Riley, who both ushered me to my seat when I tried wending my way backstage to see him.

“Please just let him get into the zone,” Riley says.

All I can do is nod, and I’m assaulted by a sick yearning as I take my seat and wait and wait endlessly. There’s only one fight tonight. Only Remington and Scorpion. And this one match will last for hours. It’s already felt like an eternity by the time I hear his name tear through the speakers, and my heart rises in my chest at the same time the spectators fly to their feet to cheer for him.

“And nowwww, ladies and gentlemen, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Our reigning champion, the defender, the one and only, Remington RIPTIDE Tate!”

The crowd goes wild, and I’m suddenly buoyant as my eyes see a flash of red at the beginning of the tunnel.

He comes out trotting to the ring, and the butterflies explode inside me. My eyes burn with the urge to see him up close. He hops into the ring and stretches out his arms, and when Riley pulls down his red hood and sets the robe easily aside, my eyes rake down Remington’s body—and a cold, hard shock holds me immobile for several long, disbelieving heartbeats. Bruises color purple all the way up his torso. There are gashes on his lips, and several stitches run across his right eyebrow.

Forcing myself to sit down, I anxiously wait for Remington’s usual turn. But he doesn’t make it. The crowd screams his name in a chant, and I notice the Underground is packed with more fans of his than Scorpion’s. But tonight Remington isn’t his cocky self, and he doesn’t turn and smile at them. He doesn’t turn and smile at me.

My spirits sink, and suddenly I realize I have never, ever, ached for someone’s smile as badly as his.

I’ve never felt so painfully invisible until I feel the lack of his eyes on me tonight.

When the presenter calls out, “And nooow, ladies and gentlemen, the nightmare you’ve all been dreading to come alive is here. Watch out for Benny the Blaaaaaack Scorpion!”

A nauseating sinking sense of despair hits me when Remy still won’t bring his blue/black eyes to mine as he watches Scorpion come slowly down the tunnel with both his middle fingers stretched out high in a bold, obvious “Yeah, fuck you, Remington Tate, and fuck the public too!”

Icy dread spreads through my stomach as I study Remy’s proud, hard profile as he waits by his corner, and the lack of his cocky response to Scorpion’s outward bravado becomes painfully obvious to me. Suddenly I wonder if he’s too proud to forgive me. Will he never kiss me? Make love to me? Love me back like I love him? Because I kissed his enemy? I’m twisting inside with the need to talk to him, to explain, to say good luck and smile at him.

But he doesn’t glance in my direction and I’m filled with the suspicion he’s doing his damnedest to glance anywhere but at me as Scorpion hops on the ring.

I watch as Scorpion’s black robe is removed and notice he looks bad too. His face is pounded purple, and now a scarred area with at least a dozen stitches lies where his black insect used to crawl. Scorpion’s yellow eyes land instantly on Remington, and a familiar, satanic smile spreads across his thin lips, a smile that already seems victorious compared to the somber, quiet intensity in Remington’s face.

Heart twisting in anxious fear, I look for Nora among the crowd and try to locate her among Scorpion’s thugs, but she’s nowhere in sight. My dread doubles when I wonder if all this I caused, all this . . . was for nothing?

Ting-ting.

The bell rings, and all the atoms in my body hone in on Remington as both fighters go to center and toe to toe. Scorpion lands a punch in Remy’s ribs, then quickly slams his jaw back in an awful one-two punch that I can hear striking flesh and bone. Remington holds his ground, but shudders as he recovers and continues going at Scorpion, his arms folded low at his sides.

My eyebrows draw together in confusion. In every fight I’ve seen him participate in, including the time I tussled in the ring with him and learned some boxing moves, Remy has never kept his guard this low. An awful premonition sinks its awful claws into my stomach, and I glance up to try to read the dark frowns on Riley’s and Coach’s faces. The grim lines etched on both their features only confirm my suspicions.

Remington’s guard is completely down. His thick, muscled arms hang relaxed and idle at his sides, and now he’s just bouncing on the balls of his feet as if waiting for the next hit to come. His eyebrows are drawn, his eyes narrowed fiercely, but he looks almost . . . hungry for it, in a raging, reckless way.

Scorpion rams a punch into his gut, then follows it with an uppercut to the jaw that Remington takes too easily, straightening almost right away and glaring back at Scorpion as though begging for another one.

He almost seems . . . suicidal.

The next three punches, Remington takes in the body again, two in the chest, one in the rib cage, and he still hasn’t landed a single punch on Scorpion. His guard won’t come up, but all you can see of Remington’s spirit is in his eyes. Which blaze fire into Scorpion as he quickly recovers from each blow and steps back up as though daring the monster to hit him again.

I’m speechless.

There’s no way to still my erratic pulse, or stop my mind from spinning. I can’t stop fretting over whether his ribs can take any more blows, and I’m wildly trying to determine what other injuries he sustained during the night they fought privately. What if he’s not punching because he’s unable to stretch his arms out to punch?

He is. Not. Punching. At all.

My heartbeat won’t calm, and that alarming premonition of something awful happening has seized me in its grip. I want to go up there and hug my guy and pull him out of there!

Scorpion swings out with his left hand and lands one in the jaw, then lands a straight punch in the face that knocks Remington to his knees. My throat goes raw with unuttered shouts and protests as the public begins booing.

“Boooo! Booo!!”

“Kill the bastard, Riptide! KILL HIM!”

When he stands again, the fight continues, endless, gray as night.

In all of Remington’s fights, I used to feel all kinds of twisting nerves as well as excitement, but now it is only anguish and pain roiling inside me as, blow after blow, Remington takes it.

Every punch breaks me inside. I can feel the ache in my bones as if his bones were mine. I’m so wounded by the sixth round, I need to take him away in my head, where he will play me a song. I need to take him for a run, where he will look at me and smile with shining blue eyes. I need to take him to our bed, where we’re warm and happy and peaceful. I need to take him somewhere, anywhere, where he can tell me what . . . the fuck . . . is wrong!

I sit here and watch the man I love getting beaten to death, and when he falls to his knees after taking an awful set of punches to his abs, he still won’t give up. Panting for breath and with his forehead and mouth dripping blood, he delights the public by jumping back to his feet and angrily spitting blood on Scorpion’s face, rebellious as he takes a stance once more.

“Remy, fight him!” I suddenly hear myself scream, and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs in a way I have never in my life screamed before. “REMY, FIGHT HIM! FOR ME! FOR ME !”

He still doesn’t look at me. And the next punches that come in a fast series of jabs, Remy once again takes. Ooof, ooff, I hear, as his breath is knocked out of him.

Fight or flight rushes all over my body, and it mercilessly eats at my blood vessels, my nerve endings, my lungs. For the first time in my life, the adrenal response is so overpowering that I want to take flight like never before. Run for him, grab him to me, and take him away, away from Scorpion, from himself, away from self-destruct button the man I love has pressed.

Scorpion pounds him several straight punches in the head, and then crack!

Remington falls facedown on the floor.

Blood oozes from his body, leaking to the canvas floor. Raw, primitive grief overwhelms me, and a black snake of fear starts gnawing painfully into the thickest arteries of my heart. Remy’s face is swollen, and he’s panting for breath and shuddering with each breath as he plants one hand on the ground, then the other. A chill black silence surrounds the room as the counting begins, and Remy tries pushing up.

His image becomes a big blur through the tears in my eyes, and I have to swallow back the plea building in my throat where I want to beg him to, for the love of god, stop with this bullshit and just stay down now!

I broke my knee by accident, but the thought of willingly breaking yourself again and again and getting up for more makes my eyes well up in horrified despair.

But Remy pushes up and spits more blood at the ground, using his arms to get back on his feet only to catch a powerful left hook right to his temple that swings his head around.

Riley and Coach yell loudly at him. “Your fucking guard! What the fuck is wrong with you?” they’re saying, over and over, their shouts loud and painfully distressed.

People yell across the room, every one of them unwilling to give up on him as long as Remy keeps standing.

“KILL HIM, RIPTIDE!!! KILL HIM!” they scream.

And as I watch him take another hit that splatters more blood across the ring mat, I want to scream back at the public to please just shut the hell up! To please, for heaven’s sake, just let him fucking stay down and stop this fucking nightmare! I can’t control the spasmodic trembling within me.

But the people continue: “REM-MING-TON! RE-MING-TON!”

But I can see Remy’s hurting. One of his arms is dangling at his side, hanging limply. He’s hurting and he’s still going, and he’s going to keep going, and going and going, until he can’t get up. When that realization finally sinks into my stunned head, I’m shattered to a million pieces. A hot tear streams down my cheek as sounds rip through the room when another series of hits lands on Remington’s flesh, the awful impacts backing him up toward the ropes.

“Remy, Remy, Remy !” some people nearby begin yelling. And when the sharp chant takes over with equal force across the room, Scorpion’s face scrunches in rage. Remy spits right into the place where his tattoo should be, whispering something taunting that seems to anger the other man so much, he swings his arm back with a deafening roar and lands an uppercut that knocks Remy like lead down onto the floor. My heart stops.

Silence falls.

I blink in mute horror at Remy’s motionless form, fallen on his side, and I take in those perfect shoulders I know by memory, his beautiful bones probably broken, his beautifully trained and beautifully made body bruised purple and bleeding on that ring floor. His eyes are frightfully closed.

And I want to die.

There are gasps of outrage when the ring doctors appear up on the platform, and people start booing out loud as the announcer speaks.

“Our victor of the night, Benny, the Black Scooooorpion! The new Underground champion, ladies and gentlemen! Scooorpioooon!”

The words somehow make it into my brain, but I don’t even register them as I sit motionless in my seat, trying very hard to keep it together as I watch the medics—the medics!—surround Remy.

I never thought anything in my life would ever hurt me as much as tearing my ACL and wobbling off the field at the Olympic tryouts, my spirit broken.

But no. Now the worst day of my entire life has been this one. When I watched the man I love break his own body to unconsciousness, and every millimeter of every quadrant of my heart is broken.

Through burning eyes, I watch the medics haul his body onto a stretcher, and the reality of the situation hits me like a cannon blast. I jump to my feet and run like crazy through a throng of people as the doctors start carrying him away. I fling myself between a pair of them and reach for one bloodied hand and squeeze two bloodied fingers. “Remy!”

Strong arms wrench me away, and a familiar voice speaks close to me. “Let them look at him, B,” Riley pleads in a craggy voice, hauling me back as I struggle to be set free.

Spinning around to hit him so that he releases me, I notice his eyes are red as he tries to keep hold of my struggling form, and suddenly, I break. Deep compulsive sobs wrack through my body as I grab his shirt, and instead of hitting him, I just cling. I need something to hang onto, and my big, strong tree is broken on a stretcher, beaten to a pulp.

“I’m sorry,” I cry, every inch of me jerking and shaking as the tears flow out of me, just as they did six years ago. “Oh, god, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

He sniffles too, then pulls away and wipes his own cheeks. “I know, B, I don’t know what the fuck . . . It’s just . . . I don’t know what the hell went on down here. Jesus!”

Coach comes to us, his face grim, his eyes also brimming with tears and disappointment. “They suspect a concussion. His pupils aren’t responding correctly.”

A new burning wetness pops up in my eyes, and the knot in my throat tightens as Riley starts after Coach.

Nora. Oh, fuck meeeee, I still need to wait for Nora!

I grab Riley back, more tears threatening to spill out when I realize I won’t be able to go with him.

“Riley, my sister! I told her to meet me here.”

He nods in understanding. “I’ll text you the name of the hospital where we end up.”

Nodding miserably, I watch him leave, wiping away more tears and not even knowing what to do with the whirlwind of emotions inside me. I desperately want to go with Remington, but I can’t ask Riley to trade places with me. Nora doesn’t know him, might change her mind if she sees him instead of me. I swear it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, to watch him be taken away, all bloodied, without running after him.

I lean on the door of the women’s restroom and wait, and wait, restless with worry and haunted by what I just saw.

My mind keeps spinning and I feel I will wake up soon and realize this was just a bad dream, and Remy did not just commit the most painful almost-suicide up in that ring.

But he did.

He had.

My Remy.

The man who played me “Iris.”

The man who laughs with me, runs with me, and says I’m a little firecracker.

The strongest man I’ve ever known, and the one who’s been most gentle to me.

The one who’s a little bit bad, a little bit crazy, a little bit too hard for me to handle.

When three hours pass, I’ve run out of tears, and my hope is gone too.

And as I go get a taxi, I’m the one who feels like whatever just got broken inside me will never, ever, heal.

♥   ♥   ♥

I SIT IN a hospital chair for the first week and stare at his beautiful face with the tube that helps him breathe, and I cry from anger and frustration and helplessness. Sometimes I put his headphones on his beautiful head and play him every single song of the ones we shared, waiting to see if his eyes twitch or if there’s some indication of thought in there. Other times, I walk out in the hall just to wake up my legs and arms that have fallen asleep. I haven’t seen Pete, and nobody will tell me where he is. Today Riley peers into the waiting room, where I’m staring down lifelessly at my bag of peanuts. I just didn’t know what to get that would be moderately healthy, and I already finished all the granolas. I think I’ve lost some weight, for my jeans are hanging loose from my hips, but my stomach is about as closed as a fist and the few times it seems to relax enough to let me eat something, my throat is to blame for not letting it past.

“He’s awake,” Riley says.

Blinking, I’m suddenly, immediately, on my feet. I toss the uneaten bag of peanuts into the empty chair next to mine and then run down the hall only to stop and stare at the door to his room. Afraid to see him. Afraid of what I’m going to say.

I’ve been thinking a lot these few days. That’s all I’ve done, actually. But out of all my thoughts, my mind goes blank as I step inside. A deep, dark anguish overwhelms me as I head for the bed. I thought I was getting numb already, but I realize I’m not. I step slowly forward and fix my eyes on the very spot around which my world seems to revolve.

And I see him. His eyes are open. I don’t care what color they are. He’s still Remington Tate, the man I love.

He’s going to be okay, and I am not. I don’t think I ever will be.

The tears burst out, and all of a sudden, all my thoughts come rushing back. I have so many things to say I just stand in the middle of the room and tear my guts open. My words are angry, but they’re barely understandable through my sobs. “How d-dare you make m-me watch t-that . . . ? How could you stand there and make me watch h-him destroy you! Your bones! Your face! Y-you . . . were . . . mine! Mine . . . to . . . to . . . hold . . . How d-dare you break you! How dare you break me!”

His eyes go red too, and I know I should stop because with the tube in he can’t even respond, but this dam has opened and I can’t stop it, I just can’t. He made me watch and now I have to make him listen to me, to what his stupid fucked-up shit has done to me!

“A-all I wanted was to help my sister and not g-g-get you in trouble. I also wanted to protect you, to take care of you, to be with you. I wanted to ss-stay with you until you were sick of me and didn’t need me. I wanted you to love me because I . . . I . . . Oh, god, but you . . . I . . . can’t. I can’t anymore. It’s hard to watch you fight, but to watch you murder yourself is . . . I won’t do it, Remington!”

He makes a pained sound in the bed and tries shifting even with one arm in a cast, and his eyes are burning red and tearing me open.

I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me. The way his eyes claw into me. Destroy me.

Hot tears continue trickling down my cheeks as I yield to a reckless impulse and go to him. I touch his free hand and bend my head to his chest as I lift his fingers and kiss his knuckles feverishly, aware that I’m getting them wet with my tears, but I can’t stop because it’s the last time I’m going to kiss this hand and it hurts.

He groans as he awkwardly places the hand of his casted arm on the back of my head and heavily strokes my hair. His throat is tubed, but when I wipe my tears and look up at him, his eyes are screaming things at me that I can’t bear to listen to. I stand, acting as cowardly as Mel says I am, and he grabs my hand and won’t let go. I don’t want him to, but I need him to. I pull my hand free with force and grab his forehead and set a kiss at its very center, a kiss that I hope he will feel all the way down to his soul, because that’s from where it’s coming from inside me. He makes a rough sound and starts pulling at his tube, and the machine makes a beeping noise when he starts succeeding in yanking off all the wires attached to him.

“Remy, don’t, don’t!” I plead, and when his efforts only intensify and he growls in anger, I open the door and yell for a nurse. “Nurse! Please!”

A nurse rushes into the room, and I feel such pain as she shoots some sort of tranquilizer into his thigh that it’s like there is nothing else for me except to become this knot of pain. I can’t believe I’m going to do this to him, that I’m as cowardly, as worthless, as everyone else. But when the nurse settles him down and adjusts his respirator, I stare at him from the door, his appearance calmer now as he gazes back at me, and I smile, a smile that is fake and that trembles horribly on my face, and I leave.

I hate that he will wake up again with his beautiful blue eyes and might not remember what I said, or where I am, or what happened to me. But I just can’t stay.

I find Riley at the cafeteria and show him an envelope I acquired from one of the nurses several days ago. “I’m leaving, Riley. My contract was over several days ago. Just . . . say goodbye to Pete and please . . .” I hand him the envelope with Remington’s name, watching it tremble violently in the air. “Give this to him when his eyes are blue again.”

That night, I’m flying to Seattle, slumped in my seat, feeling as heavy and empty as an abandoned building, and I wonder as I stare unseeingly out the window if he’s already back to blue, and if he’s already reading my letter. I’ve read it a thousand times in my head, and read it a thousand times when I wrote it the third night at the hospital, when I knew I was not going to stay.

Dear Remington,

The very first moment I laid eyes on you, I think you had me. And I think you knew. How could you possibly not know? That the floor was shaking under my feet. It was. You made it move. You colored my life again. And when you came after me and kissed me, I just knew somewhere deep inside me, my life would forever be touched and changed by you. It has been. I have had the most amazing, incredible, beautiful moments of my life with you. You and your team became my new family, and never for one second did I really plan to leave. Not them, but most of all, not you. Every day I spent with you only makes me crave more of you. All I wanted for days was to be closer. It hurts to be close and not to touch you, and I wanted to spend every waking moment with you and every sleeping moment in your arms. So many times now, I wanted to tell you all the ways you make me feel, but I wanted to hear you say it first. My pride is gone now. I have no room for it, and I don’t want to regret not telling you: I love you, Remy. With all my heart. You are the most beautifully complicated, gentle fighter I’ve ever known. You have made me deliriously happy. You challenge and delight me, and make me feel like a kid inside, with all the amazing things to look forward to, just because I was looking at the future and thinking of sharing it all with you. I’ve never felt so safe as when I am with you, and I want you to know I am completely in love with every part of you, even the one that just broke my heart.

But I can’t stay anymore, Remy. I can’t watch you hurt yourself, because when you do, you’re hurting me in ways I never thought anybody ever could, and I’m afraid of breaking and never being right again. Please never, ever, let anyone hurt you like this. You are the fighter everyone wants to be, and this is why everyone in the world loves you. Even when you screw up, you get back up fighting again. Thank you, Remy, for opening your world to me. For sharing yourself with me. For my job. And for every time you smiled at me. I want to tell you to get well soon, but I know that you will. I know you will be blue-eyed and cocky and fighting again, and I’ll be in your past, like all the things you’ve overcome before me. Just please know that I will never hear “Iris” again, without thinking of you.

Yours always,

Brooke