RR&R 01 Real (36 page)

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

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.”

“
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!”

“
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 his arm and trying to back him off a bit.

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 filthy scum’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 empty aside.

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, and 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.

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

“
Supposed being the operative word.”

“
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 between his grasp. “So if you could send the bill to the presidential suite? I guarantee we’ll be moving out by morning.”

“
I want to help!”

“
Damn, you’ve helped enough, Brooke,” Riley tells me, 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 see all of his things across our suite, his iPad and 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 and could 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 felt relatively harmless, considering, and also it had felt like I had no choice, but how I sorely wish Remington would never have found about it. Even angry, I could feel his hurt, and now I’m worried sick about it. Even if he has his fists in Scorpion’s jaw right now, his Underground victory would 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.

But at five 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?”

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

“
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
.”

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

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

That’s all I think of as I grab my sneakers, 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 winding 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 will face each other, 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.

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 Riley pulls off his red hood and sets it easily aside.

My eyes rake down his 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.

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!”

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.