The final approaches, and Remington hasn’t yet made it to the fighting ring on any of the recent nights. He’s dropped to second place after Scorpion. He could’ve fallen even more, but Scorpion lost a couple; he’s fighting while on drugs, according to Pete, and he hasn’t been as sharp as usual. To think that Nora is with that ass**le worries me sick. She could be equally drugged and helpless, but the thought corrodes me in such a way I really can’t think about that now. All I want is for Remington to successfully finish this season—this is his dream. Then . . . then we have to find a way to once again get Nora home safe, even though I know, in my gut, the men have been planning something, but it doesn’t help my unease.
But now we’re three days away from the big fight, and Remington is still completely dark. Today he went to train and didn’t even look anyone in the eye. I know he feels things, bad things. I know he doesn’t voice them because it would be losing, and he won’t ever lose. Except for when he lost for you, a sad little voice tells me.
Everyone has grown extremely worried, and I feel especially concerned when Remy asks me to call Pete and Riley. They knock at the door of the master, and I cover Remy’s na**d body with the white bedsheet so that only his muscled back and arms are exposed, and lead them inside.
“They’re here,” I say.
Riley approaches first and kneels at the side of the bed. “Hey, Rem, how you doing?”
“Bad,” he warns.
“What’s up?” Pete says.
Silence.
“I want you to take me . . . to the damn hospital . . . and schedule me.”
Riley’s eyes flare wide, as do Pete’s. The boys look at me for a moment, and Remington repeats exactly what he has just said. “I want you to take me . . . to the damn hospital . . . and schedule me to get that procedure,” he adds.
Something in his words—in the way the men hesitate before answering—send a new rush of alarm skittering through me. “You want to do that again,” Riley says.
He nods against his pillow. “Now,” he firmly stresses.
Riley turns helplessly to Pete, who after a moment grabs his phone. “First we need to see when it can be done. Let me call the hospital,” he says and starts dialing, stalking out of the room.
“It’ll perk you right up,” Riley says as he shoots up to his feet and pats Remington’s back with a solid thunk.
Remington grabs him by the tie and pulls him closer as he sits up. “Don’t f**king patronize me. Just take me there and don’t you dare let her see,” he grits.
My eyebrows flick upward when I realize Remington thinks I left the room, and Riley’s eyes shift momentarily my way, a signal to not to let on that I heard. But I’m not lying to Remington ever again, so I step forward.
“I want to be with you. If they medicate you or do anything else to you. I want to be there and I’m going to be there.”
He straightens at the sound of my voice, but he first looks at Riley. “Riley . . .” he warns. Riley loosens his tie as Remy swings his head to look at me. “You stay here and I’ll be back.” He speaks gruffly but with obvious caring, using a complete different tone with me than the one he’d been using with the men.
“I don’t think so,” I stubbornly counter, because, seriously, I’m not budging on this. The three are acting as if I’m an incompetent, weak little rosebud!
Remy narrows his eyes and clamps his jaw at my stubbornness, and I lift both my eyebrows and cross my arms.
“I go where you go. Understand? Whatever it is, it’s no big deal,” I say.
He stays locked on my stare, a muscle working in the back of his jaw.
“It’s no. Big. Deal!” I assure, bluffing with everything I’ve got.
But I’m not letting him out of my sight.
NINETEEN
BLACK VERSUS BLUE
Fully aware that I’m accompanying the guys almost by force, I wisely stay quiet during our ride to the hospital. Everyone seems to be on the same channel. Not a word is exchanged. Barely even a look. We all seem to expect Remy to say something, but his attention is firmly fixed on the passing city scenery, his profile hard in determination. I don’t really think he’s seeing anything; he’s lost inside his head.
When we arrive, I feel the warmth of his body suddenly envelop me as he bends down and takes my lips briefly with his. His voice shivers through me as he tells me, “I’ll be out soon.”
“No! I want to go with you!” I call to his broad back as he disappears down the hall with a nurse while Pete goes to the desk to check him in. I begin suspecting it is, in fact, kind of a big deal when Riley starts talking to me like I’m a baby.
“It’s so much better if you stayed here, Brooke,” he practically croons.
I scowl. “Don’t treat me like a flower, Riley. I want to be there for him. I need to be there for him.”
Pete heads in the direction Remington disappeared, and I quickly jog to him. “Pete, can I go in with him?”
For a moment, there’s a man-to-man communication going on between the guys, then Pete finally nods at Riley and tells me, “I’ll come get you when he’s prepped.”
“Prepped?”
Pete disappears down the same hall Remington did.
“Riley?”
I’m completely confused here.
Riley sighs. “He’s having a procedure to induce a brain seizure.” And as he starts to explain, I listen as if I’ve just slid to the other side of a tunnel, and am getting farther and farther away by the second. A fire burns in my eyes and all I know now is that the hospital walls are white. So blank, and plain, and white. “. . . while his brain will receive an electric current . . .”
The heart is a hollow muscle, and it will beat billions of times during our life.
I’ve learned, in my short life, that you can’t run if you tear a ligament, but your heart can be broken into a million pieces and you can still love with your whole being.
Your whole, miserable, insanely vulnerable f**king being . . .
I can feel my heart thumping hard as ever in my chest, thump thump thump. Even though I’m trying to act like it’s NO BIG DEAL, my brain reels as I try to grasp what Riley has just explained to me. That Remington is about to commit himself to electroshocks. A f**king electric current is going to be sent through his scalp to his brain to give him a f**king brain seizure.
Now he’s telling me that there could be some short-term memory loss, that he will be given short-acting anesthesia, that his blood oxygen levels and heart rate will be monitored, that other than the possible short- or long-term memory loss, there is no other known side effect. I swear that when I replay in my head the scene of Remington disappearing down the hall with the hospital staff, I hear a low, dull sound echoing in the cold, white walls—a low, dull sound coming from me.
“Oh, Riley.” His name comes out in a low, wretched moan, and I cover my face as panic and fear rise in me like a tide, drowning me.
My pulse falters when Pete appears and signals to me. I run over and follow him, half dying and half as alive as I’ve ever been from sheer panic, into a room. I see machines, become hyperaware of the unsurpassable coldness of the hospital, and in the middle of the room, I see him. He’s being strapped down with Velcro bands around his thick wrists.
His beautiful body spread out on the flat surface, he’s covered in a hospital robe as he faces the ceiling.