“That’s right. I’ll be training and you’ll be resting.”
“Yeah.”
When we fall silent, we stay close, and she whispers, “I left some arnica oils in your suitcase. If you have any muscle soreness or any pain.”
“Are you still seeing blood?” I ask, and when she nods, my concern and frustration feel like a spiked ball in the middle of my chest.
“Every time a cramp starts, I feel like it’s going to come out of me,” she admits.
Soothing a hand down her back, I press a kiss to her forehead. “I know it’ll kill you not to run. Stay off your feet for me.”
“Not as much as it would kill me to lose our baby,” she whispers.
We ride in silence toward her apartment, and I scoop her out of the car and carry her into the building. She clings to my neck as we walk into the building, up the elevator, and into her apartment, and she feels so right in my arms, I don’t even know how I’ll let go of her. “Stay. Remington, stay. Be my male prisoner. I promise to take care of you all day, every day,” she whispers.
I laugh softly, and I look into her laughing, pleading gold eyes, and I don’t even know what to do with her, I want to sink in her and live in her.
She gives me a tour of her place, and then we go into her room.
I take in our surroundings as I set Brooke by the foot of the bed. Her room has earth-toned walls. Framed photographs of biceps, triceps, and abs. A nutritional chart, and a framed quote that says:
A CHAMPION IS SOMEONE WHO GETS UP WHEN HE CAN’T—JACK DEMPSEY
There’s a big wall with pinned photographs. And there she is, sprinting past the finish line with a number 06 in her chest.
I reach out to run the pad of my thumb down the length of her running figure. “Look at you,” I say, turning. She’s right behind me. Standing, like she shouldn’t be. I scoop her up and set her on the center of the bed, brushing some escaped tendrils of hair behind her shoulder. “Stay off your feet for me,” I chide.
“I will. I forgot. It’s habit.” She scoot backs on the mattress to make room for me and then she pulls me over her, whispering in my ear, “You should go or I won’t let you leave me.”
Instead, I cuddle her to me, my arms wrapped around her waist as I scent her, slow and deep, then I lick her slowly, then kiss her and murmur, “When you tell me you’re in bed, this is what I’ll picture. This is what you see.” Her eyes glisten with tears as she quietly nods.
“I’ll be back soon,” I assure her, curling my palm around her cheek as one lone tear slides down her cheek. I try to smile. “I’ll be here soon,” I repeat.
“I know.” She wipes her cheek, turns her head, and kisses the inside of my palm, then she forces my finger closed around her kiss. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Shit, come here.” I crush her in my arms, and she trembles and starts crying for real.
“It’s all right,” I whisper, rubbing her back, but she sobs harder. I whisper it’s all right, but the way she cries guts me. It’s not anything close to right. She needs me. She f**king needs me and she will be here, without me, struggling to keep our baby. Our baby that might just end up being like me, and instead of making the woman I love happy, our baby will hurt her, just like I do. It pains me. Maybe the child I put in her isn’t right. Maybe it’s not strong. Maybe it’s just like me, and everything I don’t want her to have to struggle with.
But I’m so f**king selfish, I still want it.
I don’t want her to lose it.
I want her, I want everything with her.
“You need to go,” she whispers, suddenly pushing me away.
Fuck, I haven’t even left and it already hurts as I breathe her in one last time and set my forehead against hers. I take her face in my hand and wipe her tears with my thumbs, rasping, “You okay, baby firecracker?”
“I will be. More than okay,” she assures.
Her phone vibrates, and she checks the message, her eyelashes wet with her tears. “Melanie is five minutes away.” Her voice cracks in the end as she turns her attention back to me. “Please go before I cry,” she begs.
I curl my fingers around the back of her neck and shut my eyes closed as I lean my head on her. “Think of me like crazy.”
“You know I will.”
I lean closer. “Now give me a kiss.”
She presses her lips to mine, and I spread out my hand on the small of her back, memorizing her, drinking her up because I’m going to be thirsty and there won’t be water for me until she’s home. With me. I feel a tear against my jaw and I lick it up from her cheek when we hear Melanie outside.
“Brookey!! Where’s the hot dad and the upcoming momma?”
I curse and take another hard, fast kiss before I go, sucking on her tongue, taking everything I can, then I ease back and survey her pink swollen mouth and beautiful wide eyes, with the dilated pupils, just for me.
“You’re everything I never knew I wanted,” I huskily whisper, tucking her hair behind her. “And all mine, remember that tidbit,” I add, forcing myself to stand. “Completely mine . . . Brooke Dumas.”
She watches me back up to the door, her chest heaving, her heart in her eyes. “I’m pregnant with your baby, if there was any doubt about whose I was,” she says, with a shaky smile.
“You’re both mine.” I point right at her. “Especially you.”
When I turn, she calls me.
“Hey! You’re mine, too.”
Nodding, I pull out my iPod and toss it straight at her. “Don’t miss me too much.”
She catches it like she just caught my soul, holding it tightly. “I won’t!” she cries, and I memorize every inch of the smile on her face. Brand it inside your f**king skull, Tate.
And I do.
It’s still in my head when I meet her friend out in the hall. “Hey, Melanie.”
She gives me the same doting look all my fans give me. “Hey, Remy.”
My eyebrows furrow. “I want to be the first to know anything. If she’s sick, if she’s lonely, if she needs me.”
She keeps nodding with that ridiculous smile. “Don’t worry, I will call you or make sure she does,” she assures, patting my chest with sparkling green eyes. “Now go.” She pats my chest again, this time flattening her palms and pushing, to no avail. “Go! You sex god! I’ll take care of your girl.”
I grab her wrists, lower them, then force myself to head to the elevator. In the car, I’m drumming my fingers on my knees. In the plane, I’m flying with my headphones at my side, but no music. She has my music now. She’s ALL. MY MUSIC.
When we land and I power up my phone, I get a message from her.
Call me tonight if you want to?
Hell, of course I f**king want to.
I’m still sweaty in the gym as I try to work out, but I grab my phone and call her, dropping down onto a bench while I suck up my Gatorade. No answer.
I call again.
No answer. After several tries, it vibrates with a text message.
My friends are still here. Maybe we should talk tomorrow?
I set my Gatorade aside to text. Same time?
Yes, any time
My thumbs are too blunt and big and I struggle to pound out Ok
Good night Remy
More struggling to write down You too.
Then I stare at the screen, but there’s no more.
I can’t sleep that night. I do sit-ups, push-ups, jump rope. I want her to marry a f**king champion, so I’ve decided I’ll be training like one. Hours later, I stop working out, sit up on the carpet, prop my arms over my knees and hang my head between them as I think of the smile I’m carrying around, branded in my head.
I take a shower and play on my iPad, beating the hell out of some guy at chess at five a.m., trying not to think how much I’m craving her. The smell of her, the feel of her, the look of her. I move my pawns and in my head I’m thrusting her and making her moan. In the morning, I’m calling the florist closest to her apartment, but it’s too early and they haven’t opened.
During breakfast, Pete and Riley study my face. “Who are you calling and calling? Let Brooke rest,” Riley says.
I sigh and put the phone down.
“Hey, look at me for a sec, Rem,” Pete says, alarm in his voice.
I lift my head, and I meet his gaze so he knows I’m not f**king black. This time my sadness doesn’t come from a chemical imbalance in my body. My sadness comes from my heart.
“Remy, here we go,” Diane says as she comes up with my breakfast, and she’s smart, that one is. She seems to sense I’m not hungry and will give her shit about the food, and she’s blended all kinds of things with egg whites in three huge glasses. I down them one by one. “Why do you keep redialing?” Pete asks, watching me. “I can do it for you, what do you need?”
“I don’t want Brooke to miss me.”
“All right, so what’s the plan?”
I drag my hands down my face and growl, “I feel like I’m breathing under f**king water without her.”
“Dude, she’s a fighter, like you. They’ll be all right. Both of them,” he stresses.
He heads over to grab my iPad to check the store number. He pats my back before he calls the florist.