“I won’t ever be yours if you don’t take me. Take me! You son of a bitch, can’t you see how much I want you?”
“You don’t know me,” he strains out through gritted teeth, his face anxious as he clenches my wrists at my sides. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“Then tell me! You think I’ll leave if you tell me whatever it is you don’t want me to know?”
“I don’t think it, I know it.” He grabs my face in one open hand and squeezes both my cheeks, his eyes violently blue and almost frantic. “You’ll leave me the second it gets too steep, and you’ll leave me with nothing—when I want you like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. You’re all I think about, dream about. I get high and low and it’s all about you now, it’s not even about me anymore. I can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t concentrate worth shit anymore and it’s all because I want to be the f**king ‘one’ for you and as soon as you realize what I am, all I’ll be is a f**king mistake!”
“How can you be a mistake? Have you seen you? Have you seen what you do to me? You had me at hello, you f**king ass**le! You make me want you until it hurts and then you won’t do shit!”
“Because I’m f**king bipolar! Manic. Violent. Depressive. I’m a f**king ticking time bomb, and if one of my staff messes up when I get another episode, the next person I hurt can be you. I was trying to break this to you as slowly as possible so I could at least stand a chance with you. This shit has taken everything from me. Everything. My career. My family. My f**king friends. If it takes this chance with you, I don’t f**king even know what I’m going to do, but the depression will hit me so deep, I’ll probably end up killing myself!”
My eyes sting as the words float like awful whiplashes in my head. Every shocking word stuns me to my bones. He curses and releases me, and I take a step back and watch him angrily step into a pair of drawstring pants.
Helplessly, I watch him grab a t-shirt from the closet, and my heart has completely stopped beating in my chest. The word “bipolar” is not really a word I’m familiar with, except by listening to it from afar. I’ve never met anyone who’s had it, but suddenly I go back through these weeks, and I get a little hint of it. I do. I get it. Remy both loves and hates himself. He loves and hates his life. One second it’s all good, the next it’s all bad. He’s hot, then he’s cold. Maybe he’s never been accepted, not even by himself, and maybe everyone drops him cold the second it gets … steep.
A thousand emotions roil in my chest, and I can barely contain them all in my body.
His chest heaves as he watches me across the room now, his eyes brilliantly blue as he clenches his hands at his sides and waits for me to speak, the t-shirt still in his grip, dangling at his side.
Suddenly all I know is that this man has god-like proportions in my mind, but now I realize he’s also human and imperfect, and with every aching, quaking inch of my body, I want him all the more. So much I want to drown if he denies me tonight.
Dragging in a fortifying breath, my hands tremble as I slowly open the buttons of my top, sifting them one by one through my fingers. The rustle makes his eyes drop to my chest and his eyes flash in pain. His stare devours me so fiercely, I feel the bite of his eyes in my heart.
“I’m take as-is. I’m not medicating. It makes me feel dead and I intend to live my life alive,” he warns in a rough, angry whisper.
I nod in understanding. I refused to take anti-depressants when I supposedly, clinically, needed them after my fall. I believe it is your choice how you live with your sickness, and sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease. He’s a man who eats so right, and any chemical can unbalance him. I see that.
I’m no one to tell him what to do. But does he even realize how important he is? Where he’s gotten to, all on his own? Does he see what a great team he’s built? I can see how Coach, Diane, Pete and Riley love him even when they quarrel. I wanted to belong to this team, but now I just want to belong to this man.
And I want him to belong to me.
“Take your clothes off, Remy.”
Flicking my last button, I part my shirt through the middle, and the t-shirt he’s still holding in his balled grip falls to the floor as his fingers spasmodically open.
His eyes rake me, his voice an angry pained rasp. “You have no idea what you’re asking for.”
“I’m asking for you.”
“I won’t let you f**king leave me.”
My throat closes up with emotion, making the words hard to pronounce. “Maybe I won’t want to.”
Pained desperation flashes in his eyes. “Give me a goddamned guarantee. I won’t let you f**king leave me, and you’re going to want to try. I’m going to be difficult and I’m going to be an ass, and sooner or later, you’re going to have f**king enough of me.”
Shaking my head, I toss my blouse to the floor, then push my skirt down my h*ps and step out of it. Trembling down to my soul, I stand in only my plain cotton bra and panties, my br**sts rising and falling. “I’ll never have enough of you, never.”
At first, my words seem to have no effect on him.
And I think I’m slowly dying.
Then a low, hungry sound rips up his throat.
My breath stalls in my throat.
He stands watching me, motionless in those drawstring pants, his legs braced in a fighting stance, his eyes bursting with need. His broad shoulders jerk with his breaths, and he curls his fingers into fists at his sides. The deep roughness of his voice scrapes my flesh. “Come here then.”