I’m on the floor, sobbing, the only thing moving on me is the awful legs belonging to these awful creatures, when I hear Diane screaming tremulously into the phone, “Get back here! Get back here please!” She keeps repeating the same thing, over and over, when she suddenly swings the door open and screams out into the hall, “REMINGTON!”
Everything’s hazy as almost immediately, or maybe a few minutes later, I don’t know, the door slams open wider with a crashing noise. Through my tears, I see him, and I can picture what he sees. Scorpions all over me and me, doing nothing, crying like a baby, as afraid as I’ve ever been in my life. My vision blurs completely from something other than tears, and I wonder if it’s the venom. I feel shocks all over me. I feel the scorpions being yanked from me with bare hands, one after the other, as I sob.
Then he grabs me, and I’m in his huge arms, steady arms that hold a body that is mine—is it mine? Is this body that is falling apart mine?—and I am shaking and in an agony of pain.
I try climbing up him higher, like a tree, and cling to his neck as I sob and try to breathe, sucking in his scent like it’s the only way my body can remember to breathe again. He’s breathing hard. His hands are fists in my back, and they are shaking. Then they start rubbing up and down. His hands reach my face and he furiously wipes my tears.
“I got you,” he hisses passionately in my ear, squeezing me none too gently. “I got you. I got you.”
“A woman just came and knocked!” Diane’s frantic words tremble with tears. “She said Remy had ordered the box for her!”
“Jesus,” Pete says in disgust. “Let’s not throw them away, Diane; we need to see what kind they are. Call an EMT and let’s just crush the motherfuckers—give me a pan.”
Remington’s voice is hard as granite in my ear. “I’m going to kill him,” he promises me. “I swear to god, I’m going to kill him so slowly.”
“Just save it for the ring, Rem. Sabotaging your championship is exactly what he wants,” Pete says between whacking noises.
Remy’s voice is a hiss as I feel him rub his hands over me. “Where did they bite you? Tell me exactly where, and I’ll suck all the poison out.”
I’m gasping for breath as if my air ducts were suddenly swelling. “I . . . e-everywhere . . .”
“You shouldn’t suck on these—let me have a look at her,” Pete says.
I cling to Remington, and he tightens his arms around me and slowly rocks me, his entire body shaking almost like my own as he speaks into my ear. “I got you, little firecracker, I got you right here in my arms,” he whispers, and I can hear the barely unleashed fury in his voice.
“Rem, let me see her,” Pete begs him.
“No,” I moan, and I clutch Remy harder because I know that if I die, this is the way I want to go. Oh my god, am I going to die? Who’s going to take care of him? “Don’t let go, don’t let go,” I moan.
“Never,” he promises in my ear.
“According to Google, they’re Arizona bark scorpions. Venomous but not deadly.”
“Hang on to me,” Remy whispers, and then we’re in motion. My vision blurs even more. My tongue is thick. Saliva in my mouth. Can’t breathe. I’m shaking as he lifts me, and the sensation of being electrocuted from the inside increases to an alarming level.
“Where the heck are you going with her, Tate?”
Remington’s growl rumbles against my chest and somehow comforts me in my shaky, altered state. “To the f**king hospital, dipshit.”
I hear the crash of the door as he opens it with all his might, and then a creak as if he unhinged it. Then we’re in motion, going somewhere . . . his breathing hard and fast. . . .
Pete calls behinds us, “Dude, Diane just called the EMT. Let’s just take a f**king chill pill and give her some Benadryl.”
“You. Take a chill pill. Pete.”
We’re walking rapidly somewhere, and I can hear in his voice that he’s hanging on by threads. The thought that this could greatly affect him and make him speedy makes me panic.
“I’m awright,” I tell him; then I hear my own voice. I sound stupid. Maybe some brain cells are dying from the venom. I can’t form the letter l. I say it again, “I’m awright, Wemy. . . .” Ohmigod.
Remington freezes, and I can feel him look at me but my eyes are blurry; then I hear him say, “FUUUUUCK ME!”
The elevator arrives. When the rolling doors open, Riley’s voice reaches me. “All right, what’s going on? Coach is waiting at the gym, Rem. . . .” He trails off.
“Live scorpions,” Pete tells Riley. “Venomous, but fortunately not deadly.”
“I can’t bweathe,” I say out loud. I am freaking. The hell out. For the first time in my life I don’t understand what the hell is going on in my body.
“The poison spreads through the nervous system, but it doesn’t enter the bloodstream. Try to stay calm, Brooke. These bark scorpions are nasty suckers. Can you feel your legs?”
I shake my head. My tongue feels leaden, every spot where I was stung hurts so bad that my face is stuck in a permanent grimace, and I’m breathing in pants.
Pete reaches out. “Let me see that. . . .” I feel Remy wrap his hand around my arm and stretch it out and whisper, “I’m going to kill him,” while Pete studies me.
“It’ll be all right, B,” Pete says. “I’ve had the experience once. Awful, but you really don’t die from a North American scorpion.”
I nod and am clinging to that reassurance when Diane calls from the door, “There’s a note! I turned the box over and there’s a note!”
“What does it say?” Pete asks. Then I hear a crumpling sound as he reads, “?‘You’ve kissed me. Now you’ve been kissed back by the Scorpion. How does it feel to have my venom in you?’?”
Remington’s body engages. I can feel it suddenly, a complete change in the way he holds me. He was protective and proprietary, and suddenly . . . he wants to fight.
An image blooms inside my head: I’m standing before that embodiment of gross and kissing his disgusting tattoo of a scorpion so I could see my sister. I moan as a fresh wave of nausea roils up my throat.
“Pete, I saw his goons downstairs in the lobby. I think he’s here at the hotel,” Riley says.
“The motherfucker is probably downstairs waiting for Remington.”
“Oh, he has it coming!” Remington thunders. “He’s already dead!” he explodes.
I close my eyes tight as his tumultuous energy surrounds me, and I know, no matter how he might have struggled to stay blue . . .
Remy has gone black.
His lips are suddenly in my ear, and he whispers as he cups the back of my head, “I need to do something right now. I love you. I f**king love you to pieces, and I’m going to come back and put you back together again, all right?”
I nod, even though I feel like shit. Little jolts run through me. I bite my lip hard to focus on that pain instead, but it cannot compete with the stings on my body. I’m trying to be brave, but I remember the scorpions on me . . . on my body . . . the ugly bodies, the pincers . . . the three black dots on the head. . . . I shudder in his arms and feel like vomiting.
“Why is she shaking like this, goddammit?” Remington demands as we start moving again.