Mine (Real, #2)(91)

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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 motherf*cker’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 f*cks 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.

He zeroes his attention on me for a second longer, then he kisses the back of my ear once more and pats my bum. That’s all he does. Then he starts jumping in place, twisting his arms up and around himself, and the entire atmosphere shifts dramatically as the team starts breathing again.

“Where’s Jo?” he gruffly asks Pete.

A tingle begins in my middle as I realize he truly is coming back.

“She’s already scouting the area,” Pete says, and there’s a quiver of excitement in his voice as he probably realizes the same.

“Neither you or Jo is to take your eyes off Brooke, do you hear me?” he commands as he cracks his neck to one side, then the other.

“We got you, buddy!” Pete assures him.

“All right, are we ready here?” Coach swings the duffel containing Remy’s clean clothes, Gatorades, and extra headphones over his shoulder.

“Ready,” Remington answers as he retrieves his iPod from the speakers. The music dies instantly, and we all watch him grab his headphones from the nightstand and latch them onto the silver iPod.

“Hell yeah, that’s my boy!” Coach yells out.

Riley woots. “That’s the MAN!”

“Who’s kicking ass?” Coach pounds Remy’s back as they head for the door.

“I am.” I hear Remington’s low growl.

Coach pounds his back with an even harder thud. “What name will they all be screaming tonight?”

“Mine.”

“Say it!”

“Riptide.”

“That’s not how the motherf*ckers say it!”

Remington slams a fist to his chest and yells, “RIPTIDE!!”

“THAT’S RIGHT!” Coach yells back.