“Remy, fight him!” I hear Brooke’s unmistakable voice, and it freezes me. “REMY, FIGHT HIM! FOR ME! FOR ME!”
I hear it. Holy god, she has never screamed for me like this. It breaks me, and for the briefest second, I want to knock Scorpion with whatever force I have left. I am the strongest, the fastest, so she knows I don’t go down. I am her mate and I want her to be proud of me. The jabs come, and all I can hear is her begging me to fight. For her. And for the first time in my life, I feel completely humiliated. Can’t she see I’m allowing this?
This one’s for you, little firecracker—ooof.
My breath goes, my body contracts to hold the pain. My thoughts scatter and my head spins.
He goes for my head now, and my brain spins in my cranium like jelly. I can hear his fist connecting with my jaw until my head swings on the last crack!
Keeping balance is impossible.
I slam to the floor.
I feel it under me. I almost like it. The only solid thing as my world spins. Something about knowing I can fall and the motherfucking floor is there for me is comforting.
A wet puddle of blood is beneath me. My eyes are nearly shut and swollen. And my ribs feel like they’ve been punched into my lungs. I plant a hand on the canvas, and then the other, and I hear counting. I try pushing up, and for a moment there I don’t know if I can.
I hate him. I hate him with a passion. All I can think about is me standing here, seeing those yellow eyes and that face, and busting it open the next time I face him.
I push up and spit blood, and as soon as I am up, I catch a left hook on my side that swings me around.
I stumble and almost fall again, need to shake my head. The room is spinning. And all I can think of are Brooke’s arms, and how good they will feel when she holds me tonight. I’m going to cuddle her to me and let her put ice on me and work her magic, and she’s going to love me for giving her back her sister because I thought I wanted the championship, but not now.
Now all I want is the woman I love. To love me. Like nobody in my life has loved me before. And I’ll fight harder for her than for anyone.
I hear Riley and Coach yelling at me over and over, “Your fucking guard! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
People yell all over the arena. They’re getting thirstier and thirstier for blood, but today I can only give them mine.
“KILL HIM, RIPTIDE! KILL HIM!”
The next hit sends blood splattering across the canvas, and the people shout even louder. “REM-ING-TON! REM-ING-TON!”
My heart has never pumped so hard. No part of my body understands why I’m not using it. My fight tonight is with myself, with every fucking instinct inside me, my muscles, which want to work, my nerves, which jump reflexively to protect. But I can’t move my right arm anymore. It hangs limp at my side, and it doesn’t even hurt.
“Remy, Remy, REMY!” people continue yelling.
Scorpion growls in rage. I know for a fact there has never been a moment in his life when anyone rooted for him.
I spit in his face. “Next time I see you, you’re going to eat my fist,” I tell him.
He swings his arm back with a roar and I wait for the slam. It comes and I’m down. My vision tunnels and goes black.
I HEAR MUSIC in the dark. I hear the songs Brooke has played me, songs I have played her. My body aches and I try to move but can’t pull out of the dark. I feel hands on my jaw, and I hear sounds close to my ear. Sobbing little sounds. I feel her kisses on my temple, her fingers on top of my hair. I hear the music and lose it . . . lose her . . . No, I’m never going to lose her. I’d do everything for her. She has to know I’d do everything for her.
Light burns into my retinas. My body is leaden and numb. My chest hurts. I peel open my eyes wider and assess my surroundings.
Hospital. Riley.
And Brooke?
Panic seizes me. I try to talk and something is stuck in my throat, so I groan.
Riley’s head shoots up from where he sits in the chair. “You’re up, thank god!” He comes to me. “Holy god, Remington, I’m fucking glad you made it so I can kill you myself. You had us all—”
I grab his arm and squeeze so tight, he halts, and a noise emerges from my throat, through the stupid breathing tube I’ve got jammed in there.
“You want to know where Brooke is?” Riley asks when he looks into my eyes.
I nod and groan again. The panic claws through me. She saw the debacle in the ring, and I need to see that she’s all right.
When Riley goes to get her, I count the seconds with my heartbeat.
She comes in and stops when we see each other. I’ve never before felt what I feel now. Every cell in my body leaps, but at the same time I’m immobilized in this bed, trembling with the sight of her. She’s there, looking at me, in clothes that are wrinkled and her hair a mess, her face pale, and she has never looked so good to me. My body tenses with the urges burning through me. I want to tell her, I love you, Little Firecracker. I fucking love you so bad. . . .
I want her to bring me my iPod so I can play a song to her. “I Love You” again. Or another one. Shit, nothing can capture the feeling of loving her.
She starts trembling on her feet, and my eyes start burning when I hear the sobs that start wracking her. They tear from somewhere so deep, her voice sounds completely unfamiliar, and it makes me hurt in places I didn’t even know I had.
“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!”
My eyes are on fucking fire and I can’t fucking move, all I can do is lie here as her pain and mine tear through 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!”
I make noise and try to move even when an arm is in a cast, hating how heavy my body feels. My fast, trained body fails me, and it is as broken as I suddenly feel.
Tears trickle down her cheeks, and suddenly she comes to me and she touches my free hand and bends to my chest as she kisses my knuckles, her tears falling on my scars.
I want to touch her so bad I force my cast to move so I can place my hand on the back of her head, stroking her hair.
She wipes her cheeks and looks through tear-filled eyes at me, and I silently will her to understand that I can take this, that I can take a beating.
But suddenly she stands to go.
I grab her hand and clutch it as tight as I can without breaking her little bones. She pulls it free and grabs my face and sets a kiss on my forehead. I feel all her pain explode inside me, and she’s fucking killing me. A sound tears from my throat as I grab the tube and try pulling it out, and the machine goes crazy and so does Brooke.
“Remy, don’t, don’t!” she pleads, but I won’t fucking have it, I need to take this fucking shit off. I’ve never been a man of words, but I won’t have shit in my throat when I have something to say to her, but Brooke panics and yells for a nurse. “Nurse! Please!”
A nurse rushes into the room, and something shoots through the IV to my veins, and I am instantly as heavy as a bull and my head is closing in on me. Brooke looks at me with a face I will never forget. I think I broke her. She’s strong, she’s my mate, and she is naturally strong enough to take me—no.
Nobody can take me.
I see the look in her eyes, the same look I imagine everyone gets when they realize I’m hopeless. I’m a fucking mess. But then she smiles at me, and it’s a smile that brands itself in my head. I cling to it as I start sinking, trying to think of what song I will play her when I wake. . . .
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
I’ve read this letter over and over today. I’ve read it in disbelief, in anger, in self-loathing, in loneliness, in desperation, but never in detachment. And now, I read it another time, and it’s finally sinking in that she—my girl—has left me. My body implodes and I groan and drop my head with the sort of intense pain they don’t make painkillers for. My eyes blurring, I scrape my thumbs over the I love you, Remy over and over while I hear Pete out in the living room, talking as if it’s a normal day.
Another fucking day of the life of Riptide.
Before he ever met . . . her.
“Fifteen hundred shares of that one. Sell. . . . Yes.” There’s a silence that makes me figure out he hung up, and I watch the doorknob turn as he peers into the bedroom. The curtains are open, and he starts when he sees me. “Your eyes are blue.”
I rub my face and try to piece the past weeks together in my head, but all I can think of is bits of this letter. I love you, Remy. . . . You have made me deliriously happy. . . .
