“Oh, god.” I duck my head into his chest because I can’t take it, my fingers curling into his hospital robe. “I will be here every time you need to do this. I will be here, I promise you.”
As we’re checking out of the hospital, I get a text from Melanie.
How are things in Happily Ever After? Other than happy?
I smile as we get back into our rented Escalade as if this were just another Monday, and Remington climbs into the car with me and puts his arm on the back of my seat, like he always does. I’ve been through hell, and I’m back in heaven, and suddenly I know that’s the way my life will be: after the dark, I will always, always find my light—which is him.
I type back, Perfect
“The last time the shocks helped us pull him out of suicidal thoughts, but we had to do three a week, and we just don’t have time for that now. We can’t give him any more muscle relaxants, so we’ll have to hope this was enough of a reset,” Pete tells us all.
“I’m fucking fine,” Remington growls. We all seem to search his gaze, and it’s Riley who gathers up his courage to speak.
“Rem, Pete and I would like to have words with you about something,” he says, looking briefly at me and using a voice that practically begs me to coax Remy into reason. “Pete’s got an update on Brooke’s sister, and we just want to tell you something. Tomorrow morning before you hit the gym?”
“I heard,” he says simply, surprising everyone in the car. “I’m still thinking about what to do with you bozos.”
“Shit, Rem,” Riley says, aghast. “I’m about to go change my fucking pants, just be reasonable.”
Pete looks really upset. “Rem, I swear to god I wouldn’t ever have lied about anything else—it seemed harmless; it seemed it would only help your state of mind.”
“My state of mind isn’t helped knowing I can’t trust you dipshits,” he growls, and they both go quiet and continue looking sick as he adds, “You’re my brothers, but SHE IS MINE. If she’d left me because of your lie, I’d kill you right now. I’d goddamn kill you both.”
“We’d bring her back to you, Remington,” Pete promises. “I swear, if we’d known the level of your . . . I swear we’d bring her back to you.”
“Rem, we were trying to help you survive. Like we always do. We thought it was over, dude. We thought we were helping. But then Brooke came back and we realized how wrong—shit, how wrong we were. We don’t even know how to correct the record without looking like idiots to you.”
Remy is thoughtful for a long time, and the three of them exchange strange, brother-like bonding gazes. Then Remington nods and slides his arm around my waist, pulling me to him, and when he nuzzles my pulse point with a soft growl and curves his hand over the roundness of my stomach, all the tension eases from my shoulders. I melt into his arms.
A thousand fuzzy things flutter inside me when I hear him inhale again, longer and deeper this time, like he needs my scent to calm down and find his center. I duck and kiss the top of his dark head, running my hands through his hair. I swear I can’t stop kissing him. I kiss his jaw, his temple, reach for his hand, kiss the backs of his fingers.
When we get back to the suite, Diane serves dinner, her face all aglow at seeing him at the table, and when Remy looks at me across the table and pats his lap, I almost run to it. When he lifts his fork to me, I feel like a stupid starved bird that’s being fed for the first time in a century.
When he asks me, “More?” quietly, intently watching my mouth as he lifts his fork, I nod and bite it all off and then, before I even munch, I press my lips to his, because I can’t express the relief I feel after this procedure, seeing that he’s all right. And actually a little better.
He lazily hits the bed, his body still relaxed with the remains of the anesthesia and the muscle relaxants they gave him, the mattress squeaking as he falls on it, all muscular and loose. “Come here,” he calls without even lifting his head or looking to see where I am.
We just brushed our teeth and I’m picking up the clothes that he left littered around, then I add mine to a neat pile in the corner chair and slide naked under the covers with him. Our skins touch. Every sensation is heightened to me. I am grateful for his touch. For hearing his voice. For every single moment I have right now with him. I now see how precious it is. Every song he plays me, when that brilliant mind is all right and blazing with light and thoughts. Precious, even, when he’s in the dark, quietly fighting it and clinging to me.
His arm curls around my waist, and his fingers curl at my hip bone as he drags me over to spoon me. My anxiety over having watched him go through what he just did still rushes through me, and I can’t help but press extra hard to his body. I hear him rumble out a chuckle in amusement.
To hear his soft, sexy laugh . . .
Oh god.
“It’s not funny,” I say tearfully as I face him. “It’s not fucking funny.”
“Yes, it is,” he whispers with one adorable dimple, his voice deep and textured as he rubs the pad of his thumb down my nose. “Nobody’s ever worried about me before.”
“Yes, they do, Remy. Everyone who you love, loves you too. Pete, Riley, Coach, and Diane. They’re just better at hiding it from you.”
He looks at me thoughtfully, then he spreads his hand on my stomach as his lips scrape, soft and tender, over mine. “I’ve done this before. I’ve got this, little firecracker.” Those dark eyes watching me, he rubs his thumb over my forehead now. “Don’t get that little face for me, all right?” He crushes me to him and squeezes his eyes shut, groaning as if it feels good to him to hold me. “I want to make you happy. I want to make you fucking happy, I never want to make you sad.”
“Okay,” I say, still a little emotional, pressing my lips to his jaw.
“Okay?” he says, turning his head and pressing his lips to mine.
Sliding my arm around my stomach, I lace my fingers through his as I nod. “More than okay.”
Running my free hand over his hair, I curl one of my legs around his hips and rain a thousand and one kisses on his face, making him chuckle. I laugh softly with him, a smile curling my lips with every kiss I continue to press on him, but I don’t stop.
Now I know that he is really mine. These fingers have been mine from the moment they touched me. This face. These lips. His huge, kind, protective, possessive, and forgiving heart. He’s been mine since I’ve been his, and knowing this makes me feel like I’m being pieced apart, then put back together new and whole and happy.
“I want to sleep with you in me,” I plead, dragging my open mouth along his jaw, my fingers suddenly almost clawing the skin of his shoulder as I breathe in his warm skin and try to get closer with my swollen tummy in between.
He slips his hand between us and starts preparing me with his fingers as he turns his head to slowly, leisurely take my mouth, his tongue slowing me down, licking into me with lazy pleasure. “Are you ready?” he murmurs heatedly.
“Fill me . . .” is all I can say, and a breathless sound bubbles up my throat as he grabs me by the waist and sinks me down on his length, filling me up so I am so full and so penetrated by him, I can hardly talk, or breathe, or think of anything but that Remy is inside me, pulsing and hot, his mouth taking me, slowly, quietly, reassuring me he’s got this. And he’s got me.
HE’S STILL BLACK the day of the fight, and the atmosphere in the presidential suite is thick with tension as we wait for him to get ready.
Pete, Riley, and Coach hover by the master bedroom door, while I’m being eaten alive by my own sick worry, because I seriously don’t know if he should fight like this.
“Mention that motherfucker’s name!” Coach hisses to Pete. I think he wants to provoke Remington’s turbulent energy into action, but Pete shakes his head.
“We won’t use anger. He’s full of self-hatred when he’s low,” Pete whispers.
But what I’ve personally most felt is his inner struggle. He’s been inside himself, fighting. He doesn’t release a word of self-loathing, but I sense that he thinks the words, he feels them in his soul. The electroshock helped, but he’s still low. It breaks me that he needs to fight like this.
“Try warming up those muscles, Brooke,” Pete suggests.
Coming over to where Remy is tying up his boots in silence, I slip my hands up and down his back and loosen up any muscle that I can, awakening them with slow, deliberate hard presses of my fingers.
“All right, Rem, let’s get pumped up. I know you like this one,” Pete says as he sets Remy’s iPod on my speakers.
“Uprising” by Muse bursts through the room at high volume. The rebellious beat of the music seems to reach Remington’s ears, and his muscles start engaging under my fingers, like he can’t help but respond.
My heart quivers a little. Is he coming into himself?
He’s been so busy fighting inside himself, I just wonder if he has enough fight left for Scorpion.
He jerks on his other boot while I rub his hard muscles and try to transmit every ounce of good and healing energy I have to him. I warm each muscle, one by one, moving up his back, paying extra attention to his rotator cuffs. When I can’t stop myself from bending down to his dark head to ask him how he feels, he swings around and grabs the back of my head, holding it as he locks his mouth to mine and plunders me.
When he pulls back, my mouth burns from the wet heat of his, and his eyes simmer with a dark and fierce desperation. He stares at me like I’m the only hope in the world, the look in his eyes so wild and fierce, he lights the hope inside me that maybe he’ll fight. Maybe he wants it bad enough to push through this. I know how badly he wants this win, and I know how completely he loathes it when his black side fucks with him.
“Remington, dude, this is what you’ve been waiting for.” Pete seizes his shoulders and draws his attention to him with a reassuring squeeze. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is within reach. Everything. You have plans after the championship, I know you do. Winning will make them happen. Brooke, the baby . . .”
At those words, I see him pinch his eyes shut for a quiet moment, then he drags in a long, slow breath. Pete bends to whisper something in his ear, and Remington nods and gruffly tells him, “Thanks.” When he opens his eyes again, he gets up, and the synapses in my brain seem to fire up in excitement.
Draped in his fighting gear already, his ripped, tan body looks every inch the prime-time fighting machine he has built himself to be. When he says, “Come here, Brooke,” I’m so insanely nervous about this fight, I almost stumble forward as I go. He takes me in his arms and hugs me tight, placing a warm kiss on the back of my ear. “I need you in my peripherals, at the very least. At all times. At all times.”
Suddenly, my insides shudder with the knowledge that he will be fighting, and come hell or heaven, I will be watching him. “I won’t move from my seat!” I promise.