“What do you mean?” I frown at her. “Women paraded through where?”
“Our hotel.”
“You mean recently?”
My stomach drops, and I mean, drops, when Diane’s eyes widen, and her face loses all color.
She starts shaking her head, and then . . . then she starts glancing around as if she wants to hide in a fucking flowerpot! “Brooke,” she whispers, her tone apologetic as she backs up a step. Why?
Does she think I’m going to hit her?
Do I look like I’m going to hit someone?
I don’t want to hit someone, I can barely even stand.
Everything blurs as I turn to stare at Remy’s back. Across the lobby. I think of the way he moves, like a predator taking me, when we make love. In my mind, I see his eyes, the way he watches me come for him. I imagine him thrown across a hotel bed while dozens of women pleasure him, his blue eyes—my blue eyes—watching them come apart for him too.
And then, then I think that he might not have been blue. He could have been black. Remy in his rawest form, intense and manic, as reckless as he will ever be.
Because he’s not normal. Not even close to normal. He’s not only fucking Remington “Riptide” Tate—he’s bipolar and he swings from one mood spectrum to the next. When he goes manic, he does not remember, sometimes, what he does. And the month I left, he was very, very manic. His eyes, black and mysterious, looking at me desperately from a hospital bed . . .
My insides twist until my lungs feel jammed in my throat as I remember how he tried to pull his respirator off and stop me.
Heart pounding fight or flight, I locate Riley across the lobby, and he’s scanning his phone while I vividly remember him leading a bunch of glittery, beautiful women into Remington’s suite not so long ago—to “cheer” him up when he had a black episode.
Before I can stop myself, I charge over to him like a bullet, my fists trembling at my sides. “How many whores did you bring to Remington’s bed, Riley?”
“Excuse me?” He lowers his phone in complete puzzlement.
“I asked how many . . . whores . . . you brought to his bed. Was he even aware of what he was doing to them?”
He glances at Remington’s broad back, then he grabs me by the elbow and pulls me aside to the elevator bank. “You don’t get to have an opinion, Brooke. Remember? You left! You left when he was broken in a fucking hospital bed, Pete was babysitting your sister—in drug rehab—and I could barely pick up all the pieces of what your letter . . . your fucking letter . . . did to him! Something that you will never, ever even so much as comprehend! In case you have forgotten, Rem has a mood disorder. He needed to be pulled out of the fucking dark—”
“Hey.” Remington yanks him back by the collar and makes a fist as if he’s about to lift him. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Riley jerks free and glares as he retucks his tie into his stupid new Boss jacket. “I was trying to explain to Brooke, here, that things weren’t as happy as they are now when she was away.”
Remy shoves a finger into Riley’s chest. “It’s done with. You got that?”
Riley clamps his jaw, and Remington rams his finger into his chest so hard, he forces him back a step. “You got that?” he demands.
Riley nods tightly. “Yeah, I got that.”
Without another word, Remington curls his hand around the back of my neck and steers me into the elevator.
But the entire elevator ride, my insides squeeze with hurt even though I try to reason with myself that I have no right to feel this way.
Without really seeing anything ahead, I stare at our penthouse as we walk in. It’s our new home. Our hotel rooms have always been like home, but they’re not my home. My home is far away. My home is now this man. And I need to accept the fact that loving him might break me. Over and over, loving Remington is going to break me. When he’s fighting and takes more punches than I can bear, I will break. When he’s tender with me and gives me all the love I don’t feel I deserve, I will break. When he has an episode, where his eyes go black and he doesn’t remember things he said or did . . . I will break.
“You like the room, little firecracker?” His body heat envelops me as he comes up from behind and tucks me into his body with his arms. I feel warm. Protected. “Want to hit the running trail when it gets dark?”
His lips graze the curve between my neck and collarbone, and the feather-touch sends a painful little ripple to my heart. I feel as if I’ve swallowed the entire garden full of searing-hot cacti as I pull up the collar of my shirt and turn.
“Did you fuck other women?”
Our eyes meet, and a familiar shiver of awareness runs through me as I stare into his face. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what he’s thinking.
“I realize I have no right to ask you.” I search deep into his blue eyes, and they search me back with equal intensity. “We broke up, right? It was the end of it. But . . . did you?”
I wait, and his eyes begin to twinkle.
He. Is. Actually. Grinning!
“It matters to you?” he asks cockily, one eyebrow high. “If I slept with anyone?”
The rage and jealousy bubble up inside me so fast, I grab a couch pillow and slam it into his chest as I explode. “What do you think, you fucking jerk?”
He grabs the pillow and easily discards it. “Tell me how much it matters.” The sparkle of mischief in his eyes only makes me grit my teeth harder, and I shoot another pillow his way.
“Tell me!”
“Why?” He deflects the pillow and comes after me as I start backing off, his smile full of amusement. “You left me, little firecracker. You left me with a sweet letter telling me, very nicely, to go fuck myself and to have a nice life.”
“No! I left you with a letter that told you I loved you! Something you hadn’t told me until I came back to you and begged you to tell me.”
“You’re so fucking cute like this. Come here.” He grabs the back of my head and pulls me into his arms, and it takes all my force to yank free.
“Remington. You’re laughing at me!” I cry wretchedly.
“I said come here.” He gathers me back into his arms, and I twist my head and shudder as I try to squirm free.
“Remy, tell me! Please tell me, what did you do?” I beg.
He pins me to the wall and sets his forehead on mine, his gaze completely territorial. “I like that you’re jealous. Is it because you love me? Do you feel proprietary of me?”
“Let go,” I breathe angrily.
He lifts one large, tan hand and cups my face so, so gently, I could be glass. “I do. I feel completely proprietary of you. You’re mine. I’m not letting you go.”
“You said no to me,” I breathe, blazing with hurt inside. “For months and months. I was dying for you. I was going crazy. I . . . came . . . like a fucking idiot! On your fucking leg! You withheld yourself from me until I was . . . dying a little inside with wanting you. You’ve got more willpower than Zeus! But the first women they bring to your door . . . the moment I’m gone, the first whores they happened to bring you . . .”
His smile remains on his face, but the light in his eyes has dimmed, and now there’s a fierce intensity in his stare. “What would you have done if you were here? Stopped it?”
“Yes!”
“But where were you?”
My breath comes in jerks.
He lowers his head and looks deep into my eyes, now curious. “Where were you, Brooke?” One big, warm hand curls around my throat, and he strokes his thumb across my pulse point.
“I was broken,” I cry in a mix of anger and pain. “You broke me.”
“No. You. Your letter. Broke me.” The laughter has faded from his gaze as he runs the pad of his thumb up my throat then runs it, lovingly, along the curve of my jaw then finally trails it, like a feather, softly across my lips. “What does it matter if I had to kiss a thousand lips to forget these?”
There’s a knock on the door, but our warring energies are locked like missiles on their targets. He’s too busy caging me in with his arms, and I’m too busy having my heart broken inside me, loathing that I’m the actual wielder of the axe, because we’d broken up. I know he needs sex when he’s manic. I know I left. I had no right to Remington or anything he did or said.
So I broke my own heart when I left, and now the reality of what happened when I left is coming back and continuing to break it. And here I am, with a huge lump in my throat and exhaling as hard as a fire-breathing dragon.
He eases back to open the door and pull inside one of the suitcases a bellman is standing there with. As I try to pass, he grabs the back of my shirt and says, “Come here, settle down now.”
I push his hand away and don’t know if I want to let him settle me down or not. I’m being irrational. I broke up. I left. The one I’m angry with right now, the one I want to hit right now, is me. My insides wrench with pain as we hold each other’s gaze. I wipe a tear as I head to the open door, where Remington continues pulling the rest of our things inside.
I know I caused all this. Because I thought I was strong and had tried to protect myself, and so I hurt me, and I hurt him and a whole shitload of people, because I was strong and thought I could protect him and my sister—and I fucked everyone instead. But I’m so wounded inside, I just want to lock myself up somewhere and have a good, long cry. I imagine the glittery whores coming into this hotel room when he wasn’t even in his full senses, and I know I’m going to vomit.
I tell the bellman, “Thank you. Would you send this duffel with that other suitcase to the other room?”
The guy pushes the cart back toward the elevator bank and nods.
“Where are you going?” Remington asks as I step into the hallway.
I drag in a breath and turn. “I want to sleep with Diane tonight. I don’t feel so well and I’d rather we talk about it when I . . . when I . . . am settled down,” I say with a closed throat.
He laughs. “You can’t be serious.”
When I go over to the elevator and press the CALL button, his laughter quickly fades.
When I board with the bellman, I’m holding it in, my vomit and my tears. The young guy smiles at me and asks, “First time at this hotel?”
I nod and swallow.
As soon as I arrive at Diane’s room, I burst out crying. She brings the suitcases inside and shuts the door. “Brooke, I didn’t mean to cause trouble! I thought you knew. The groupies and women—it’s always been like this except when you’re around. I’m so sorry.”
“Diane, I broke up with him! Yes! I understand it’s all my fault. Everything is all my fault. Even him losing the championship.”
“Brooke,” Diane tries to console as she sits me on the bed. “They came and went. It wasn’t . . .”
I wipe my tears and sniffle, but my misery feels like a steel weight. “He lived like that before I came into the picture. I don’t know what I expected when I left. I thought it would take him a little time to get back on the horse, you know? But I know that being helpless and moping around isn’t Remington. He would’ve been . . .”
